A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
MOVIE GUIDE: T
Take the Money and Run (1969, Woody Allen)
Riotous, gag-filled fake "biography" of Woody's legendarily inept criminal shows off the then-untamed director's impressive sense of timing and already a willingness for directorial stunts. (A-)
REVIEW + DVD review / RELATED: Bananas review / MENTIONED: The Muse review / Twelve Chairs review / Cool Hand Luke review / Zelig review / gag comedy
Tales of Hoffmann (1951, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)
Strange, surreal opera documenting a man's life of unrequited love is the stuff of genius visually, although the translation to English is awkward; it's the fault of the source material that the characters don't make a lot of sense. But it's an absolute must-see, a film that will transport you and articulates with glorious, ornate sincerity the mind of a lovelorn human in remarkably lyrical color, sets, and visual audacity. (A-)
REVIEW / RELATED: Red Shoes review / LISTED: rated / best of year / MENTIONED: Singin' in the Rain review
Tales of Terror (1962, Roger Corman)
Succinct but unfortunately inaccurate title announces a trio of Poe stories adapted by Richard Matheson, mostly played here for laughs. Interesting but flaky. (B)
Talk to Her (2002, Pedro Almodovar)
Ingeniously structured film about two men taking care of invalid women and how their lives intertwine, full of strangeness, beauty, miracles, and discomfort. A difficult film to watch and to fully understand but an entirely absorbing work that lingers permanently. And one cannot escape mentioning that the silent film sequence is remarkable. (A-)
REVIEW / LISTED: rated
The Taming of the Shrew (1967, Franco Zeffirelli)
Illiterate but technically skillful and surprisingly witty film of Shakespeare's play, a welcome detour from the usual procedure of just filming his work straight-on with no imagination. Zeffirelli doesn't do anything great with it, nor do Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, but this is far more fun and professional than his ROMEO AND JULIET. (B)
Targets (1968, Peter Bogdanovich)
The increasingly crippling psychosis of a nice young all-American middle class boy leads to his murder of his entire family and a long session of senseless sniper attacks; meanwhile, Boris Karloff, having retired from the movie business, is on the way to his last public appearance, where the two stories converge. Amazingly resourceful Bogdanovich project is almost rapturous in the ways it finds to comment on cinema itself; it's very much the work of a first-timer on a budget, but it does showcase considerable panache and an uncanny ability to generate fear and excitement. (A-)
REVIEW / DVD review / LISTED: rated / best of year / MENTIONED: Nashville review / 1000th post / F for Fake review / Do the Right Thing review / Wuzzon
Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)
Well-made, engaging, beautifully photographed, and well-acted, but completely wasteful. Scorsese's technical mastery can't make up for the lack of connection he forges with his characters; you feel as if you are watching an intellectual exercise rather than a movie. That's passable to a point, but by the time we reach the bloody climax of this bleak film following the adventures of a traumatized, restless Vietnam vet in NYC, we are numbed, only awake enough to be insulted by the calculated irony of the ending. Infuriating and largely pointless. (C-)
notes on / top ten of the week / LISTED: rated / RELATED: Goodfellas review / MENTIONED: Sideways review / Broadcast News review / Time's 100 greatest films / The Muse review / The Godfather review / Targets review / Mona Lisa review / Nashville review / Zodiac review / Rosenbaum vs. The Departed / Platoon review
Team America: World Police (2004, Trey Parker)
All-too-accurate rendering of American values during the 2004 election in this action film satire starring marionettes. It's even more dead-on in its targeting of the blow-shit-up genre and preaching Hollywood celebs. Some may find it mean-spirited, but they wouldn't get the jokes anyway. Unfortunately, as is often the case with South Park, the film is not especially funny because it basically just tells the truth. (B+)
REVIEW / LISTED: rated / MENTIONED: Real Life review / Ratatouille reaction
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze (1991, Michael Pressman)
Nothing boiled my blood more in the early '90s than the Ninja Turtles, at least until trolls had their resurgence. This film includes Vanilla Ice, and looked at in retrospect, it's awful but rendered less unpleasant by its complete absurdity. And no, I've never seen the first film, nor have I had the inclination to catch TURTLES IN TIME. (C-)
10 (1979, Blake Edwards)
