Category Archives: Movies
Monkey Man – Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 10th March 2025Monkey Man is a film written (with two co-authors), directed, and produced by British actor Dev Patel, who also stars as the title character. Patel was the young star of Slumdog Millionaire, among other major credits. The movie is an action thriller in the same general neighborhood of the John Wick movies and many of…
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Maria – Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 14th January 2025Maria is a film depicting the last days of soprano Maria Callas. Streaming on Netflix, the movie directed by Pablo Larraín, is a tour de force for Angelina Jolie who plays the legendary singer. A lot has been made about the accuracy of the events surrounding Callas’ death in Paris at age 53. Similarly, some…
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The Ride of the Valkyries
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 22nd June 2024With the possible exception of the Bridal March from Lohengrin, the music that opens Act 3 of Die Walküre – The Ride of the Valkyries – is the most familiar written by Richard Wagner. The Ride takes around eight minutes, and begins in the prelude to the third act, building up successive layers of accompaniment…
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Maestro – Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 24th December 2023Bradley Cooper has made a movie based on the life of conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife the actress Felicia Montealegre. Cooper, who also co-wrote and directed the film, has taken the greatest pains to make the two protagonists seem identical to the duo they portray. Cooper has so gotten into the Bernstein character that…
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Oppenheimer – Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 29th July 2023Christopher Nolan’s latest film centers on the man who directed the project that built that first nuclear weapon. J Robert Oppenheimer was picked by then Colonel Leslie Groves to lead the scientific laboratory that would build the bomb. The movie is a triumph of construction, pacing, suspense (even though the viewer knows the story and…
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The Tragedy of Macbeth – Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 22nd February 2022Joel Coen, of Coen brothers renown, has filmed an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play – his first on his own. The movie had a limited run before moving to Apple TV+. Recorded in stark black and white with an almost square aspect ratio, it is an effective evocation of the great play. Interestingly, the version used…
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All About Me! – Book Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th January 2022The title of Mel Brooks autobiography is a visual pun. But like most autobiographies it conceals more than it reveals. A better title is All about Me! That I Care to Disclose. When you finish it, you won’t know much more about Brooks than you did on page 1. The man behind the outlandish jokes…
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Transit – Movie Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th June 2021If you are a film goer you’ll likely love Christian Petzhold’s 2018 Transit. If you like movies you’ll find the picture a yawner. Petzhold’s movie (you can see where I’m coming from) is an adaptation of Anna Sehgers’ 1944 novel of the same name. It takes place during the period when the Nazi’s took full…
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Breathless – Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 29th January 2021Why a review of a movie more than six decades old? In this age of living inwardly one gets to view a lot of stuff that would have remained unexplored in a normal time. Jean-Luc Godard (b 1930) was a film critic who decided to practice what he was reviewing. À bout de souffle (Out…
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Mario Lanza – 100th Birthday
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st January 2021For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been’. John Greenleaf Whittier January 31, 2021, is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alfredo Arnold Cocozza known to posterity as Mario Lanza; Lanza was his mother’s maiden name. A native of Philadelphia, he was the son of Italian…
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