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.
Where is John Belushi’s unparalleled popped-pimple impersonation when we need it?
I summon the ghost of Belushi’s Bluto in “Animal House” because, in some strange blip of cinematic genealogy, he’s as responsible for “Neighbors” as Seth Rogen is.
In fact, considering the lard-ish lineage of the fat comic on film, Belushi may be doubly guilty.
There is a marvelous movie playing at the Landmark Midtown right now that may not last another week. “Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq” is about the life and art of the phenomenal dancer who, in the early 50s, was one of George Balanchine’s wondrous prima ballerinas as well as one of his wives (fourth and last). As we learn very early in the documentary, her career was tragically cut short when she contracted polio.
The film exists as both a chronicle of her astonishing talent and her formidable spirit. After she was confined to a wheelchair, Arthur Mitchell hired her to coach his new company, the Dance Theater of Harlem.
Look for “Faun” on Netflix or perhaps PBS after its brief theatrical life is done. In the meanwhile, if you can’t get to the Midtown by Friday, these films could pirouette in your head.
Bob Hoskins, who passed away last week, belonged to that rare circle of actors with character-man looks and leading-man charisma. “A five-foot-six cubic” is how he often described himself.
He always credited his pal Michael Caine for opening doors (and minds) to a working-class star. And Hoskins did work. And he was a star. He appeared in about 100 movies and TV shows. And even if the piece as a whole wasn’t brilliant, he always was.
Here are a few movies you should check into to see what I mean.
“The Long Good Friday”
Both a witty social parable and a thoroughly gripping tough-guy movie, this British gangster film introduced Hoskins to American audiences back in 1980.
Harry Shand, London’s underworld overlord, wants to go legit. But just as he’s about to seal the real estate deal that will make it possible, all bloody hell breaks loose. Bombs, corpses, that sort of thing.
There’s an old saying in horse racing: breed the best to the best and hope for the best.
You could say the same about movies. Which means it goes double for movies about horse racing.
The first Saturday in May is upon us and that means one thing.
Time to run for the roses.
It’s surprising, actually, how few movies are about Kentucky Derby. Yes, “Secretariat,” is but that was also about the Triple Crown and a woman’s tenacity (Diane Lane as Penny Tweedy) in a traditionally male game.
After slumming for years in crud like “Ghost Rider” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” Nicolas Cage has decided to remind himself — and all of us — that, yes, he can act, That, in fact, he’s a helluva an actor when he puts his mind to it.
His new movie “Joe” is so unexpectedly good it made me want to go back and look at all of Cage’s previous movies. In it, he plays an ex-con, scraping together a kind of life in hard-scrabble rural Texas.
For money, he runs a crew whose job is to go around poisoning trees so a lumber company can come in and plant new ones. For everything else, he drinks hard, visits the local whorehouse, and tries — mightily — to keep his violent temper in check.
Anita?
Anita from West Side Story? Anita Sharpe, Bloomsberg bureau chief in Atlanta?
Anita….is she the former Mousequeteer who made all those beach movies with Frankie Avalon (oh oops…that was Annette).
So my first question…aside from the insider query as to why nobody knew this was opening here…is, why did filmmaker Freida Lee Mock make the title “Anita” instead of “Anita Hill?”
True story: Mickey Rooney was starring in a series of two-reelers modeled after the Little Rascals, in which he played a character named Mickey Maguire. Brash, energetic, smart-alecky, stubborn — Maguire wasn’t all that different from young Rooney himself.
One day he noticed a slight young man with a pencil-thin moustache sketching. The Mick asked what he was drawing and the man answered, a mouse. Then he asked the little boy his name and when he heard it, the artist said, “Well, I’m going to call this mouse Mickey, after you.”
About the only thing Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah” has in common with the Bible’s Noah are an Ark, a Flood, and a guy named Noah.
Oh, there’s also Mrs. Noah and their three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth. And all those animals,
After that, the versions are radically different. And I think Aronofsky’s is better. Well, maybe not better, but at least more entertaining.
It’s still — basically — the same old story. God, referred to here as “The Creator,” tells Noah (Russell Crowe) a world-soaking deluge is on the way. God/The Creator does so via a series of visions or, perhaps, bad dreams Noah has.
Nick (Jim Broadbent) and Meg (Lindsay Duncan) both love Paris.
They’re just not sure if they love each other any more.
The superb new film, Le Week-End,” chronicles their floundering, all-too-human attempts to find out. It opens in Atlanta on Friday, March 28.
Returning to the City of Lights 30 years after they honeymooned there, the long-married couple knows each other’s pressure points as surely as George and Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
The movie — which, I must emphasize, is in English…NO subtitles — is an expert dissection of why we love, why we hate and why some of us put up with each other for a lifetime.
The Net, the Web, the World-wide Web, the Internet, the Information Highway, Cyberspace…
I could keep going but, as someone once said, the Eskimos have a hundred words for snow. Or something like that.
Anyway, the Web recently turned 25, so attention must be paid, as Arthur Miller once wrote. (Question: How many words did he have for ex-wife Marilyn Monroe?)
My hands-down favorite Internet movie is: “The Social Network,” which has cemented an, um, unkind version of Mark Zuckerberg in the public mind forever, thanks to Aaron Sorkin’s dead-on script, David Fincher’s dead-on direction and Jesse Eisenberg’s dead-on…let’s switch it up and say uncanny…performance.
The on-going transformation of Liam Neeson — from sensitive hero of serious movie like “Schindler’s List,” “Michael Collins” and “Ethan Frome” to action hero of “Taken,” “Unknown” and “The Grey” — continues with “Non-Stop.”