Edwards plays his cards with multiple hidden surprises, including a particularly devastating and wonderful one, in this disjointed but marvelous comedy about Dudley Moore's midlife crisis and lusting after Bo Derek. The director's command of his audience was never more skillful. (A-)
MENTIONED: Bonnie & Clyde review
The Ten Commandments (1956, Cecil B. Demille)
It goes without saying that this is overblown, and that if unsubtle biblical stories appeal to you, if you don't mind Charlton Heston hamming it up for four hours, and if your main interest in film is cool special effects, you might enjoy this. If none of this applies, stay away and spend your afternoon elsewhere. (C)
The Terminal (2004, Steven Spielberg)
Involving, smart comedy-drama, Spielberg's excellent take on post-9/11 America, set in the Kennedy Airport. Tom Hanks is an immigrant whose country has gone to war and no longer exists; as a result, he cannot leave the building and is stuck there for months, acquiring a new life in the process. A Capra-esque story that could easily have been made syrupy, maudlin, or worse, this is handled with appealing restraint up to its surprising (and brilliant) low-key ending. After attempting to make a great comedy for his entire career, Spielberg finally gets it right. (A)
REVIEW / LISTED: rated / best of year / MENTIONED: xmas presents / seen second time
The Terminator (1984, James Cameron)
Extremely violent action film plods along with little thought seemingly given to how we are expected to connect to or care about it. Schwarzeneggar is certainly believable, but this is just a series of dispassionate setpieces, skillfully but absently directed by Cameron. (C)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991, James Cameron)
A major improvement on the first film, this one drives forward with some keen science fiction ideas, though by the conclusion it has become so senseless and hyperactive that one is desperate for it to just be over. (B-)
MENTIONED: The Critic on DVD
Terms of Endearment (1983, James L. Brooks)
Excellent adaptation of Larry McMurtry's book about a mother and daughter's years-running battle of the wits is brought to the screen with dark wit and intelligence by Brooks (in his debut as director), enlivening the film with observations and cutting insight. One of the most painfully funny (and quotable) slice-of-life comedies crafted in America, this owes a lot to all of the actors, but especially Jack Nicholson as the promiscuous astronaut next door. A cathartic, bittersweet bit of mastery. (A)
RELATED: Starting Over review / MENTIONED: movies on cable / Sideways review / The Piano review
That Darn Cat! (1965, Robert Stevenson)
That darn cat is a spy, apparently, who is able to help people solve crimes. Dumber than it sounds. (C)
There's a Girl in My Soup (1970, Roy Boulting)
Waste of Peter Sellers and Goldie Hawn is notable only for nudity, not comedy. (D+)
They Call Me Trinity (1971, Enzo Barboni)
Overload of slapstick in SEVEN SAMURAI parody that never stops to breathe or bother with a coherent storyline. Those capable of dealing with this kind of thing will love it. Others may have to turn it off. (C)
The Thin Blue Line (1988, Errol Morris)
Subtle and incredibly scary, this documentary presents an embarrassing amount of evidence that a man convicted of the murder of a cop in Texas was innocent and that a brief acquaintance, now incarcerated for other reasons, committed the crime. Morris offers no narration or any such outside interference, allowing the involved parties to speak for themselves. What's more, he manages to be darkly comic even in this very grim documentary. A real eye-opener. (A-)
REVIEW / MENTIONED: An Inconvenient Truth review
The Thing (1982, John Carpenter)
Anemic remake of the classic thriller is devoid of personality, and the effects are too unimpressive to be paraded around with such enthusiasm. (D)
The Thin Man (1934, W.S. Van Dyke)
Myrna Loy and William Powell are delightful as married detectives on the trail of a missing man. Banter and sophistication are magnetic, the story itself is far less interesting, but there is a lot of style and charm to be commended here. (B+)
REVIEW / LISTED: rated / MENTIONED: Scoop review
The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
A man (Joseph Cotten) goes to Vienna looking for help from an old friend, only to find that he has been killed, hit by a car, and police are now labeling him responsible for a series of heinous crimes. Cotten sets out to clear his name. A brilliantly-performed, stylish masterpiece of a thriller, with a script that, through eloquent dialogue and the kind of perfect surprises that don't come from supsense film conventions, never trails off. Joseph Cotten is wonderful as usual, and the film is a lively rollercoaster bubbling over with great ideas, most of them visual. Chase scenes and the ending offer stunning, kaleidoscopic highlights. (A)
