Leonard Maltin

My Life As A Mankiewicz: An Insider’s Journey Through Hollywood

Leonard Maltin — Tue, 29 May 2012 07:00:00 GMT

If you love Hollywood anecdotes—not the same old stuff you’ve heard before but fresh material, related first-hand by a master storyteller—you simply must get this book. I didn’t so much read as devour it, and now I feel impelled to tell everyone I know how good it is. Tom Mankiewicz grew up the privileged son of writer-director-producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz. His fabled uncle Herman co-wrote Citizen Kane. Humphrey Bogart gave him his first stiff drink. Elizabeth Taylor used him as a beard when she was “seeing” Richard Burton but still married to Eddie Fisher. Joe Mankiewicz made a point of taking his family along on location whenever he could, which...

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Men In Black 3—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 25 May 2012 05:25:22 GMT

The first follow-up to Men in Black, ten years ago, seemed to be running on empty. It was the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with sequels, whereas this one won me over completely. Why? For one thing, after a decade’s absence, I enjoyed revisiting the characters of Agents J (Will Smith) and K (Tommy Lee Jones) and their alternate-reality version of New York City, where the population is dotted with bizarre-looking aliens, designed by makeup whiz Rick Baker. While it’s impossible to recreate the feeling of originality that made the 1997 movie so enjoyable, screenwriter Etan Cohen and director Barry Sonnenfeld have done the next best thing: they’ve created a...

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Moonrise Kingdom—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 25 May 2012 05:25:08 GMT

I really wanted to like this film. I respect Wes Anderson and his distinctive voice as a writer-director (Rushmore is one of my favorite films of the 1990s), but this latest endeavor is so precious and self-aware that it nearly smothers itself. He’s been heading in this direction for a while, as evidenced by The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited, both of which had inspired ideas scattered within them. Moonrise Kingdom is more frustrating than either of those pictures because it deals with two youthful misfits and ought to win our hearts. But in his crucial casting of the young leads, and in his overall tone, Anderson builds a wall around these kids, and...

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The Intouchables—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 25 May 2012 05:24:53 GMT

Last year, Harvey Weinstein brought a French film called The Artist to the U.S. and wound up with an armful of Academy Awards. This year he’s presenting another Gallic import that not only was a box-office smash, but features Omar Sy, who beat out Jean Dujardin for the Best Actor prize at the César Awards, that country’s equivalent of the Oscars. It’s easy to see why. The Intouchables is a charming, funny film with two winning performances; in short, a crowd-pleaser. François Cluzet plays a man of taste, refinement, and great wealth who has become a quadriplegic after a parasailing accident. When his household staff interviews new caregivers he rejects...

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John Huston’s “LIGHT” Online

Leonard Maltin — Thu, 24 May 2012 07:01:00 GMT

Striking a blow for film preservation, and widespread access to films once they are properly restored, the National Film Preservation Foundation is now streaming John Huston’s long-suppressed 1946 documentary Let There Be Light on its website. If you think you’ve seen the film before, think again. People who don’t make a distinction between washed-out prints with muddy soundtracks and first-generation copies need to learn the difference. In this case, both seeing (and hearing) is believing. As Scott Simmon writes in his informative program notes on the NFPF site HERE, “John Huston’s World War II documentary Let There Be Light is so legendary for its...

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Real & Faux Silent Footage Worth Watching

Leonard Maltin — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:27:00 GMT

YouTube has unearthed a treasure trove of film footage, aside from videos of cats roller-skating: precious moments of W.C. Fields on Broadway, The Three Stooges fooling around in Atlantic City, and a contemporary comedy short that predates The Artist in its attempt to replicate the silent era. I first encountered that 30-minute short when it was new in 1996 and its creator, Robert Watzke, sent me a copy seeking my reaction. I screened it, enjoyed it, and then, frankly, it receded in my memory until just a few months ago when the filmmaker sent me an e-mail saying he’d posted it on YouTube. Heavenzapoppin'! is a sweet, clever 30-minute short, shot on 35mm film...

