Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy

NEW AND NOTABLE BOOKS: FROM CHAPLIN TO ERROL FLYNN August 2024

Books August 4, 2024

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MISS MAY DOES NOT EXIST: THE LIFE AND WORK OF ELAINE MAY, HOLLY WOOD’S HIDDEN GENIUS by Carrie Courogen (St. Martin’s Press) If you came of age when comedy albums were all the rage, as I did, it’s likely you were a fan of Mike Nichols and Elaine May (and fellow Chicagoans Bob Newhart and Shelley Berman). Graduates of Chicago’s Compass Players and Second City, they hit New York in 1958 and took show business by storm. Their improv-based comedy vignettes were smart, fresh and new. They officially broke up the act a short time later but remained in each other’s lives through Nichols’ passing in 2014. (She scripted two of his best movies, The Birdcage and Primary Colors.) May directed just three feature-length comedies but became infamous…

NEW ON 4K/BLU-RAY/DVD IN JULY

Blu-Ray/DVD July 28, 2024

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The following article was written by my friend and colleague Alonso Duralde. You can learn more about him HERE. NEW ON 4K/BLU-RAY/DVD IN JULY: PERFECT DAYS, RISKY BUSINESS, TED LASSO, AND MORE! NEW RELEASE WALL Perfect Days (The Criterion Collection): It’s zen and the art of cleaning toilets in Wim Wenders’ latest understated masterpiece. Japanese superstar Kôji Yakusho stars as a man who has found peace in his simple life, cleaning up Tokyo’s public restrooms (which are all architectural marvels) and enjoying cultural pursuits in his off hours (reading, taking photographs, listening to vintage cassettes). It’s a gorgeous tale of life and how to live it, but it also offers the unspoken subtext that human beings deserve jobs that not only offer time to rest but…

MODERNISM, INC.—A GOOD DOCUMENTARY BY DESIGN

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews July 20, 2024

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I must confess that I wasn’t familiar with Eliot Noyes although, like other baby boomers, I was affected by his work. Noyes, the subject of this first-rate documentary, was an esteemed graphic designer who spearheaded the philosophy and practice of modern design in the years following World War Two. (During the war he was a pioneer in an altogether different field: the use of gliders.) But his ideas were formulated before the U.S. went to war: in 1939 he was the first curator of Industrial Design at the Museum of Modern Art! These are just a few of the takeaways from Jason Cohn’s absorbing feature film. We learn about the man who believed that “good design is good business” from three of his children (including…

TWISTERS DELIVERS THE GOODS

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews July 19, 2024

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Shortly after seeing, and enjoying, the 1996 movie Twister, I noticed something on a colleague’s desk that made me laugh out loud: a copy of the published screenplay. If there were ever a film that made me want to read its script less than this, I couldn’t name it. Like its predecessor, Twisters does something only a movie can do, by giving us a vicarious experience that feels exciting and real while it’s happening, and easily forgettable as soon as it’s over. Although it is directed by Lee Isaac Chung, best known for his exceptional indie sleeper Minari (2020) there is nothing to set this white-knuckle disaster movie apart from the 1996 film or other popcorn movies in this genre. The characters are painted in broad strokes, at least when we…

MADE IN ENGLAND: THE FILMS OF POWELL AND PRESSBURGER

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews July 11, 2024

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If you are already a Powell and Pressburger aficionado, this highly personal documentary, hosted and produced by Martin Scorsese, will be catnip. I found it positively thrilling. If you are unfamiliar with their notable work from the 1940s—The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, et al—it will serve as a unique and indelible introduction. Either way, Made in England is a towering achievement that I would call a “must-see.” Whenever he talks about films he cares about, Martin Scorsese is mesmerizing. Here, he not only speaks with conviction but personal experience—from the time he first set eyes on The Thief of Bagdad on local New York television (in black & white) to his later friendship with Michael Powell. He even illustrates how concepts from their…

THE CONQUEROR: HOLLYWOOD FALLOUT

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews June 27, 2024

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The backstory of the notorious turkey The Conqueror, starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan, has all the ingredients for a stimulating documentary, but Hollywood Fallout puts that story into a larger and more troubling context. Spoiler alert: the U.S. government lied to its citizens about the dangers of long-term radiation emanating from atomic bomb tests in the Nevada desert, and stonewalled the residents of St. George, Utah, where its effects were particularly devastating. That’s where the erratic billionaire Howard Hughes sent director Dick Powell, movie stars John Wayne and Susan Hayward, and a large cast and crew to make this misbegotten film in 1956. A large number of those people died from one form or other of cancer—enough to remove it from the realm of coincidence. Writer/director William…

DADDIO: AN INTRIGUING CURIO

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews June 27, 2024

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If you’re going to make a two-character film you’d better have two really interesting people in your script and damned good actors to play them. Daddio has exactly that, and the result is an intriguing curio that serves as a showcase for the talents of Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn. He drives a Yellow Cab and she is his latest passenger at JFK airport, heading for midtown Manhattan. A bad accident has slowed traffic to a dead stop, which he takes as a cue to initiate a conversation with her. Penn is a quintessential New Yorker whose job has made him an amateur psychologist and philosopher. He believes he can size up anybody who climbs into his taxi. In Johnson he senses a vulnerable subject, and she…