Words fail me. There’s a certain kind of twisted logic to it: a novel about the persistence of love has turned, in the hands of a mediocre director, into a a campy, puffed-up piece of rotten Oscar bait, a movie of such boundless badness that it would take somebody with a Nobel Prize in literature [...]
Posts Tagged ‘adaptation’
The Lion in Winter
“It’s 1183 and we’re barbarians!” proclaims Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn), and she’s got a point. The infighting between aging Henry II (Peter O’Toole), his jailed queen, and jealous sons vying for the crown (Anthony Hopkins, John Castle, Nigel Terry) is some of the ugliest — and most twisted — I’ve ever seen.
Based on a [...]
The Simpsons Movie
Just in case you somehow managed to avoid the longest-running TV sitcom in American history, do not worry: The Simpsons Movie is careful to include everybody in the fun. In the opening minutes, after Itchy and Scratchy have landed on the moon and everybody in the audience has been declared “a sucker” for paying good [...]
The Long Goodbye
“That’s a lot of entertainment for five grand!” Philip Marlowe’s talking about the questionable spectacle of a bunch of gangsters (including an uncredited Arnold Schwarzenegger) stripping to make a point, but it applies equally to Robert Altman’s time-traveling Chandler adaptation as a whole. Mumbling Elliott Gould is miles apart from Humphrey Bogart but drop dead [...]
