Author: Village Vidiot

This deeply affecting documentary chronicles the story behind a story. In 1980, three adopted young men, all from Jewish families, accidentally discovered that they were triplets, separated and adopted by three very different families, at birth. What follows is their joyous reunion, their early acclaim and momentary celebrity, and the questions that then flowed from…

This biopic stars Dev Patel as S Ramanugan, the brilliant, self-taught Indian mathematician, and Jeremy Irons as GH Hardy, the Cambridge math don he worked with during the years preceding and during WWI. Leaving his young wife at home in India, he sought to find his way through a cold and unwelcoming Britain, where even…

This badly done Barbara Streisand vanity piece is a real embarrassment. Nick Nolte does well in several scenes, the story has some life as a gothic tale of southern depravity, and George Carlin as the gay neighbor is wonderful and really steals the show, but it is, otherwise, a waste. Streisand is unbelievable, in the…

This ambitious conceit examines the issue of consciousness as one man sleeps? Dies? It is interviews animated over. A fascinating film worth seeing in this age of boring crap. Still, do not see it as I did, while exhausted after watching “Italian for Beginners”. I fell asleep

This “Star Wars” series, Ron Howard directed, Lawrence and Jonathan Kasden written, prequel gives us Han’s backstory following him from street thief to pilot and good guy criminal. Raised in privation, he (Landen Ehrenreich) flees and joins the imperial military before hooking up with criminal freebooters (led by Woody Harrelson) working for an intergalactic syndicate….

Third of the year, third in the theater. First time in a long time. We both enjoyed this slow, tense, atmospheric piece, where character, dialogue, acting, and story line carry this John LeCarre story/film in an ambiguous world of grey people and deceit. Gary Oldman as George Smiley (reprising the role done so brilliantly by…

They’re lying to one another. Forget it. Boring despite a couple of funny jokes

They do take us into the neutered SEC. I

There were more than a few times when I expected a very young Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky” to emerge on the stage and spit some lines along with our heroine, Patti Dumbrowski, aka, “Killer P” (a wonderful Danielle Macdonald—and Australian no less!). The story lines by writer-director Geremy Jasper track in many ways in this tale…

There is nothing remotely believable about this Justin Bateman-Melissa McCarthy comedy about a boring middle class accountant, Bateman, (the only accountant in the country paid 50k) whose identity is stolen by wacko sociopath, shopaholic McCarthy. He runs off to Florida to save his career in a cockamamie plan to bring her back to Denver so…

There is much to recommend this documentary story of Vito Russo, author of The Celluloid Closet. An early and standout gay activist, he succumbed to AIDS in 1991. He was a founder of Act UP!, he figured in the major opening of gay life in post-Stonewall 1970s NYC and San Francisco. Interviews with friends and…

There are three movies in this Quentin Tarantino written/directed film about a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) who becomes a bounty-hunter along with his German liberator, Christoph Waltz in a brilliant turn. They work together killing white folk for the money and then go off to ‘rescue’ Django’s wife, now owned by the deranged, brutal Candie,…

The tribal areas of Pakistan are truly tribal and the subject of this look at tribalism, gender and women in that area. And one should look at this film. It’s visually stunning, although there are some incredibly perplexing gaps in the story line and script, some inexplicable and needless complications of the plot line, and…

The three of us went to see this one at the Capital. Bronwen and I really enjoyed it. Our daughter, who’d seen it three months before, was so dismissive that it really took a little bit of the fun out the thing. But just a little, because this movie is one hell of a lot…

The tensest and best of this fine action trilogy. We’d just watched the other two on DVD (B3 had never seen them). There’s lots of inter-textual stuff, so it actually would be good to see them again before you watch this. Jason Bourne sets out to find out who he is and how he became…

The story of the crash of 2008 narrated by Matt Damon Excellent movie. See this one and appreciate the perverse irony of S&P resetting US government bond rates at AA instead of AAA Sickening and a must see

The story of Philippe Petit as he planned and executed his World Trade Center tightrope walk of 1974. Inspired to walk from the moment he heard about the buildings, he staged this amazing hack with the aid of a loving and devoted band of followers. I wanted more about the post-walk relationships, especially a where…

The second part of Joshua Oppenheimer’s look at the 19654 genocidal massacres of one million Communists and troublemakers of any sort that irritated the military or local thugs,. and Chinese Indonesians, this film brings Adi Rukun, the brother of one victim, Ramli Rukun, face to face with the men who tortured and murdered him. It…

The same TSs, pregnant nuns, and thieves as before inhabit

The perfect film to watch on the day of the Bentley University commencement We both (and that is a surprise) enjoyed this Ben Affleck vehicle that asks and answers “what would Jason Bourne be like if he had savant skills and Asperger’s Syndrome?”. Is this Affleck’s response to the degraded Damen cycle?. He’s an accountant/stone…

The mystery is, why did everyone like this silly bit of fluff so much. Even as a comedy, this Mike Myers conceit is overly long, thin, rather boring, and dumb as a parody/homage to 1960s/70s James Bond, secret agent, Man from UNCLE movies and tv shows. Names like Alotta Fagina mix with a Dr Evil…

The legacy of imperial policy, in this case settling Estonians in Georgia over a century ago, helps set up this antiwar story of enemies and neutrals coming together to understand one another. Ivo is a rural carpenter/farmer in an Estonian village in Georgia. Estonians had been settled there under the Czar. Now there are only…

The latest from the Coen Brothers, this dark and frustrating look at the folk scene in 1961/62, and yes, it’s that precisely dated, crafts an opportunistic, unpleasant, frequently narcissistic, often cruel if true-to-the-music semi-Dave Van Ronk alter-ego (Llewyn Davis, acted by Oscar Issac—who plays his own guitar and sings) with nice work by Justin Timberlake,…

The latest from Jim Jarmusch, this is sort of Jarmusch does Beckett over lots of coffee and lots of cigarettes. Funny in parts, meandering in others, this is a plotless exercise in meaning, lack of meaning, conversation, social climbing (in a lovely piece staring Alfred Molina and James Coogan). Some wonderful acting (a dialogue between…

The Hollywood Western is returning with a vengeance. Men die by the wagonload in this new take on an old Western starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, with fine performances by such warhorses as Peter Fonda. Bale, as Dan Evans, a rancher in financial trouble due to nefarious dealings by a local developer/rancher, agrees to…