It's so didactic, it's so moralistic, you might feel superior to Arthur Miller...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

It's so didactic, it's so moralistic, you might feel superior to Arthur Miller, whose story about anti-Semitism in Brooklyn is a sledgehammer reminder that art with a message should at least go obliquely if not subtly. The Jewish grocer says with a straight face, "When you look at me, you don't see me." I think we get the point.

Cleaning the environment of child contamination is a hilarious conceit that turns around the usual fears children have of monsters in closets.

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

No one in a literate, civilized society should miss this film --- it is a stunning fusion of sight, sound, and sense.

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

I know about teenage daughters, believe me --- rebel they will, and Scarlett Johansson's daughter Suzanne shows teen anguish and rebellion as authentic as could be.

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

Veteran editor Eva Gardos ("Mask") has her first directorial production with "An American Rhapsody." It's a story of a young girl's odyssey from Hungary to the U.S. in the 1940's, bouncing from her natal to adopted families with the help of her grandmother.

If you understood that "Seinfeld" was about nothing, then you will accept that "Vertical Ray of the Sun" is about almost nothing.

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

If you understood that "Seinfeld" was about nothing, then you will accept that "Vertical Ray of the Sun" is about almost nothing. For instance, Hanoi is awash in color and brother and sister listen to Lou Reed while they exercise their bodies and exorcise their incestuous longings. Nothing else happens.

"After five minutes of this movie, you're going to wish you had 10 beers." These bursts of wisdom are indicative of an odd girl who will have to find out how to maneuver in a much less honest world.

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

The Coen brothers are back with their usual barnyard of eccentric characters.

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

I haven't quite figured out why I love film noir, but the Coen Brothers make me remember some of the reasons. Cinematographer Roger Deakin drenches the shots in vivid black and white, reminding me of noir's diet of good and evil, like a virginal young musician who suprisingly goes down on Billy Bob Thornton's Ed to reward him for trying to help her, thus precipitating an almost deadly accident because of the reward.

She's a little troublemaker with a big heart, and if you don't watch her, she'll steal the gnome from your garden and then your heart.

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

All we get here are actors whose lives and conversation are punctuated by no more wisdom than comments about perfuming private parts and penis size.

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

Ed Burns's Tommy Riley is caught renting "Breakfast at Tiffany's," leading to an affair and a pregnancy. This is the most excitement you're going to get in this Woody Allen rip-off.

May to December can be the cruelest months if they're about a relationship between a young woman and an older man.

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"