REVIEW / DVD review / LISTED: rated / 10 best of year / best DVDs of year / RELATED: Alida Valli RIP / MENTIONED: King Kong [33] review / Lady from Shanghai review / Black Narcissus DVD / Intermezzo review / new AFI list / notes on composition / Portrait of Jennie review
Thirteen (2003, Catherine Hardwicke)
Accidentally funny "exposé" of problem teenagers is cursed with horrendous overuse of handheld camera, but the acting isn't all bad, and it's mindless fun to watch these bad girls give their parents a hard time in the most obvious and stupid of ways. (B-)
MENTIONED: fall movie preview
The 39 Steps (1935, Alfred Hitchcock)
Dangerously close to perfect. Robert Donat runs from police who think he killed the spy in his apartment, ends up handcuffed to cranky woman (Madeleine Carroll). A nailbiter even on repeat viewings; every shot is beautiful, the black & white photography and rapid-fire editing lending this witty but dark thriller a sense of undeniable life. Episodic in the best of ways, every performance grand, with Peggy Ashcroft and John Laurie both unforgettable in small roles. Hitchcock's worldwide breakthrough, still one of his best films, the atmosphere of both joy and terror realized with a skill absent to nearly every other major director. (A+)
REVIEW / REVIEW (short) / Hitchcock's masterpieces / RELATED: North by Northwest review / Champagne DVD review / remakes of / MENTIONED: Lord of the Flies reaction / Catch Me If You Can review / endings / Goodbye Mr. Chips review / War of the Worlds review / Third Man review / 1000th post / Stagecoach review / The Sting review
This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006, Kirby Dick)
A documentary exposing the bullshit of the U.S. ratings system is a nice idea, but Dick can't pull it beyond reality show doldrums. The interviews with directors who've been fucked up the ass by the system are nice, but the film has no sense of its own cinematic possibilities, and it's a flat cultural document that will lose all its relevance within a year or two. (C)
REVIEW / LISTED: rated
This Island Earth (1955, Joseph Newman)
Some have an inexplicable attachment to clunky old science fiction movies like this, but despite their protests to the contrary, this is one of the worst of all the stuffy, clinical live action cartoons Universal produced in the '50s, poorly acted and nonsensical, and only slightly forgivable on account of unintentional laughs. What is so "intelligent" about this, I wonder? (C)
MENTIONED: Lost Weekend review
This Is Spinal Tap (1984, Rob Reiner)
Another film too accurate to be as funny as it wants to be, this sensational parody of pompous '70s rock & roll groups -- largely improvised by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer -- contains moments of mastery and is sustained with more skill than most "mockumentaries." The songs are a riot. (A-)
RELATED: A Mighty Wind review / Best in Show review / For Your Consideration review
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965, Ken Annakin)
Title sequence is only saving grace of this tired, overbaked long chase sequence involving men in an airplane race who are not really all that magnificent. Quite boring and much too long, with the only real thrills overconcentrated at various points in the narrative. (C)
Three Amigos (1986, John Landis)
Stupid, stupid, stupid comedy must be punished even if it is well aware of its stupidity. This rambling excuse for actors who like working together to romp around unrestricted is free of brains, restraint, and any kind of respect for its audience. Landis seems to make movies strictly for his friends' amusement. The songs are fun, though. (D+)
The Three Caballeros (1945, Norman Ferguson)
Strange, opulent Disney WWII package feature is a series of vignettes about Central and South America that has gained a somewhat mysterious but not entirely unwelcome cult following today. Some of the animation really is dazzling. (B+)
Throne of Blood (1957, Akira Kurosawa)
Even Harold Bloom likes this one! This is Kurosawa's take on Macbeth -- not up to Welles' or Polanski's, but pretty damn enjoyable, especially the first half. It unfortunately loses some of its goodwill as time presses on and the staging becomes less imaginative, but the death scene is magnificent. (B)
REVIEW / LISTED: rated / RELATED: Yojimbo review
Thunderball (1965, Terrence Young)
Slowest, dumbest Bond film of the Connery period doesn't seem quite as ridiculous now that it's been followed with stuff like MOONRAKER, but still exhibits a distressing lack of faith in the judgment of those seeing it. (D+)
THX-1138 (1971, George Lucas)
