Widely regarded as one of the best cartoon shorts of all-time, 1953’s “Duck Amuck” features an increasingly agitated Daffy Duck (Mel Blanc) constantly breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the unseen artist who forgets to draw the scenery (leaving the Duck against a blank background), or, when drawing something, varying it (or Daffy himself) in wildly inconsistent ways making it impossible for Daffy to tell a story.
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Mystery Monday takes us back to the Milano restaurant located in Midtown Manhattan where a group of six friends would gather once a month for an exclusive dinner of themselves, their server Henry Jackson, and a (decidedly male) guest of their choice to be grilled over the course of the evening and would invariably would bring up a problem or puzzle to be solved (almost always by Henry rather than the more distinguished members of the club).
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The Acquisitive Chuckle Read More »
Based on the historical novel of the same name, Hamnet offers a fictionalized telling of William Shakespeare‘s (Paul Mescal) family and the series of events that could (depending on what scholars you believe) have played into the playwright’s finest tragedy. Whether or not the account is accurate, there is no debate that director Chloé Zhao (who co-wrote the screenplay with the novel’s author Maggie O’Farrell) delivers a heartbreaking, yet ultimately cathartic, emotional tour de force that won’t leave a dry eye in the house.
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“Houston, we have a problem.”
Re-released (for the first time in IMAX) to celebrate the film’s 30th Anniversary, director Ron Howard‘s 1995 film based on the real events surrounding the flight of NASA’s Apollo 13 is arguably his best (I’d put it neck-and-neck with the underrated Frost/Nixon.) Casting Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon as the three astronauts whose mission to the moon goes horribly wrong and Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, and Chris Ellis as those in Mission Control who help bring them home, Apollo 13 is a tense drama where knowing beforehand the ending somehow (despite all logic) doesn’t hurt it’s climactic final act.
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AMC Theatres’ release of All The President’s Men in select theaters is timely not only in honoring the passing of Robert Reford but in terms of current events with a corrupt administration hiding its crimes and going on an attack against the press and the First Amendment. Released in 1976, the film follows hungry reporters Bob Woodward (Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) looking into the Watergate break-in and uncovering a story so large it would eventually lead to the resignation of Nixon a year later.
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