Glenn Korbel – Google

There is a chilling moment in the documentary. Robbins confronts a woman who adores her father. She speaks in the most glowing terms about him while Robbins nods knowingly and suggests that he treated this girl like his "little princess." Then, he goes with the nuclear option. "Motherf#$%ker!", he bellows in his raspy voice. "He meant well but look how he f@#cked up." There is a discernible gasp in the audience as Robbins educates her to the fact that her father ruined her life. Whatever her issues, Dad is responsible. Just when you think Robbins couldn't sink any lower to play the "guru" he purports not to be, he cajoles the woman to call her boyfriend, put him on speaker phone, and break up with him with thousands of people listening in. "Pick up your fu$kin' phone,” he commands her. She meekly does and the rest is a pop-psyche legend for all the wrong reasons. It demonstrates Robbins can talk someone suffering enough into almost anything. It's been years since I've thought of this thin slice of "I Am Not Your Guru" and still find Robbins' "intervention" elicits a shudder of disgust. Perhaps the best word to describe it is "atrocious". Robbins gives no sign that he is concerned about the potential fallout for this woman, her father, and boyfriend for the vulnerabilty, trust, and naivete that brought her to this ghastly moment in her life. It is sobering to think that so many people--countless thousands--believe he offers the way to a better life. Francis Thompson wrote in :"The Hound of Heaven", "A dog starving at his master's gate predicts the ruin of the state." This woman came to Robbins hungry for counsel, she was bullied into a choice that could have had devastating consequences. Consider yourself warned. It could happen to you.

It’s something of an axiom that in writing for stage or screen flashbacks should be used sparingly as they put the brakes on the arc of the plot. A second maxim is that clarity should never be compromised. The viewer or reader must never has to ask, “What’s going on now.” Both of these time-tested rules are trashed in “The Haunting of Hill House”. The catapulting between now and then is enough to cause whiplash. This leads to needing one of those schematics the FBI uses to depict connections of members of a mob family. Worse still, the script bounces back and forth between three or four different plot points like a shuttle in a loom, never really lingering sufficiently on one to fully develop it. The end result, if you hang in long enough, is a muddled mess undone by script writers attempting to be too clever by half.

It might have been more accurately titled, “The Colonel”. Elvis’ story seemed almost to be a convenience for Parker to make the case that he was not implicated in Presley’s death and his conclusion that Elvis died because he loved his audience too much doesn’t pass the laugh test. Austin Butler is a revelation despite a jumbled mess of a script, frenetic editing, and vertigo-inducing camera angles. A miss.

It's utterly baffling that anyone can watch this film and not marvel at the brilliance of a great screenplay by a writer who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama. More incomprehensible still, is that some missed the fact that this is an ensemble piece and each character is pitch perfect. This is a timeless film, nominally a romantic comedy, but so much more. It is a magnum opus to the inviolable bonds of family. Assuch, "Moonstruck" stands alone in its genre as a masterpiece.

Audiences today have been so desensitized by trivial super-hero thrillers that it is conceivable many will not be capable of appreciating the subtlety and nuanced storytelling of one of the most highly regarded plays of the early 20th century. Understandably, consummately brilliant stage plays cannot pack the same punch when scaled down to a 47" television and yet "An Inspector Calls" comes as close as humanly possible. The stage play was thrilling, the BBC's adaptation, riveting. I had at times the sense that I was in a theater, a feeling I've had only on one or two other occasions; Lincoln Center's televised production of "South Pacific" being one. When it all shakes out for those who need to be intellectually and emotionally provoked, this film rings all the bells and David Thewliss' short monologue in the final scene is worth the price of admission. I imagine if we are to be judged for our sins of omission or commission, our inquisitor will be much like Inspector Gool. The verdict: Brilliant.