Intriguing (visually, at least) debut for director Lucas is mostly just a catalog of elements seen in numerous other sci-fi films about oppressive future worlds. While more respectable than his other films, it gives no more reason than they do to believe that he actually knows how to tell a story. (C-)
Tideland (2006, Terry Gilliam)
This controversial slice of unfiltered Gilliam is obviously made with the knowledge that many viewers will want nothing to do with it. The director seizes the opportunity to take his most bizarre ideas and run with them. The story -- of an orphaned girl escaping into fantasy to deal with the horrors around her in a creepy rural semi-neighborhood -- shows great promise, but the execution suggests that whatever the things were that tempered Gilliam and kept him at least slightly on the sunny side of convention in projects like BRAZIL and 12 MONKEYS is an integral part of what makes his work so appealing. Because this is not appealing. Remarkable and unforgettable, sure (unforgettable, oh god, yes), but not necessarily something a person who is not Terry Gilliam needs to spend a whole lot of time with. (B-)
REVIEW / most anticipated of year / LISTED: rated / RELATED: Brothers Grimm review / MENTIONED: Brothers Grimm reaction / typeface discussion
Time After Time (1979, Nicholas Meyer)
Silly but hugely entertaining movie about H.G. Wells building a time machine, taking it to the '70s and confronting Jack the Ripper, who also has come to the future. Mary Steenburgen serves in a fun, innocuous romantic subplot. It's all a bit trashy -- with bizarrely full-blown scenes of violence -- but, in its strange way, magical. (A-)
MENTIONED: The Ring review / scary movies
Time Bandits (1981, Terry Gilliam)
Gilliam's first non-Python film is an ingenious journey through history, with a young boy taken to meet various immortal figures. Weird, funny, and thrilling, this is a work of great imagination and astonishing energy. (A)
RELATED: 12 Monkeys review / Brothers Grimm reaction / Brothers Grimm review / Tideland review
The Time Machine (1960, George Pal)
Very likable and admirably full-blown H.G. Wells adaptation is beautifully directed by Pal, with the future vision and sense of menace both well-realized, although the monsters at the finale may be a bit ill-advised. It's completely lacking in sophistication and a certain amount of the political commentary, but the sweeping, dazzling story survives intact to become a first-rate science fiction picture. Rod Taylor is brilliant in an unusual, difficult role. (A-)
MENTIONED: Idiocracy review
A Time to Kill (1996, Joel Schumacher)
As with THE CLIENT, Schumacher turns a boring over-the-counter legal thriller by John Grisham into an exciting film, severely undercut by the performances here of Matthew McConaughey and Sandra Bullock, poorly chosen leads. Still, this is a 150-minute movie that's actually worth the time it takes to get through. (B)
Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation (1991, Rich Arons et al.)
Feature expansion of Steven Spielberg's intelligent, hilarious early '90s TV cartoon is full of appealing, knowing satire and a number of harrowing situations. The animation isn't anything special, but the writing is terrific, and though the film does at times come off as a bunch of short episodes of the series thrown together, it ends up achieveing cohesion toward the end. (B+)
Titanic (1953, Jean Negulesco)
Fairly good cast wanders through a routine, detached telling of the story. This is upstaged by both of the other major films about the tragedy. (C)
MENTIONED: Selznick/Hitchcock version / The Lady Eve review
Titanic (1997, James Cameron)
Entertaining three-hour epic about the sinking of the famous vessel, led by Leonardo DiCaprio and (the excellent) Kate Winslet, became the highest-grossing movie of all time. It is Cameron's best film to date, despite its dramatic flaws and laughable characterizations, not to mention a script that could have used a rewrite or two. But anyone is bound to surrender to the seductive, dazzling portrait of the event and its aftermath. (B+)
DVD cover / MENTIONED: Great Expectations review / my Dane story / Nightmare Before Christmas anecdote / box office problems / Dr. Zhivago review / Saving Private Ryan review
To Be or Not to Be (1983, Alan Johnson)
Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft are wonderful in half-baked, irritating remake. (D+)
Mel Brooks Collection DVD review
To Catch a Thief (1955, Alfred Hitchcock)
No plot, just an excuse for French Riviera photography and lots of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly looking great. Some great scenes, but this is slick and inconsequential; with no sense of danger or any real moral weight, it's hardly an actual thriller. A vacation for the director, to say the least. (B)