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Battleship—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:21:47 GMT

Finally, Hollywood has produced a movie for people who found the Transformers series too intellectually challenging. This shouldn’t come as a complete surprise, since Battleship is not based on a novel, or a magazine article, but a board game. Yet even within the confines of a big, dumb summer action movie, Battleship strains the limits of credibility. Director Peter Berg has layered a veneer of patriotism and gung-ho Navy pride onto Erich and Jon Hoeber’s cardboard screenplay, in a cheesy attempt to bring gravitas to the project (and guilt to anyone who dares to knock it). Still, there’s no escaping the fact that the characters—though played by beautiful...

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What To Expect When You’re Expecting—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:17:47 GMT

I’m as susceptible as anyone to watching highly attractive people onscreen, which this movie has in abundance, but it took time for What to Expect When You’re Expecting to win me over. I found some of its multiple storylines annoying and hopelessly contrived, at first; it’s only toward the end, when the film draws from real life, that it finds its heart and becomes relatable for anyone who has been through pregnancy or parenthood. (The movie was “inspired by” Heidi Murkoff’s best-selling non-fiction book of the same name.) Cameron Diaz plays a TV fitness guru who’s “over 35” and determined not to let pregnancy slow her down, in...

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Hysteria—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:14:23 GMT

Understandably, this R-rated comedy is being promoted as the story of how the vibrator came to be invented. That’s not untrue, but what makes Hysteria so entertaining is the larger picture it paints of repressed Victorian society. That it does so in the form of a farcical comedy makes it all the more enjoyable. Hugh Dancy plays an idealistic young doctor with progressive ideas that the medical establishment doesn’t want to hear. He eventually finds a job with eminent London physician Jonathan Pryce, who is renowned for treating the catch-all woman’s ailment he identifies as hysteria. His treatments involve manipulating his finger in a way that pleases his patients no...

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Polisse—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 18 May 2012 04:01:00 GMT

Polisse is a sprawling but vivid portrait of the Paris police department’s Child Protection Unit, a tight-knit group of colleagues whose emotionally draining work (like protecting children from sexual predators within their own family) affects their private lives as well as their relationships on the job. The grisly, sometimes heartbreaking cases they encounter on a daily basis would touch, or distress, anyone not made of stone. Filmmaker and actress Maïwenn has fashioned this provocative film with co-writer Emmanuelle Bercot from stories they learned, and witnessed, while spending time with the real-life unit; no wonder so many of the hair-raising vignettes have the ring of...

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The Dictator—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Thu, 17 May 2012 01:59:59 GMT

As someone who was completely disarmed by Borat, then disappointed by Bruno, I hoped Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest comedy would hit that sweet spot again, especially since he is working with his longtime collaborators, director Larry Charles and writers Alec Berg, David Mandel, and Jeff Schaffer. I certainly couldn’t have foreseen a film as sloppy and mediocre as this. You have to give Baron Cohen credit, not only for audaciousness (as he has proved with his worldwide promotional stunts for The Dictator) but for his complete commitment to every character he portrays. The problem with his latest, Admiral General Aladeen of Wadiya, is that he’s poorly conceived. If he were...

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Hollywood’s Kiddie Connection

Leonard Maltin — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:25:23 GMT

What do Jerry Lewis, Bugs Bunny, and Hopalong Cassidy have in common? They all recorded special material for an innovative kid-oriented Capitol Records series in the 1940s and ‘50s. This amazing output, perfectly timed for the baby boom of the post-World War II era, has now been exhaustively documented by Jack Mirtle in his self-published book The Capitol Records Childrens' Series: 1944 to 1956: The Complete Discography. The crossover from the movie world is notable, as Capitol featured such talents as Tex Ritter, Margaret O’Brien, William Boyd (as Hopalong Cassidy), Jerry Lewis, Claude Rains (reading Bible stories), and Smiley Burnette, along with the voice artists...

