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Contact Leonard at moviecrazymail@pacbell.net

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  • Studio Vaults Open—On DVD
  • Remembering Deanna Durbin
  • Sugar And Spice: Love Is All You Need
  • Movie-Buff Heaven: The TCM Classic Film Festival
  • A River of Dreams: Mud
  • Disney, Hitchcock, and Marilyn Flying High
  • With Bogart On The African Queen
  • Greta's New Wave: Frances Ha
  • Star Trek Into Darkness
  • A Voyage Worth Taking: Kon-Tiki
  • The Incredible Shrinking 3-D Audience
  • Well-Forged: Iron Man 3
  • At Any Price
  • The Great Gatsby
  • The Game-Changer: Ray Harryhausen


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Leonard Maltin

Broken Embraces

  • By Leonard Maltin
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  • December 12, 2009 4:34 AM
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I felt a tinge of disappointment when I realized the hero of Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film was a director. It struck me as a glib, easy way of concocting a story to express the Spanish filmmaker’s love of cinema. I should have had more faith in him. Broken Embraces is a marvelous piece of storytelling that...
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More: Film Reviews

Everybody's Fine

  • By Leonard Maltin
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  • December 12, 2009 3:52 AM
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Sentiment is a tough sell nowadays, but when I see the success of The Blind Side I know that audiences are just as susceptible as ever to manipulation by a skillful storyteller. Everybody’s Fine isn’t nearly as ambitious as The Blind Side, and doesn’t have the same broad appeal—there’s no sports angle, and it isn’t based on a true story—but it’s...
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More: Film Reviews

Me and Orson Welles

  • By Leonard Maltin
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  • December 12, 2009 3:41 AM
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I am, at once, a complete sucker for this movie and potentially its severest critic. On the one hand, I am fascinated by the career of Orson Welles, and have read a great deal about (and interviewed people involved with) his tumultuous life in New York during the late 1930s. Not yet a household name, he juggled a burgeoning theatrical agenda with his...

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More: Film Reviews, Me and Orson Welles, Zac Efron, Claire Danes, Christian McKay, Richard Linklater

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

  • By Leonard Maltin
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  • December 12, 2009 3:03 AM
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During a panel discussion at this year’s Telluride Film Festival, Nicolas Cage was asked to respond to a description of his performance in this film as over-the-top. He replied, with a smile, that it seemed that casting him in this particular role under Werner Herzog’s direction meant “over-the-top” was a given.
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More: Film Reviews

Precious

  • By Leonard Maltin
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  • December 12, 2009 3:00 AM
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When a film aims for greatness and falls just short of its target, one can dwell on its attributes or nit-pick its failings. In the case of Precious, I’m inclined to take the high road, because of the movie’s raw emotionalism and exceptional performances.
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More: Film Reviews

Fantastic Mr. Fox

  • By Leonard Maltin
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  • December 12, 2009 2:45 AM
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Simplicity is not a quality most Hollywood moviemakers aspire to achieve, but for me it’s part of the charm of Fantastic Mr. Fox, an amusing, low-key fable that strikes a tone unlike any other animated film this year. There’s nothing simple about the technique of...
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More: Film Reviews

The Hangover

  • By Leonard Maltin
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  • December 12, 2009 2:35 AM
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I am not a fan of raunchy comedies, by and large, but this one won me over completely. The overall premise may not sound fresh—four guys going to Vegas for an anything-goes bachelor party—but screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore keep pulling...

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More: Film Reviews, Hangover, Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Todd Phillips, Scott Moore, Jon Lucas

Whip It

  • By Leonard Maltin
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  • December 11, 2009 11:41 AM
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Drew Barrymore has done herself proud. Her first directorial effort, Whip It, is a highly entertaining film that draws on several time-worn ingredients (coming of age, a fish out of water) and blends them with...
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More: Film Reviews

AN EDUCATION

  • By Leonard Maltin
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  • December 11, 2009 11:00 AM
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It isn’t easy being a sleeper nowadays. There’s been so much buildup for An Education, which has traveled the film festival circuit since Sundance in January, that it’s difficult for ordinary moviegoers to feel as if they’re discovering it for themselves. I hope inflated expectations don’t harm the film’s reception: it really is quite good and deserving of all the buzz it has generated this year.

Newcomer Carey Mulligan plays a precocious 16-year-old girl growing up in a London suburb in the early...

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More: Film Reviews, Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Lone Scherfig, Dominic Cooper, Rosamund Pike, An Education, Sally Hawkins, Alfred Molina

Where the Wild Things Are

  • By Leonard Maltin
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  • December 11, 2009 9:01 AM
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Where the Wild Things Are puts me in an awkward situation as someone who is supposed to deliver a clear-cut opinion of a film: I didn’t love it, yet there are passages in it that are so magical I don’t think I’ll ever forget them. When a movie has that much heart, and reveals as much care and thought as this one does, the fact that it’s...

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More: Film Reviews, Spike Jonze, Max Records, Catherine Keener, Dave Eggers, Maurice Sendak

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Popular Posts

  • Studio Vaults Open—On DVD
  • Remembering Deanna Durbin
  • Sugar And Spice: Love Is All You Need
  • Movie-Buff Heaven: The TCM Classic Film Festival
  • A River of Dreams: Mud
  • Disney, Hitchcock, and Marilyn Flying High
  • With Bogart On The African Queen
  • Greta's New Wave: Frances Ha
  • Star Trek Into Darkness
  • A Voyage Worth Taking: Kon-Tiki
  • The Incredible Shrinking 3-D Audience
  • Well-Forged: Iron Man 3
  • At Any Price
  • The Great Gatsby
  • The Game-Changer: Ray Harryhausen

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