REVIEW / quote / MENTIONED: Catch Me If You Can review / Targets DVD
To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday (1996, Michael Pressman)
AKA "Claire Danes on the Beach." (B-)
To Have and Have Not (1944, Howard Hawks)
Sort of a poor man's CASABLANCA, with Lauren Bacall delivering the great lines and Bogart playing the usual hardcore private Mr. Nice Guy. A fun movie, but defiantly unsophisticated. (B)
REVIEW / LISTED: rated / MENTIONED: year in movies / Lady from Shanghai review
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962, Robert Mulligan)
How in the hell do you fashion such a dull movie out of one of the finest books ever written? By miscasting Gregory Peck, first of all, and by adapting the text in such a clinical yet overbearing fashion that not only do few people protest the result, you win a few Oscars! I'm sorry to be a spoilsport but I was grossly disappointed by this one. (C+)
MENTIONED: Boys from Brazil review / H2G2 review / The River review
Tootsie (1982, Sydney Pollack)
Pollack misses one opportunity after another to make this SOME LIKE IT HOT ripoff an interesting movie. Dustin Hoffman is wonderful as an out of work actor who dresses as a woman to get a role on a top-rated soap opera, then becomes world famous. There are a few laughs -- many provided by Bill Murray -- and some strong emotional moments, but the movie is just too conventional to have fun with its premise, has many shades of stupidity (especially the awful songs), and ends in the worst possible fashion. I'm amazed anyone feels this to be one of the all-time great comedies. (C+)
LISTED: rated / disappointments / MENTIONED: endings / Groundhog Day review / Victor/Victoria DVD review / new AFI list
Topaz (1969, Alfred Hitchcock)
French spies need to find stuff out about Cuba. If you can ignore one annoying character, this is a brilliant film until the last fifteen minutes. Hitchcok simply didn't know to end his story. But aside from that, this is a haunting, absorbing, highly underrated thriller worthy of the director's name. (B+)
REVIEW / RELATED: Paradine Case review / MENTIONED: Munich review
Top Gun (1986, Tony Scott)
Appallingly bad, pandering '80s movie is engineered to annoy. Humans could not possibly be responsible for it; it must have been created by robots, starting with lead actor Tom Cruise. (D+)
MENTIONED: Minority Report review
Top Secret! (1984, Jim Abrahams/David Zucker/Jerry Zucker)
Val Kilmer doesn't come off much more convincingly in a comedic role than he does anywhere else, but this is a surprisingly funny successor to AIRPLANE!, with more than one side-splitting sequence in a parody of Cold War spy thriller-melodramas. (B+)
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970, Richard Fleischer)
One of the few war movies that is genuinely interesting and even entertaining, this tale of Pearl Harbor seen from perspectives on both sides of the war was a box office flop but remains the definitive film on the subject, with brilliantly-mouted depiction of the attack itself. (B+)
Torn Curtain (1966, Alfred Hitchcock)
Paul Newman is a spy trying to get a formula, with his fiancée Julie Andrews following him around. Fluffy and inordinately forgettable, not to mention woefully miscast, but give it credit for being watchable and for Hitchcock's intriguing action setpieces. This is the only one of Hitchcock's last six films that somewhat deserves its poor reputation. (C)
REVIEW / RELATED: Paradine Case review
Total Recall (1990, Paul Verhoeven)
Wacky cartoon of Philip K. Dick story has all the usual sci-fi mainstays (no flinching at improbability, unnecessarily ornate production design, fake intelligence, and mindless action) and fails to intrigue past the first few minutes, with director Verhoeven's excesses growing intolerable by the time the second hour begins. No real saving graces aside from the solid effects work. (D+)
Touch of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)
Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh get thrown into their own personal hell at the U.S.-Mexican border, besieged by a hostile, corrupt sheriff played brilliantly by the director. Convoluted story may lose some, but the film's menace and chilling finality survive regardless, with ambiguity crafting heroes from villains and tragedy from comedy. (A+)
DVD review / LISTED: best of year / RELATED: F for Fake review / MENTIONED: The Third Man review / 1000th post / Goodfellas review / deluxe DVD waned / In the Heat of the Night review
The Towering Inferno (1974, John Guillermin & Irwin Allen)
JAWS may have begun a new era of blockbusters, but this insulting escapist disaster film is much more responsible for the brainlessness of the movies that came forward in its wake. Amazingly enough, this moronic drama of a burning building received a Best Picture nomination! (C-)