Probably the weakest of the New Neeson movies, it is, nonetheless, an entertaining thriller that holds up really well until, say, its last 10 minutes. Even so, it’s still an entertaining picture.
The premise is initially pretty straightforward. Neeson is an alcoholic air marshal who, like Denzel Washington in “Flight,” thinks a nip or two is the breakfast of champions. As the movie progresses, we learn there’s a reason for his melancholy. His little daughter has died.
He also hates flying.
Neeson is cruising along at about 30,000 feet on a transatlantic flight to London when he receives a disturbing text on his supposedly secure cell phone. Unless $150 million is wired to a certain account, somebody on board is going to die every 15 minutes.
It’s all over but the appalling follow-up coverage that has ranged from some guy who does impersonations of Oscar nominees to commentary by Olympic ice-skating judges on the fashions. In 2018, let’s have Oscar winners judge the ice skating events.
But, time to get down to brass tacks, so to speak: How much is an Oscar worth?
Mentally and emotionally, I’d say it’s priceless.
But talking plain old dollars and cents, what is that little gold guy, emasculated-a-la-a-Ken-Doll worth.
The Oscars are like an old friend you don’t see much anymore. You still care about ‘em, but in a sort of distant, dispassionate way. I haven’t truly cared about the Oscars in a long time. Not passionately, I mean. But I do have an affection for them.
And let’s face it. There are sexier awards shows, more entertaining awards shows, even more serious awards shows. But the Oscar is the one everyone wants. Longevity has its privileges. So does institutional memory.
Here is my guesswork for the Oscar nominees in the six major categories.
Sure, it’s sunny and nice now. But not so long ago, Atlanta had a little problem with, um, a little snow.
However, I’m not in the finger-pointing business — unless it’s at something on a movie screen.
Herewith a few movies in which snow just won’t let go — either as frigid backdrop or active predator.
Anyone remember that South American rugby team that crashed in the Andes in 1972? Well, Frank Marshall, who helped Spielberg and Lucas birth Indiana Jones, does. Or did. In 1993 he made a movie called “Alive,” based on that story.
“The Monument Men” is not “Ocean’s 14.”
For one thing, it doesn’t have Brad Pitt.
For another, it’s set during World War II.
For a third, well, it’s not even as good as “Ocean’s 12” or “13.”
Based on a true story, George Clooney’s latest group effort reunites him with Matt Damon, but adds Bill Murray, John Goodman, Bob Balaban, Jean DuJardin (“The Artist”) and Hugh Bonneville (yes, M’Lord himself from “Downton Abbey”) to the mix.
How did this happen?
Oscar-winning actor, Phillip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in his apartment Super Bowl Sunday. He was 46. And do I need to tell you he was found with a needle in his arm?
Hoffman was a ferociously fine actor, with the looks of a character player, but the charisma of a leading man. He often bounced back and forth between the two — with an ease we took for granted.
I met Hoffman once. In 2002, I think. Up in his hometown of Rochester, New York (actually, he was born in Fairport, a Rochester suburb). What I remembered most — aside from being more than a bit awestruck — is how much he reminded me of Charlie Brown’s dirt-centric friend, Pigpen.
You know how the same word can have a different meaning?
Like pot and a pot. Or grass and some grass. Or dope and a dope.
I have no idea why all my examples are marijuana-related. A vote for Georgia to go medicinal perhaps?
Anyway, when you winter-ize your home, it’s a good thing. It means you’re thinking ahead. Less draft; less money spent on your gas/electric bill.
But when Hollywood “winter-izes” a movie, it’s usually not a good thing.
I’m not sure I can write about the Oscars yet again. Well, I can’t do it without admitting to my hypocrisy.
I think the Oscars are junk. I stopped watching them for 10 years, then was forced by my job (film critic at the Atlanta newspaper) to watch them for about 30 years.
They could be interesting. They could be unintentionally hilarious. And sometimes I really, truly cared a lot about the results. Mostly because a favorite performer or director finally got some recognition they probably deserved long before they actually won.
Of course, there are exceptions. Listing them would bore you to tears. Just for example: I was very happy when the Coen brothers and Frances McDormand got some long overdue kudos when they won for “Fargo.”
Predicting the Oscars — the nominees, let alone the winners — used to be a lot harder.
The critics groups were never any help; if anything, a vote of confidence by them was almost like drawing the short straw.
Now the Golden Globes are bruited about as THE early tip-off. On the one hand, that’s laughable because the Hollywood Foreign Press is a pretty laughable crowd. The majority of them have daytime jobs that have nothing to do with reviewing movies, and whatever they do write is likely to appear in the Slovenia Daily Gazette (no offense meant to Slovenians).
The single most important thing that happened in 2013 was we lost Peter O’Toole, in mid-December, at age 82.
He was supposed to have died sometime in the 1970s. Hard living and hard drinking can do that to a man.
But O’Toole was more than man. He was something fantastical. Not simply larger than life but somehow beyond the petty realities of life. The tales of his drunken carousing with Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Albert Finney, Michael Caine, Sean Connery — all those beautiful Brits did for movies what the Beatles did for music. That scandalous mix of creativity and reckless abandon.
O’Toole’s legend may have been better served b if he had gone in the 70s when proper attention would’ve been paid. It’s fine he was lumped together with the likes of James Gandolfini and Joan Fontaine (who died on the same day as O’Toole). But Paul Walker and Corey Monteith?