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Dark Shadows—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 11 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

It makes sense that for Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton to get in on the current vampire craze, they’d have to approach it with a sense of humor. I doubt if many young viewers know that they’ve based their new film on a forty-year-old daytime TV drama, and it scarcely matters. Dark Shadows is an amusing piece of high camp, stoked by Depp’s deadpan star performance and the kind of elaborate trappings one would expect from Burton. (His longtime production designer, Rick Heinrichs, has done another beautiful job with both real and virtual sets.) The story begins in the 1700s, when the Collins family leaves Liverpool for the New World and settles in Maine, where...

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Hollywood’s Hobo In Residence

Leonard Maltin — Thu, 10 May 2012 04:55:00 GMT

Had I not been lucky enough to see William Wellman’s 1928 silent film Beggars of Life years ago, or read the works of Gene Fowler, I might not know about Jim Tully, the scrappy Irish-American who became celebrated for writing about the subject he knew best: the hardscrabble life of an orphan turned boxer turned “road kid.” His most successful book (an autobiography in novel form), Beggars of Life came to the screen with Wallace Beery, Richard Arlen, and Louise Brooks in the leading roles…and ironically, the onetime hobo spent the last twenty years of his life in Hollywood, paying the bills by writing first for Charlie Chaplin, and then for a variety of fan magazines...

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A Fitting “Noir City” Festival Finale

Leonard Maltin — Tue, 08 May 2012 04:54:00 GMT

I always look forward to the film noir festival at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre. This year’s finale on Sunday night featured the eloquent, ever-youthful Marsha Hunt (who, incredibly, is 94) talking about her career after watching a film she made in 1949 and never saw before: Mary Ryan, Detective. It’s not a rediscovered classic, but a well-made Columbia B movie about a female cop who goes undercover to bust a stolen-jewelry racket. Marsha was amused and impressed with her own abilities on screen, from removing a bullet from a colleague’s wounded arm to viciously slapping a night watchman at a fur storage loft, in order to convince her thuggish colleagues that...

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The Avengers—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 04 May 2012 05:01:01 GMT

If every summer blockbuster or comic-book movie were as good as Marvel’s The Avengers I’d greet the upcoming release slate with a lot more enthusiasm…but there aren’t many writer-directors as talented as Joss Whedon. Indeed, it’s the writing that sets this film apart from the crowd, in harmony with perfect casting, first-rate visual effects, and other key ingredients. During the past few years, as we’ve been teased about this gathering of superheroes in the epilogues to Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor, andCaptain America, I’ve wondered how Whedon—or anyone—would deal with so many strong yet distinctive personalities in a single picture....

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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 04 May 2012 04:49:00 GMT

When a film has a dream cast led by Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith, and Bill Nighy, you can’t go far wrong, and that is exactly the case with Ol Parker’s adaptation of the novel by prolific British television and screenwriter Deborah Moggach, whose credits include the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice. Who better to direct this piece that John Madden, the man responsible for such films as Mrs. Brown, Shakespeare in Love, andProof? Please forgive me, then, for not having fallen in love with the movie, as many others have; I find it a bit too calculated and pat. It does not condescend to older people, thank goodness, or play them as cute, although it does take...

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The First Marvel ‘Avenger’ On The Screen

Leonard Maltin — Thu, 03 May 2012 05:00:01 GMT

Joss Whedon’s The Avengers gathers a galaxy of Marvel Comics superstars, but I wish more people could see the first comic book superhero to make the leap to the big screen: Captain Marvel, in what many aficionados consider the best serial ever made, The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941). Former Western star Tom Tyler made a handsome and heroic superhero, and perennial juvenile actor Frank Coghlan, Jr. was ideally cast as Billy Batson, the plucky young fellow who transformed himself into Captain Marvel by uttering the magic word, “SHAZAM.” (For the uninitiated, SHAZAM is an acronym that represents the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the...

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THE LEGENDARY LYDECKER BROTHERS

Leonard Maltin — Thu, 03 May 2012 01:05:18 GMT

At last, someone has paid proper tribute to Howard and Theodore Lydecker, the legendary siblings who created unforgettable visual effects for Republic Pictures’ action-packed serials, westerns, and feature films during the studio’s heyday. Henderson is a devotee of those Saturday matinee favorites, but unlike most of us, he grew up knowing Theodore Lydecker’s son George. This enabled him to meet one of the famous brothers, and gave him latter-day access to the family and its collection of behind-the-scenes photos. It’s those photographs that make this book so valuable, along with the younger Lydecker’s anecdotes about his father’s work. Henderson’s...

