Eleanor Ringel Cater

Eleanor Ringel Cater, long-time movie critic for The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, also has been a regular contributor to CNN, MSNBC, Entertainment Weekly, Headline News and WXIA, Atlanta's NBC affiliate, and a columnist for TV Guide.
Number of posts: 24
Email address: eleanorcater@msn.com

Posts by Eleanor Ringel Cater:

Life, Talk, Views

High on critics’ list: It’s ‘Up in the Air’

by Eleanor Ringel Cater | 6, Add your Comment | Dec 16 09

First, it was just NYC. Then people got huffy 'cause the New York Film Critics Circle didn't make allowances for national reviewers. Say, the folks at The New Yorker or Time. Thus, The National Society of Film Critics which, to tell the truth, is still mostly New York and L.A., with a sprinkling of Boston and Chicago (and me ... the sole yahoo from the South). Then so many writers relocated to the West Coast that there was a need for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. As for The National Board of Review, well, apparently they have about a gazillion ...

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Life, Views

Jerichow: No Postman and No Doorbell

by Eleanor Ringel Cater | 1, Add your Comment | Aug 8 09

Now that just about everyone has seen JULIE & JULIA (except moi; hey, if it worked for Kathleen … ), I thought I’d mention that, if you go to the Landmark Midtown in Atlanta and the Meryl Streep movie is sold out, give JERICHOW a try. It’s an odd — and oddly affecting — spin on James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” Set in Germany, this version might better be called “The Postman Always Rings Once.” Except there is no postman and no doorbell. Dishonorably discharged drifter and semi-lout, Thomas (Benno Furmann) helps out an alcoholic Turkish immigrant, Ali ...

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Life, Views

‘Revanche’ looks at ‘chaotic nature of fate’

by Eleanor Ringel Cater | 1, Add your Comment | Jul 23 09

A nominee for best foreign language film at last winter’s Academy Awards, the strangely eloquent Austrian film “Revanche” (translation: "Revenge") is a tale of two couples whose paths cross in a tragically unexpected way. Alex (Johannes Krisch), a security guard of sorts at a Viennese brothel, falls for one of the working girls, a Ukrainian prostitute named Tamara (Irina Potapenko). She falls back. The problem: The power-brokers who run the operation don’t like the, er, staff to date. So Alex comes up with a scheme to free them both. He’ll rob a bank and they’ll ride off together into some sunset somewhere. Robert ...

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Life, Views

‘Il Divo,’ part Nixon, part Corleone

by Eleanor Ringel Cater | 2, Add your Comment | Jul 16 09

You think Italian politics are nutty now. Well, check out Il Divo at the Landmark Theater in Midtown Atlanta. Giulio Andreotti could be a character out of a Fellini film, but he's the real thing. This besmirched but irrepressible former Italian prime minister, who was still a power figure in his 90s despite accusations of corruption, murder and Mafia ties, felt no need to make confessions. Instead, he merely shrugged as his enemies stewed. Paolo Sorrentino's film (playing this week at the Landmark) takes the if-you-can't-beat-'em-celebrate-'em approach to Andreotti's long but checkered career. Don't worry about the details of Andreotti's reign or trying to ...

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Life, Views

Home Movies: Storm the Barricades or …

by Eleanor Ringel Cater | 0, Add your Comment | Jul 14 09

Bastille Day!!! Time to storm the barricades. Or rent these movies: START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME (1969) Donald Sutherland and Gene Wilder star as twins literally separated at birth. One pair goes on to become bloodthirsty aristocrats especially skilled at fencing. The other becomes hapless peasants caught up in the French Revolution. The humor is very late ‘60s-silly, but much of it is still riotous today – especially Hugh Griffith as a senile Louis XVI. And yes, that’s Orson Welles, the BIG man himself, as the pompous narrator. A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1935) Classic Golden Age Hollywood with David O. Selznick tackling Charles Dickens before ...

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Life, Views

The unsuitable suitor, Karl Malden

by Eleanor Ringel Cater | 3, Add your Comment | Jul 3 09

The death of Karl Malden may not amount to a hill of beans .... Wait,. wrong classic movie. THE classic movie, with which Malden would forever be associated with throughout his long career was “A Streetcar Named Desire,” for which he won an Academy Award (for best supporting actor) for recreating the role of Mitch, Blanche's unsuitable gentleman suitor in the original Broadway production. Otherwise mostly known for his distinctively bulbous nose and role as Michael Douglas's partner in the TV series, “The Streets of San Francisco,” Malden had the sort of rich and varied character-actor career that seems almost impossible today. His ...

