The World According to Garp Movie Review

I have so many memories from my childhood of my mother watching The World According to Garp that I think there must have been a stretch of time when it was on TV nearly every day. I thought it a bizarre movie then and I find it a bizarre movie now. George Roy Hill directed this adaptation of John Irving’s novel, which I’ve never read. But I won’t let that prevent me from speculating on something I’d be willing to bet the book does that the movie fails to.

25 Years Ago This Month: December 1988

Typical of December, the final month of 1988 was full of releases vying desperately for awards consideration, especially Oscars. Eight films released in this month received Academy Award nominations, including all five of the Best Picture nominees.

As always, we start with what I've seen...

Barry Levinson's Rain Man was the box office behemoth of the year and winner of the Best Picture Oscar the following year. It embodies everything a typical "best picture" is, but mostly it's a rather simplistic portrait of autism produced at a time when virtually no one knew anything about the disorder. A quarter century later, many people can probably tell you something about it, most mistakenly that it's caused by childhood vaccinations. Dustin Hoffman's autistic savant is the very rare exception among people on the spectrum, but in 1988 it led most people to believe that being autistic meant being able to count cards and take the house in a Las Vegas casino.

Albert Nobbs Movie Review

Did anyone notice while making Albert Nobbs that the title character is just not that interesting? Didn’t it occur to anyone that a supporting character, one in a very similar life situation as Albert is not only portrayed in a far better performance but he is more vividly drawn with a more compelling history. Is this a fault of the screenplay by Glenn Close and John Banville or the short story “The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs” by George Moore?

Close plays Albert Nobbs. This is not a Linda Hunt case of a female actor playing a male character. Albert is a woman who has been disguised as a man for an undetermined number of years, but it’s certainly long enough that his entire identity is essentially male. For that reason I refer to Albert with masculine pronouns. Only at two moments in the film did his actual gender come to the fore. Set in the late 19^th century, Albert makes his living as a waiter at Morrison’s Hotel in Dublin.