MENTIONED: Die Hard review
Toys (1992, Barry Levinson)
Levinson tried for over a decade to get someone to finance this, and it turned out to be one of the most horrifyingly bad movies of the early '90s, creating a strange parallel to the story, which concerns a man fulfilling his dream of building a toy factory only to have this go awry. Self-consciously cutesy film attempts valiantly to impress with its over-the-top production design, but all you feel is contempt. (D)
Toy Story (1995, John Lasseter)
Exquisite debut feature from Pixar (and Lasseter) was the first all-CG full-length cartoon. It's a film arguably made more for the Boomers who flocked to see the Event picture than for the kids who have made it immortal ever sense, but it is still a finely crafted tale of penis envy between favored toy Woody and new kid on the block Buzz Lightyear. The animation, of course, is startling, especially when the film ventures outside of the bedroom, but it's the characters that make it memorable, and the wild, relentless comic chases that make it so much fun. (A-)
RELATED: subtext of Incredibles / Pixar stuff / Cars & TS3 / TS3 vs. Ratatouille / Cars review / MENTIONED: box set / James & the Giant Peach review / Nightmare Before Christmas review / Mickey in Living Color V. 2 / more on Chicken Little / L.A. Story DVD review / Shrek review
Toy Story 2 (1999, John Lasseter)
One of the best sequels ever made, this stunning work of virtuosity turns the original film upside down to create something funnier, more ambitious, sadder, and far more universal than TOY STORY. A fatso collector steals Woody with intentions to send him to a museum in Japan! Buzz Lightyear and the other favorites from the first movie go on a hazardous journey to rescue their friend. Scenes range wildly from hilarious (and with humor that will reach across multiple generations simultaneously rather than in the arbitrary manner of the earlier effort) to heartbreaking; this is absolute top-quality entertainment, and the most sophisticated cartoon to come out of the United States in decades. (A+)
REVIEW / RELATED: Cars & TS3 / Cars review / MENTIONED: golden globes / action figures / box set / 2006 movie preview / summer movie preview / L.A. Story DVD review / movie summaries
Trading Places (1983, John Landis)
Horribly unlikable comedy -- its "plot" defined completely by the title -- is full of whiny, annoying characters and train-wreck attempts at winning humor. Useless Landis pap, wasting a rather interesting cast. (D+)
Trail of the Pink Panther (1982, Blake Edwards)
Or, So It's Come to This: A Pink Panther Clip Show. Following Peter Sellers' death, Edwards tries to use deleted scenes from the five PANTHER films as well as clips from their highlights and form them into a vague story about a reporter investigating Clouseau's disappearance. Needless to say, it's a failure. Edwards made this and VICTOR/VICTORIA the same year, in what may be the broadest juxtaposition of quality in back-to-back films for any director in history. (D+)
Pink Panther Film Collection DVD review / MENTIONED: Love on the Run review
Transylvania 6-5000 (1985, Roy DeLuca)
Terrible comedy satirizing classic horror films. I think it's a comedy, anyway. You're a saint if you don't run screaming from the room after about fifteen minutes. (D-)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, John Huston)
Or, Bogart Is Allowed to Act! Don't get me wrong, I love Humphrey Bogart, but look down his list of classic movies -- CASABLANCA, THE MALTESE FALCON, TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, THE BIG SLEEP -- and surely you notice that there is little variance in terms of the characters he was permitted to play. He's always the kind of guy the rest of us wish we could be. Enter TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, which offers a wonderful exception: this time, Humphrey is the kind of guy we fear we would be if our luck changed. This is LORD OF THE FLIES with real dimension: humanity unhinged, at its nastiest, but Bogart never lets us forget that the monster is in all of us. A brilliant movie. (A)
LISTED: rated / best of year / MENTIONED: Twelve Chairs review / The Wild Bunch review
Tremors (1990, Ron Underwood)
I don't even know what to say about this. (D)
The Triplets of Belleville (2003, Sylvain Chomet)
Thanks to Sylvain Chomet, we got at least one silent movie in the last few years, this ingenious French-Canadian animated film telling, with very little dialogue, a blissfully dreamlike tale of a lost bicyclist. It's also the first example we've had in ages of hand-drawn animation being used effectively in a film; it is wonderful to see a cartoon instead of an "animated feature" for a change. This offers something we don't get very often in modern films -- pure, unadulterated joy. Along those lines, fuck the people who callously label this "animation for adults." Show this to your kids; they can handle the nudity. It will make their eyes go wide and their worlds expand. Then show them FANTASIA. (A+)
