Some Kind of Wonderful Movie Review: 25 Years Ago This Month

Some Kind of Wonderful is often compared to Pretty in Pink as being a retread of similar material. Both were written by John Hughes, that master of writing teen characters in the 80s, but I think the similarity between the two is superficial. It’s true that both films are about class divides in American high schools. Both are about a teen from the poor side of town who falls in love with a rich kid. But Hughes, in his way of probing beneath the surface, uncovered different layers in this telling.

J. Edgar Movie Review

Earlier this year I wrote a review of Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter that complained of my weariness with his recent lazy filmmaking. I almost began this review of his latest film, J. Edgar, the same way until I went back and read that one. But the fact remains that his biopic of the man who was director of the old Bureau of Investigations and then first Director of the FBI for a total of 48 years is tired, boring and absurd. This is lazy storytelling at its worst.

J. Edgar Hoover always was and remains to this day something of an enigma. We know him as the paranoid director who supposedly investigated his enemies and people he believed to be subversives and radicals. He’s widely suspected of illegally wiretapping and of keeping secret files that were ultimately never recovered (at least in full). There is strong suspicion he was a deeply closeted homosexual and may have maintained a long-term relationship with his number two man Clyde Tolson. There’s even some silly speculation that he was a cross-dresser. But we don’t know much about the man and his motivations for his paranoia and his jealousy when it came to FBI agents who absorbed more of the spotlight than he could stand.