With so much going on in the world, the problems of one aging movie critic trying to fill up a 10 Best List shouldn’t amount to a hill of beans.
Author Archives: Eleanor Ringel Cater
Eleanor Ringel, Movie Critic, was the film critic for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for almost 30 years. She was nominated multiple times for a Pulitzer Prize. She won the Best of Cox Critic, IMAGE Film & Video and Women In Film awards. An Atlanta native, she graduated from Westminster and Brown University. She was the critic on WXIA’s Noonday, a member of Entertainment Weekly's Critics Grid and wrote TV Guide’s movie/DVD. She is member of the National Society of Film Critics and currently talks about movies on WMLB and writes the Time Out column for the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
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Ryan O’Neal (1941-2023) – a ‘golden boy’ on screen; not in real life
Ryan O’Neal, who died late last week at age 82, was about as Golden Boy-looking as it gets. Plus, he had a kind of goofy charm, as if he knew he was a lightweight, too, but if it didn’t bother you, it wouldn’t bother him.
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‘Maxine’s Baby’ – documentary celebrating Tyler Perry as someone who wouldn’t give up
“Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story” is a different sort of feel-good movie.
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Barbra Streisand’s 966-paged autobiography ‘shares it all’
The legendary star’s doorstopper of an autobiography – a mere 966 pages – is simultaneously revelatory and walled-off.
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‘The Holdovers’ – trio of actors shine in movie about spending X-mas in boys’ prep school
Though slack-paced, familiar and overlong, “The Holdovers” isn’t difficult to sit through. That’s mostly thanks to the cast. Giamatti is simply a wonderful actor.
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‘Defending My Life’ – Rob Reiner’s loving tribute to actor, director Albert Brooks
If you aren’t already familiar with Albert Brooks, this is an excellent introduction. If you do, “Defending My Life” is a delicious celebration of one of the funniest people on the planet.
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‘Opposable Thumbs’ – a book about movie reviewers Siskel and Ebert
“Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever” is a loving, respectful and extremely thorough look back at rival Chicago newspaper movie critics, Roger Ebert (the Sun-Times) and Gene Siskel (the Tribune).
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In time for Halloween, Eleanor’s scary movie picks over the decades
When it comes to ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, I think we can all agree:
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‘The Burial’ – a well-acted entertaining courtroom thriller
Given its blahhh title, “The Burial” seems to be trying to dig its own grave. Actually, “The Burial” is the not-so-good title of a pretty-darn-good movie starring Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones.
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‘Fair Play’ – movie show gender pitfalls of mixing work and romance
Gender politics and office politics crash into each other with head-on ferocity in “Fair Play,” a perversely provocative and shamelessly entertaining new film being shown in theaters and on Netflix.
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Highlighting several movie gems of Hispanic heritage
There are hundreds of films I could recommend with a Hispanic heritage. Anything by Pedro Almodovar. Anything by Luis Bunuel. Anything by Guillermo del Toro. Alfonso Cuaron. Alejandro G. Inarritu.
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‘A Haunting in Venice’ – Branagh movie released in time for Halloween
My guess is that Kenneth Branagh had a lot more fun making “A Haunting in Venice” than we have watching it.
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When is a movie critic a critic? Or when is a reviewer on the take?
Recently, the New York Times published an article about how influencers are increasingly on the take in the role of pseudo-movie critics. Not that their opinion shouldn’t matter as much as (more than?) mine or the late Roger Ebert or even the Times’ own critic, Manohla Dargis.
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Thank you George Lefont, 85, for our movie moments in Atlanta
When I heard that George Lefont, the man who made Atlanta a movie town for over 40 years, wasn’t doing well, I went looking for some of my old articles on him. After all, I’d been writing about him since the late 1970s.
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‘Golda’ falls far short in depiction of Israeli prime minister Golda Meir
As Israel’s only female prime minister, Helen Mirren goes for the gold – as in, Oscar gold – in “Golda,” a tedious and piecemeal reconstruction of Golda Meir’s handling of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
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Oscar watch: Ryan Gosling and Robert Downey Jr.’s ‘brilliant’ performances
at this point, the race for Best Supporting Actor could come down to a pair of MVP performances in both pictures – Ryan Gosling and Robert Downey Jr.
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‘Maestro’ – Bradley Cooper portrays Leonard Bernstein in Netflix movie
“Schnozzgate” (as my pal Lee has dubbed it) centers on the online kerfuffle arising from director/star Bradley Cooper’s decision to play famed conductor Leonard Bernstein with a prosthetic nose.
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Saying goodbye to Robbie Robertson, Paul Reubens and William Friedkin
While waiting for the third shoe to drop – celeb deaths come in threes, as we all know – I decided that the late, great Robbie Robertson of the Band could round out the loss of William Friedkin and Paul Reubens (aka, Pee-wee Herman).
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Reopened Tara Theatre reaches perfection while smash hit ‘Barbie’ falls short
This post has been updated. See note at the bottom. By Eleanor Ringel Cater We all know Barbie is pretty in pink. Her movie, however, is only pretty good. And it’s very pink. The Peptol Bismol pink that drenches Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” is actually one of the picture’s best aspects. The production design is knowingly […]
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Oppenheimer – a ‘formidable’ movie – in 70mm at Atlanta’s Tara Theatre
Chris Escobar got me back to the movies. He rescued the Tara. He revived the Plaza. He reinvented the Atlanta Film Festival. Reviewing movies is a wonderful job. It is, nonetheless, a job. And even post-pandemic, the thought of being in a large, enclosed space with people who’ve been exposed to Lord-knows-what wasn’t…well…wasn’t my idea […]
