The King of Marvin Gardens (1972) **

Oddball character study ends with a redeeming bang. Terrific support from Mr. Crothers.

Comfort and Joy (1984) *

Pointlessly quirky and bizarre which ends up supremely annoying. It's a shame because Bill Paterson is terrific as always.

The Letter (1940) **

Ms. Davis is in fine form, as is the entire cast, but it seems a superficial take on the source material.

Track 29 (1988) *

Well cast misfire is too manic for the viewer to care much.

Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell: Atlanta Newspaper Sends Legal Plea – Variety

“The film literally makes things up and adds to misunderstandings about how serious news organizations work,” said Riley. “It’s ironic that the film commits the same sins that it accuses the media of committing.”

Riley did not personally know Scruggs and was not at the paper during the time of the bombing. A recent article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution talked to people who knew and worked with Scruggs and who felt that her portrayal in the film “veers from reality.” It quotes Ron Martz, who co-bylined Scruggs’ initial story on Jewell being a suspect, with saying that no one associated with the film reached out to him.

“If they had actually contacted me it might have ruined their idea of what they wanted the story to be,” Martz told the paper. “It’s obvious to me they did not go to any great lengths to find out what the real characters were like.”

The Hollywood biopic strikes again. Look, if you're going to monetize your claims of veracity you MUST be accurate. If you can't do that, CHANGE THE NAMES! It's not that difficult.

Dodsworth (1936) *

Soapy Hollywood melodrama about the leisure class.

Marriage Story (2019) ***

Uneven divorce story has a number of scenes that strain credulity and annoy, and others that are pitch perfect and strongly resonate. An actor's showcase with a fine cast especially Mr. Liotta who nearly steals the picture.

Anthony Hopkins talks to Brad Pitt About Movies, Mortality, and Mistakes

HOPKINS: Well, it’s such a mystery when our first memories are made. I can remember that day on the beach with my father. I’d been crying, because I’d lost a little candy he had given me in the sand. And that frightened little boy—who was destined to grow up and be an idiot at school, clueless, alone, lonely, angry, all those things—I look at him and say, “We did okay.” And the fact is that one day we’ll be gone. Our parents are gone. Most of my friends I’ve known have gone. I was driving around Venice the other day, and I thought, “It’s all a dream. What a struggle it all is. It’s all an illusion, but it’s the glory of life, the sheer glory of looking for it in everything.” And I’ve become aware of that now, more than ever. It’s in there. It’s in my cat, it’s in my dog, it’s in you. How could it be otherwise? I watch my cat jumping to a little pinch on the fireplace. Now, he can’t write a book, he doesn’t know anything about philosophy or mathematics. But how the hell does he do that? That is totally awe-inspiring.

The Pawnbroker (1964) **

Screams "Serious Drama" from the get go and it's pretty bleak stuff to be sure but it's so close to parody it loses resonance.

Dolemite Is My Name (2019) **

By the numbers "let's make a movie" movie made a little bit better by Mr. Murphy and Mr. Snipes.

La tête d'un homme (1933) **

One of the first adaptations of Maigret is mainly a character study of the villain. Some nice scenes, plenty of innovative camera tricks and atypical shots. Not really interested in the whodunit aspects of the story.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2018) **

Literal interpretation of the source novel is well made, acted. Nice to see Mr. Glover back on the screen.

The Good Liar (2019) **

Enjoyable who's-conning-who flick is well made. Mirren is exceptional.

Why thousands of Amazon packages converge on a tiny Montana town - The Verge

The end result is a bizarre, looping supply chain. Some hair conditioner might get sent from a Walmart warehouse in Grantsville, Utah, to Roundup, then from Roundup to an Amazon fulfillment center in Joliet, Illinois. Finally, Amazon sends it out to a customer.

Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe another seller buys the item and sends it to another prep center. The preppers are constantly getting packages from Amazon, which they unbox and repackage and send back to Amazon.

This is what’s called an Amazon flip. Sometimes it happens when one seller buys something from another seller who isn’t using Prime shipping, then marks it up and sends it back to Amazon in the hopes that the Prime designation will cause the algorithm to give them better billing. Other times, sellers will buy products from Amazon when the price drops, then send them right back.

Tideland (2005) **

It's very well made but this is one instance where the source material should never have been put on film to begin with. Not pleasant.

How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster - Los Angeles Times

Three years after Castle Bravo, U.S. authorities encouraged Joseph, her family and her neighbors to return to Rongelap.

U.S. government documents from the time show that officials weighed the potential hazards of radiation exposure against “the current low morale of the natives” and a “risk of an onset of indolence.” Ultimately they decided to go forward with the resettlement so researchers could study the effects of lingering radiation on human beings.

“Data of this type has never been available,” Merrill Eisenbud, a U.S official with the Atomic Energy Commission, said at a January 1956 meeting of the agency’s Biology and Medicine Committee. “While it is true that these people do not live the way that Westerners do, civilized people, it is nonetheless also true that they are more like us than the mice.”

The Lighthouse (2019) ***

Oddball flick that seems to be about the maddening effects of roommates. Along the way some good actors get to show their stuff as the craziness escalates.

The Laundromat (2019) **

Soderbergh directs the heck out of this flick, and the actors work their collective butts off but an avalanche of exposition kills the story. Banderas in particular should have asked to be paid by the word.

The Domino Principle (1977) *

Logically silly, ham-fisted conspiracy thriller has no thrills, just some nice exteriors of The Bay Area.

A Face in the Crowd (1957) ***

Probably considered too far fetched in its time, it's unfortunately proven to be too naive in its denouement. Terrific performances.