"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Unsolicited opinions on books, movies, TV shows, consumer products
“I suggest a new strategy, R2: let the Wookiee win.” — Anthony Daniels as C-3PO in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977). Two notes for my reader(s?), before I get to the reviews: I have built up a huge backlog of movie reviews to post here, and promise to try to catch […]
“Integrity is a bugger, it really is. Lying can get you into difficulties, but to really wind up in the crappers try telling nothing but the truth.” – David Mitchell, Ghostwritten The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins The familiar arguments against the familiar arguments for god, well arranged and cogently stated. If you’re a member […]
“You can’t handle the truth.” — Jack Nicholson (as Col. Nathan R. Jessep) in A Few Good Men (1992). El Norte (1983) Hey, I tried, but this film is so sociopolitically earnest I instinctively turned against it. It begins graphically enough, with Mayan peasants being brutally suppressed by Guatemalan landowners and their military lackeys, but […]
“When I began to write fiction that I knew would be published as science fiction, part of what I brought to it was the critical knowledge that science fiction was always about the period in which it was written. ‘1984’ is really about 1948. It can’t really be understood outside the historical context of 1948.” […]
Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a difficult read. Difficult, at first, for mundane reasons. Names you don’t know how to pronounce (Sethe, Halle). Irritating, non-standard diction (whitepeople, blackpeople). A narrative structure that jumps without transition from character to character, time to time, location to location, leaving you to catch up as best you can. A general […]
“Round up the usual suspects.” — Claude Rains (as Capt. Louis Renault), Casablanca (1942) Easy Virtue (2008) This had promise, being that it’s based on a Noel Coward play, but it didn’t deliver. It comes across as a parody of a typical BBC drawing room comedy, minus the humor. I honestly think the movie is […]
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker The Color Purple is a story told in short letters. Letters, at first, from a barely-literate Celie to God, letters that are little more than raw observations of a brutal, degraded, hopeless life. Letters, later, from Celie’s sister Nettie, reminding Celie of their shared history, relating the progress of […]
“I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!” — Margaret Hamilton (as the Wicked Witch of the West), The Wizard of Oz (1939) Sunshine Cleaning (2008) I have a hard time understanding why some reviewers put this one down. True, it comes out of the same box as Little Miss Sunshine and other […]