Review - The Wiz

An oh-so-1970s Motown reimagining of The Wizard of Oz? What’s not to love? The cast is a who’s who of Black singers and actors from the era. The musical numbers are great fun. The production design creates an excellent blend of fantasy landscape and gritty New York City. And best of all, the adaptation retains the spirit of Baum’s book – in some ways even more faithfully than the original movie – while at the same time incorporating a whole new set of cultural references. This picture should have a place on any list of quintessential movies from its decade. Worth seeing

Review - Cats

 This whole thing has a fascinating downward arc. It started with actual cats, which of course are excellent. Then in 1939 T.S. Eliot wrote Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The poetry collection was entertaining enough, though surprisingly twee coming from one of the godfathers of moody modernism. In 1981 Andrew Lloyd Webber turned Eliot’s poems into a popular musical that – for better or worse – revolutionized the portrayal of felines by people in leotards. And now this. Despite the opportunity presented by nearly 40 years passing between the stage production and this screen adaptation, many of the artistic decisions seem ill-considered. The story leads off with an act of animal abuse. The effects, makeup and costuming create things that look neither like cats nor like people but rather some horrid hybrid designed to appeal only to audience members with a highly specific fetish. Technical problems abound; most noticeable is the characters’ scale variation from nearly human size to cat size to hamster size. With the assembled ensemble of talented singers, dancers and actors, a much better movie should have been made. See if desperate.

Review – Prosecuting Evil

As a young attorney in the Army in 1945, Ben Ferencz was part of the team that set up documentation of war crimes. Then he served as a prosecutor during the post-war Nuremberg trials. He was later instrumental in the creation of the International Criminal Court. Do I even have to tell you that this documentary about his life is absolutely fascinating? Worth seeing

Review – Fantasy Island

As a childhood fan of the putative source material for this movie, I was expecting something else. Clearly I didn’t imagine the return of Ricardo Montalban and Hervé Villechaize, especially given that they’re both dead. But I didn’t imagine a mean-spirited “be careful what you wish for” with definite Saw overtones either. Because if I had imagined that at the outset, I could have imagined something else to watch. See if desperate

Abandoned - Capone

This movie starts out in the last year of Al Capone’s life, in his post-gangster, post-prison decline in his mansion in Florida. I waited for 20 minutes or so for flashbacks, plot twists or any kind of distraction from the slow deterioration of a tertiary syph patient. Nope. They might just as easily have made a movie out of the first year of the notorious criminal’s life. It would have involved the same amount of lying around, inarticulate babbling and shitting himself. But at least a baby would have been cheaper than Tom Hardy.

Review - Birds of Prey

Moving farther into the largely Marvel free realm of girl power superhero movies, DC offers up “The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.” To be sure, this isn’t exactly a milestone in the history of feminist cinema. But it’s an entertaining action movie that keeps the story moving and manages some humorous moments along the way. Mildly amusing

Review - Palm Springs

 Groundhog Day for stoners. This time around the protagonist has company, the love interest dragged into the time loop with him. The production manages an entertaining moment or two amid the general silliness. Mildly amusing