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Life, Talk, Views

On the Wilder Side

by Eleanor Ringel Cater | 6, Add your Comment | Jul 1 09

I recently had the great honor to interview Gene Wilder. He was in Atlanta to visit his wife, Karen Webb's, grown-up children who had moved South to work for Turner. Wilder is an original — quite possibly the most unique comic actor of his time. He was pummeled by Zero Mostel in “The Producers,” kidnapped by Warren Beatty in “Bonnie and Clyde,” rode West (in Rabbinical whiskers) with Harrison Ford in “The Frisco Kid,“ played Donald Sutherland's mismatched twin in “Start the Revolution Without Me” (a great 4th of July choice even if it is about the French Revolution) and brought ...

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People & Places, Views

Woody Allen made me sad

by Eleanor Ringel Cater | 11, Add your Comment | Jun 21 09

While I was in a traffic jam yesterday, coming home to Atlanta from Maysville on I-85 (All Lanes Blocked .... dreaded words), I happened to catch an interview with Woody Allen on NPR. He's doing press to plug his new movie, "Whatever Works," which opens in Atlanta in early July. Movie sounds okay ... more Allen-Angst, this time starring Larry David as the Woody surrogate and Evan Rachel Wood as the inevitable younger (much) woman ... THIS TIME a Southern beauty queen with more dimples than brains. Anyway, I have a soft spot for Allen since he's created more enduring works than failures ...

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People & Places, Views

Happy Bloomsday: James Joyce in film

by Eleanor Ringel Cater | 3, Add your Comment | Jun 16 09

Well, it’s Bloomsday — the day when James Joyce-eans all over the world take a minute to recall Leopold Bloom’s 24-hour Odyssey around Dublin over a century ago. As it happens, my husband and I were actually sitting at Davy Byrnes Pub on Bloomsday several years ago. Not a conscious choice, but guided there, we think, by the spirits of our friends the Grahams who would’ve loved to have been there in our place. So I began thinking about Joyce, whose books were always too dense for me. They were, in general, too dense for film, too. A man named Joseph Strick ...

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Life, Views

Home Movies: Clint grows up in ‘Gran Torino’

by Eleanor Ringel Cater | 2, Add your Comment | Jun 10 09

“Gran Torino” might as well been called “Dirty Harry Grows Old…and Grows Up.” Clint Eastwood directed and stars in this surprisingly satisfying plea for getting along. He plays a cantankerous old coot who can’t accept that the ol’ neighborhood ain’t what it used to be. In fact, nothing, it seems, is like it used to be — except for his cherished Gran Torino which he safeguards in his garage like a buried treasure. However, he is forced to examine the nature of change and his own conscience when he is befriended by a Hmong family who’ve moved in next door. It’s ...

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Life, Views

Home Movies: Happy birthday, Donald Duck

by Eleanor Ringel Cater | 0, Add your Comment | Jun 10 09

Hope you’re feeling ducky because yesterday was Donald Duck’s 75th Anniversary. Yep, he made his debut on June 9, 1934, in a Disney-ized version of “The Wise Little Hen.” He plays one of the farmyard animals who beg off when the titular hen asks for help for the harvest. His voice was provided by Clarence Nash who remained Donald’s spokesperson for 50 years. According to IMDB, Nash claimed he based Donald’s inimitable sound on his pet goat, Mary, who made a similar noise when she was hungry. Nash also provided the voices for Daisy Duck, and Donald’s nephews, Huey, Dewie and Louie, ...

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Life, Views

Home Movies: Revolution and Defiance

by Eleanor Ringel Cater | 0, Add your Comment | Jun 3 09

Arguably the best movie of 2008, “Revolutionary Road” arrives on DVD this week. Passed over by the Oscars and semi-ignored by many of the major critics’ groups, Sam Mendes’ searing look at a couple going under in late ‘50s suburbia has even more of an impact on the small screen. The intimacy of home viewing adds considerably to the growing claustrophobia that envelops both the movie and the main characters, expertly played by Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet (yes, Winslet did win an Oscar, but it was for the infinitely inferior “The Reader.”’) Based on Richard Yates’ 1961 cult novel about ...

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Life, Views

Home Movies: Valor … and ‘Blood’

by Eleanor Ringel Cater | 1, Add your Comment | May 20 09

Memorial Day is intended to honor American soldiers, but valor isn’t necessarily a matter of nationality. “Valkyrie” has just been released on DVD and it’s a strangely fitting Memorial Day movie. Based on the true story of a plot hatched by some German officers to assassinate Hitler in 1944, the film stars Tom Cruise as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of the group. Maimed in battle (Cruise sports an eyepatch and crippled hand), Stauffenberg is the stuff B-movie action heroes are made of: cunning, courageous and perhaps a tad less complicated than one would like (well, hell, a lost eye ...

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