Solo: A Star Wars Story
An engaging but unnecessary bit of backstory for one of blockbuster cinema's most beloved characters.
Quentin Crisp
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The Celluloid Closet (1996)
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Roger Ebert -
Orlando (1993)
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Queen Elizabeth I
Roger Ebert
* This filmography is not intended to be a comprehensive list of this artist’s work. Instead it reflects the films this person has been involved with that have been reviewed on this site.
#76 August 17, 2011
"I realize that most of the turning points in my career were brought about by others. My life has largely happened to me without any conscious plan. I was an indifferent student except at subjects that interested me, and those I followed beyond the classroom, stealing time from others I should have been studying. I was no good at math beyond algebra. I flunked French four times in college. I had no patience for memorization, but I could easily remember words I responded to. In college a chart of my grades resembled a mountain range. My first real newspaper job came when my best friend's father hired me to cover high school sports for the local daily. In college a friend told me I must join him in publishing an alternative weekly and then left it in my hands. That led to the Daily Illini, and that in turn led to the Chicago Sun-Times, where I have worked ever since 1966. I became the movie critic six months later through no premeditation, when the job was offered to me out of a clear blue sky."Visit "I was born inside the movie of my life" to read the opening pages from Roger's forthcoming memoir to be published September 13, 2011.
A Clockwork Cuckoo
View image: Eyes Wide Shut.
My review of "Color Me Kubrick" at RogerEbert.com and in the Chicago Sun-Times:
John Malkovich is a terrible Stanley Kubrick. In "Color Me Kubrick" he plays the director of "Dr. Strangelove," "2001: A Space Odyssey," "A Clockwork Orange," "Spartacus" and "Judgment at Nuremberg" as a multiple-car collision of Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau, Miss Kirk Douglas, Quentin Crisp and Tony Soprano. Sometimes all in the same scene.
What, you say? Kubrick didn't direct "Judgment at Nuremberg"? Well, right you are, and Malkovich isn't playing Stanley Kubrick, the renowned film director. In "Color Me Kubrick," billed as a "true-ish story," Malkovich plays Alan Conway, the fittingly named con artist who improbably impersonated Kubrick -- well, not so much impersonated him as simply claimed to be him -- around London during the making of "Eyes Wide Shut."
The movie is structured as an episodic farce and a showcase for bad acting. As the cons get increasingly outlandish, so does Malkovich's Conway's Kubrick, who tries on more accents than all the characters in all of Stanley Kubrick's films put together, and gets them all wrong, too. He name-drops incessantly, and insists on referring to the star of "Paths of Glory" and "Spartacus" as "Miss Kirk Douglas," and the star of "Eyes Wide Shut" as "Little Tommy Cruise."
Continue reading review at RogerEbert.com
