Tag: cinema

The Stone Boy

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The Stone Boy

I have been to funerals that bring out bottled up emotions and old family grudges much like the ones in The Stone Boy.  Tragedy somehow brings those feelings to the surface and the time comes, ready or not, to release them on those to whom we have coveted blame.  What is unique in the Hillerman […]

| April 4, 1984
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The Lord of the Rings (1978)

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The Lord of the Rings (1978)

I arrive at Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings with a great many mixed feelings.  This is a film of so much style, so much imagination, so much ambition, yet I find myself trapped by the unavoidable conclusion that this movie is flawed beyond the point of no return.  Its animation style wavers back […]

| November 15, 1978
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Magic (1978)

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Magic (1978)

There must have been, I can imagine, a great temptation to turn a movie like Magic into a freak show, an exercise in exploitation that is free of restraint.  God forbid, perhaps even a movie that respects the intelligence of the audience.  This is, after all, the story of a ventriloquist being controlled by his […]

| November 8, 1978
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Caravans (1978)

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Caravans (1978)

Caravans is the kind of movie made by, and for, people who constantly say “Why don’t they make movies like that anymore,” and then when you see them you realize why.  As throwbacks go, it seems like a noble effort but how soon we forget that certain ideas, certain styles, certain ways of making things […]

| November 2, 1978
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Comes a Horseman (1978)

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Comes a Horseman (1978)

A good follow-up is hard to come by, and that’s what happened with Alan Pakula who followed his great 1976 Watergate thriller All the President’s Men, with a dour, unsatisfying and oddly-titled western drama Comes a Horseman that has all the pieces for a great movie, but none of the energy or investment that we […]

| October 25, 1978
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Halloween (1978)

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Halloween (1978)

I was about 9 years-old when I saw Halloween for the first time, and if it is true that the movies that you are exposed to as a child mean more to you later on, then this may have had the longest-lasting psychological impact on me.  To this day, the mental image of Michael Myers […]

| October 25, 1978
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The Late Great Planet Earth (1978)

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The Late Great Planet Earth (1978)

Well, that’s it!We’re doomed!Get yourself a shovel, son.It’s about to get deep! According to this movie, the Bible says that the human race is headed on a collision course of earthquakes, famine, disease, volcanic eruptions, holocausts, African Killer Bees, hellfire and brimstone, and it’s all coming soon – so brace yourself, buster.  The clock is […]

| October 25, 1978
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Goin’ Coconuts (1978)

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Goin’ Coconuts (1978)

I had no idea until about three hours ago that Donny and Marie Osmond had a feature film.  Having seen it, I can say that I probably could have gone the rest of my life without knowing that.  None-the-less my half-assed internet research tells me that this movie was made at the peak of their […]

| October 17, 1978
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