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Revisiting History: Booker’s Place

Leonard Maltin — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:00:02 GMT

So many documentaries come out every year that it isn’t possible to keep up with them all. I watched Booker’s Place (now open theatrically in New York and Los Angeles, and available nationwide On Demand) because I admire its director, Raymond De Felitta, who most recently gave us the piquantly original comedy City Island. And I’m awfully glad I did. I had no idea that Raymond’s father, Frank De Filitta, made award-winning documentary films for NBC News in the 1960s. Recognizing this, his son started posting some of his father’s work online. The one that resonated with many people was Mississippi: A Self Portrait, made in 1966. In it, an illiterate black...

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Tickets, Anyone?

Leonard Maltin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:51:29 GMT

The news that Fandango, the company that sells admissions to movies online, is expanding its use of “paperless tickets,” using bar codes for smart phones instead, makes perfect sense…but doesn’t make me happy. There goes another facet of the moviegoing experience: tickets! Mind you, I haven’t received a decent-looking admission ticket in years; what you get nowadays would better be described as a receipt, not so different from the scrap of paper you receive for purchasing a cantaloupe or a package of gum from your neighborhood market. Tickets used to be uniform in size and shape: those little notched pieces of card-stock paper were a souvenir, or at...

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The Five-Year Engagement—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:00:01 GMT

Moviegoers who expect another Bridesmaids from this Judd Apatow-produced comedy are in for a surprise. Some of them may be disappointed with the lack of raucousness, but I was not: The Five-Year Engagement is a strikingly original comedy with serious undertones. It dares to take its time, as it covers an unusually long time period in a constantly-changing relationship. The one constant is that its protagonists, played by Jason Segel and Emily Blunt, genuinely love each other. Not everyone will welcome the leisurely pace and meandering nature of the film, but it won me over completely. And to allay any concerns, the movie fully earns its R rating with the expected complement of raw dialogue...

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The Pirates! Band Of Misfits—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:56:00 GMT

I’m a sucker for Aardman Animations’ films, and have been ever since I first set eyes on Nick Park’s unforgettable short Creature Comforts more than twenty years ago. The Pirates! Band of Misfits, directed by the studio’s co-founder Peter Lord, has the same qualities that always make their work so appealing: a distinctly British sense of humor, and amusing character designs—in clay. While even the folks at Aardman have embraced computer technology as a filmmaking tool, there is something uniquely appealing about sculpted clay figures like the Pirate Captain (voiced by Hugh Grant) and his self-described “luxuriant beard.” Audiences naturally...

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Headhunters—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:50:03 GMT

I can’t remember the last time a movie surprised me as much as Headhunters: not just its story twists and turns, which are considerable, but its continual stripping of character veneer and overall audaciousness left me breathless. I haven’t read any of the growingly-popular novels by Norwegian author Jo Nesbø (whose reputation has grown in the past few years, possibly in the wake of Sweden’s Stieg Larsson), but if this is indicative of his storytelling skills, I’m impressed. The film captures our attention right away by introducing us to its highly unlikely “hero,” a smug, high-level corporate headhunter who plays to win. He’s even won...

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Bernie—movie review

Leonard Maltin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:49:00 GMT

Some films—even good ones—fall neatly into one category or another, but I often find myself drawn to movies that defy pigeonholing, like Richard Linklater’s Bernie. Is it a comedy? Yes, in part. Is it a character study? Certainly. Is it a true-crime story? Absolutely. Does it have two outstanding performances in the leading roles? Definitely. If you like Jack Black and/or Shirley MacLaine, the movie is a must-see. Black plays the title character, who prepares bodies for their final viewing at a funeral parlor in Carthage, Texas and prides himself on his work. An outgoing fellow, he is well-liked throughout the community, where the subject of homosexuality never enters...

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