short review / DVD review / complaint / LISTED: rated / 12 best of year / MENTIONED: 1000th post
Tron (1982, Steven Lisberger)
Stupid but delightful and infinitely well-meaning WARGAMES-ish film about The Computer Age, as perceived in 1982. Jeff Bridges is furious because the computer ripped off some of his creative work, so it sucks him inside and he does battle with the CPU! Early use of CG animation is intriguing, and the movie is a lot of fun to watch, for all its weak metaphoric silliness and only the coldest sort of imagination. Old-computer buffs (and Atari 2600 fans) should consider this a must-see. (B)
DVD review / LISTED: best DVDs of year / MENTIONED: received in mail / The X-Files: Season One / The Matrix review
Troop Beverly Hills (1989, Jeff Kanew)
Shelly Long grins through this dismal, forgettable comedy about girl scouts; the only good thing about it is the Beach Boys song ("Make It Big") over the opening titles, and even it isn't that good. (D)
The Trouble with Harry (1955, Alfred Hitchcock)
In a small town, a corpse belonging to a man named Harry is a major nuisance. Whoever gave this its reputation as a clunker had no sense of humor. It's ruthlessly weird and is most likely Hitchcock's funniest film, the laughs sprinkled liberally throughout an excellent script by John Michael Hayes. Exceptional performances, too. (A)
RELATED: Mr. & Mrs. Smith review / MENTIONED: 1941 DVD review / notes on composition
True Lies (1994, James Cameron)
The title and early scenes involving the lead characters' marriage promise an intrigue that is ultimately betrayed in favor of routine Cameron-action tomfoolery. A real shame, because a film noir with Schwarzenegger could be a riot. (C)
True Stories (1986, David Byrne)
Rarely has a film so precisely reflected a director's personality, with the first hour of this crazy "rock" movie an exploration of Byrne's mind, formed in delightful non-sequiturs and strange but alluring eccentricities. Unfortunately, with Byrne corresponds to story conventions enough to add a climax, he falters, the last half-hour a bore highlighted only by John Goodman's rendition of "People Like Us." (B-)
LISTED: rated
The Truman Show (1998, Peter Weir)
Weir could have made the definitive meditation on movies, TV, and reality here; he settles instead for a Capra fantasy about a man who is unaware he is the subject of a reality TV show that airs 24 hours a day. Eerily prophetic, even for a film made as recently as 1998, but Weir is too fond of his characters to do anything except what amounts to -- when you ignore the bells and whistles -- a fairly conventional story about a lost soul. In that sense, it scores, but it could have been even better. (A-)
Truth or Dare (1991, Alek Keshishian)
Arresting at times, this documentary about Madonna's 1990 world tour captures dynamic performances and plenty of intriguing candid moments. Unfortunately, the brilliance of the filmmaking only matches the blissful pop of the subject to a limited extent, so the film doesn't really know what it's about, but it's still fascinating stuff; highlight: Madonna's argument with her dad about the use of sex in her concert. (B-)
Tuck Everlasting (1980, Frederick King Keller)
Intelligent, low-key adaptation of Natalie Babbitt's ghostly novel about a family blessed/cursed with eternal life comes across with the ideal measure of reality to balance out its fantasy elements, retains the beautiful conclusion and only cops out on one point (the mother, not the father, pulls the gun in the book, and the change is greatly disappointing in the film). (A)
Turner & Hooch (1989, Roger Spottiswoode)
Tom Hanks suffers through this detective-and-dog claptrap with such dread you don't blame him for wanting to escape to the likes of PHILADELPHIA and FORREST GUMP. This film includes Reginald VelJohnson. (D+)
12 Angry Men (1957, Sidney Lumet)
Still-riveting Reginald Rose drama -- brilliantly staged by first-time feature director Lumet -- about a juror (Henry Fonda, fantastic) on a murder trial with doubts about the defendant's guilt slowly making his case to his reluctant peers. The film belongs to Martin Balsam as the jury foreman, but the entire cast is excellent, and the movie is sustained beautifully, maintaining interest up to the last second. (A)
REVIEW / RELATED: Dog Day Afternoon review / MENTIONED: amazon.com free shipping / new AFI list
The Twelve Chairs (1970, Mel Brooks)
