Times Square (1980) Review
Times Square (1980) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Two teenage girls live rough in pre-cleanup Times Square and form a band, in a film that was recut against its director's wishes, had a relationship removed from…
Tag: Theater
Stage writing has to work with no camera to help it, and film adaptations of plays show the difference. This tag collects reviews of plays on screen and what theatre teaches about dialogue.
1990sShakespeare in Love (1998) Review
Shakespeare in Love (1998) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A genuinely witty romantic comedy with a superb Tom Stoppard screenplay, which beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture through the most studied campaign in Academy history…
ComedyOscar Wilde Day: The Machinery of a Line
Wilde produced a body of work you could read in a fortnight, and he is quoted more than writers with forty books. The reason is mechanical, not mystical: he built the surprise into the sentence instead of the paragraph, and…
AprilShakespeare Day: He Only Worked for Me Live
Shakespeare wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets and shaped English more than anyone, and he never worked for me on the page, only live on stage. A look at why the plays demand performance to come alive.
DecemberMovie Theatre Day
Movie Theatre Day is April 23. The honest case for the movie theater, why streaming is killing it, and what still makes the big screen worth the ticket.
JanuaryNational Popcorn Day
National Popcorn Day is January 19. The history of movie popcorn, why it is tied to film forever, and the revival theater that made it special.
AugustNational Cinema Day
National Cinema Day is a Saturday in late August with a few-dollar tickets nationwide. What the day is, why theaters created it, and how to make the most of it.
Book ReviewsOthello
The noble Othello is poisoned by the malice of Iago, perhaps the most chilling villain Shakespeare ever wrote, in a devastating tragedy of jealousy and manipulation. Tightly built and startlingly modern, it is a masterclass in manipulation and one of…
1990sA Few Good Men (1992)
1992 Rob Reiner courtroom drama with Tom Cruise as a Navy lawyer and Jack Nicholson as the Marine colonel who can't handle the truth. A Few Good Men is Rob Reiner's 1992 American courtroom drama and one of the strongest…
1980sDeathtrap (1982)
Lumet's 1982 stage-play adaptation. The script doubles back on itself three times.
1960sThe Lion in Winter (1968)
The Lion in Winter is one of the great chamber pieces in cinema, written as a stage play by James Goldman and adapted by him for the screen with all the dialogue intact. The film is two hours of family…
1970sEarthquake (1974)
The Towering Inferno is the best. Both films defined what the disaster genre would be for the next.