The Weekly Gravy #188

The Burning Hell (1974) – Dreck I feel that if there were an afterlife, punishment for evil would be reasonable and of a fixed term. And I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell. – Isaac Asimov I doubt Asimov ever saw the films cooked up by Ron Ormond and Estus Pirkle after the former (a producer of exploitation films) became…

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The Weekly Gravy #187

The Letter (1940) – **** There’s no question in The Letter of who done it – from the very beginning we know that Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) shot Geoffrey Hammond. And while it’s a little before we learn exactly why, it’s pretty clear that her claims of shooting him in self-defense are a lie; if her stoic expression while shooting him didn’t tip us off, then her behavior as she explains what…

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The NBR Project: 10 Years On

Taylor Russell in the brilliant Waves, which made the NBR Top 10 list and didn’t earn a single Oscar nomination. Back in the spring of 2014, I began what I called The NBR Project, with the aim, more or less, of reviewing those films cited by the National Board of Review for their annual Top 10 lists. Since then, while I’ve seen plenty of films which made their lists – and have since all but…

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The Weekly Gravy #186

Catch My Soul/Santa Fe Satan (1974) – **½ Othello is one of Shakespeare’s thorniest tragedies, with an interracial marriage at its core which deteriorates under the villain’s influence into violence and finally murder, and with a title role all too often played by white actors in blackface – including at least one production of this very work. But it’s also one of his finest tragedies, a…

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O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA Review - ****

Hearing about the death of O.J. Simpson, I decided to go ahead and publish a fuller review of the brilliant documentary that sums up his life, his career, and the social context in which his trial occurred, leaving little room in my mind that he was, indeed, guilty. This was what I wrote in a capsule review in February 2017: 467 minutes, and it scarcely drags. A story most of us know far too…

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Jones Soda Hatch Chili & Lime Review

I was taking a walk in between my double feature of Monkey Man and Femme and wandered into HyVee, where I saw individual bottles of Jones for sale alongside the multi-packs. One caught my eye: a “Special Release” in a flavor I’d never tried. Given the reasonable sugar content (25 grams) and the 3-cent-a-gallon fuel discount I’d get with my shopper’s card, and it seemed like a no-brainer. But is…

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The Weekly Gravy #185

Braveheart (1995) – *** Braveheart is one of the most curious and contested Picture winners I can think of. It inspires passionate support from some and denunciations from others (Erik Beck shreds it here, my cousin here), but all of that is in hindsight. In 1995, it entered the race with good but not brilliant reviews and, more surprisingly, fairly modest grosses; it only came in 18th on the…

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Millville Peanut Butter Bunnies Review

For Easter, Millville – the in-house cereal line for ALDI – came out with this whimsically relevant variation on the classic peanut-butter-and-chocolate theme. As an admitted sucker for that combination (if only they’d bring back my beloved Blasted Shreds), I naturally gave it a chance. Note that I’ve already eaten most of the box and already have an idea of what they’re like. The scent is…

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The Weekly Gravy #184

The Life of Emile Zola (1937) – *** 30 minutes into The Life of Emile Zola, we cut from Zola, who’s risen from an impoverished young writer living in a garret to a wealthy middle-aged man living in luxury, to Maj. Esterhazy (Robert Barrat) writing a letter to the German military attaché which will be intercepted and kick off the Dreyfus affair, and the rest of the film will revolve around the…

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The Monthly Gravette #24: THE TALE OF GENJI Finished

I began reading The Tale of Genji last July; I finished it in the wee hours of St. Patrick’s Day, making this the longest time I’d spent on any one book in a very long while. That’s only partly because it’s so very long (1,090 pages in the translation I read) and partly because, well, life got in the way; I was not always in the mood to delve back into a work so heavily steeped in the values of a…

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The Weekly Gravy #183

The Graduate (1967) – **** It’s fascinating to read Roger Ebert’s review of the 30th anniversary reissue of The Graduate and see how he takes the film to task – not so much, I think, because the film is, as he suggests, an artifact of its time, but because he misread it when he was young: As Benjamin and Elaine escaped in that bus at the end of “The Graduate,” I cheered, the first time I saw…

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Awards Season 2023-24: The 13th Annual Gravy Awards

Yorgos and Emma do it again. Picture: Poor Things (Oscar, BAFTA, PGA, Globe, CC) Killers of the Flower Moon (Oscar, BAFTA, PGA, Globe, CC) Oppenheimer (Oscar, BAFTA, PGA, Globe, CC) A Thousand and One Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse All of Us Strangers Perfect Days The Boy and the Heron Past Lives (Oscar, PGA, Globe, CC) The Killer Asteroid City The Caine Mutiny…

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The Weekly Gravy #182

Bobi Wine: The People’s President (2022) – ***½ Oscar Nomination: Best Documentary Feature I haven’t seen many bad documentaries, and most of those I’ve seen have been very good (***½) or great (****). But those are both broad tiers, with a lot of room for nuance, and there’s a definite difference between a high ***½ like The Eternal Memory and a lower ***½ like this film. It’s not that hard…

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Awards Season 2023-24: The 96th Academy Awards

I got some very cool stuff at the Oscar party I attended, but perhaps the most photogenic was this lovely poster for Past Lives. Is Al Pacino okay? Serious question. That concern aside, it was a pretty good night. Kimmel’s hosting was hit-and-miss, but I’ve certainly seen worse. I liked how they presented the acting awards. Would’ve been cool if they’d done that with a couple other categories,…

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The Weekly Gravy #181

Io Capitano (2023) – ***½ Oscar Nomination: Best International Film It’s not a question if things will go wrong, but what will go wrong and when. Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and his cousin Moussa (Moustapha Fall) are teenagers living in the slums of Dakar, Senegal, and they dream of migrating to Europe and making a name for themselves as musicians; we see early on that they’re talented songwriters.…

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Awards Season 2023-24: Predicting the 96th Academy Awards

The moment of truth is here. I’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so I’ll just say that what I’m doing here is ranking the nominees in order of likeliness to win. When the winners are announced, I’ll score myself thusly: if my #1 wins, I get 5 points. If my #2 wins, I get 3 points. If my #3 wins, I get 1 point. Anything else, I get nothing. Since I’m covering 20 categories (I don’t bother with the…

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The Weekly Gravy #180

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) – **** Mutiny on the Bounty was touted at the time for its size and spectacle – the poster makes mention of its massive budget and what it was spent on – but almost 90 years later, what keeps it afloat (pun intended) are the characters, namely the three leads who made this the only film ever to have three nominees for Best Actor – the introduction of the Supporting…

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