The story of a madcap quest for an antique chair in which a fortune is hidden brings forth welcome shades of TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE. Though it does incorporate a few wild comedy setpieces -- all of them hugely out of place but still very good -- the film is highly atypical of Mel Brooks' work. It's beautifully and almost romantically shot, with brilliant use of Yugoslavian locations. The film is not among his best but it is highly entertaining and interestingly restrained; in addition to writing and directing, Brooks wrote a wonderful song that plays over the opening credits. (B+)
REVIEW / Mel Brooks Collection DVD review / LISTED: rated
Twelve Monkeys (1995, Terry Gilliam)
This is the sort of science fiction lively enough for me to relate to. An prisoner in the future is sent back to 1990 to prevent the spread of a virus that nearly wipes out humanity. Funny at times, wild, engrossing, and fascinating, with Bruce Willis delivering his best-ever performance thanks to a director who does not waste him. Brad Pitt is also excellent. Unquestionable highlight is the Hitchcock sequence, which captures the experience of not just surrendering to Hitchcock but to films in general. (A)
REVIEW / LISTED: best DVDs of year / RELATED: Brothers Grimm reaction / Brothers Grimm review / Tideland review / MENTIONED: Twilight Zone CG
Twentieth Century (1934, Howard Hawks)
This is considered to be among the first classic "screwball" comedies, but feels more like what it is: a stodgy old play of little interest transferred to the screen with a minimum of real ideas and effort. Hawks and writer Ben Hecht, two brilliant men, completely fail to deliver on this one. Carole Lombard is wasted, John Barrymore is awful, and the film is just labored and overwrought. (C-)
REVIEW / LISTED: rated / worst of year
Twilight Zone--The Movie (1983, Joe Dante/John Landis/George Miller/Steven Spielberg)
No one asked, but these four directors delivered anyway. Joe Dante offers a visually inventive "It's a Good Life" that lacks all of the power of the original episode. Spielberg's "Kick the Can" is possibly the worst thing he has ever directed. Miller's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is exciting but adds very little to what was already there. Worst of all is certainly Landis' untitled sequence, never an episode of The Twilight Zone but a weak invention of his; the filming of it -- and, apparently, Landis' overzealous need for danger -- led to the death of Vic Morrow by decapitation. What a fucking waste. (C-)
REVIEW
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992, David Lynch)
This is the kind of surrealism that really impresses the average MTV viewer; remember the trashy soap opera Passions about vampires? This is well below that on the dramatic scale. What the hell were people thinking when they made this (and went to see it)? (D-)
Twins (1988, Ivan Reitman)
Sloppy "comedy" of genetic experiment that results in DeVito and Schwarzenegger being "twins" who find one another years later. Evil. (D+)
Twister (1996, Jan De Bont)
I saw this in a packed theater in 1996 and found it dizzying; later that year, I saw it on home video and realized that sometimes, the medium is the message. And it probably shouldn't be. (C-)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
Ceaselessly beautiful, almost overwhelming open-ended masterpiece about the evolution of mankind, the embracing and defeating of technology, and finally, the power of the individual. Kubrick dares to stage his film with little dialogue and manages to tell a story of great sensory impact without explicit explanation of every plot point. I'm convinced this as close as you can get to a religious experience on the screen, maybe anywhere. (A+)
REVIEW / rwarrr! / RELATED: Kubrick: A Life in Pictures / Don Trumbull obit / Lolita review / Barry Lyndon review / AI review / new Kubrick box / MENTIONED: Lost in Translation review / Triplets of Belleville complaint / endings / Reds review / MGM closing / Fantasia review / H2G2 review / Time's 100 greatest films / Pi review / Charlie & the Chocolate Factory review / Chinatown review / Mike Leigh vs. Frenzy / Close Encounters review / oscar rant / Futurama S4 DVD / Days of Heaven review / The Prisoner DVD / Fanny & Alexander debate / my mind is going / LOTR: Return of the King review
2010 (1984, Peter Hyams)
I admit that maybe on its own this would not be as offensive as it ends up being, but this turgid, idiotic, mindless sequel rides the coattails of its brilliant predecessor and ends up being an insult to it. Certainly, Clarke or no Clarke, the most unnecessary sequel in history, beyond even JAWS 2 or PSYCHO II. And Hyams just has no clue what he's getting himself into here. (F)
MENTIONED: Pi review
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