Author: Village Vidiot

Roy Perlstein is 30, single, and a comic actor struggling to break into the big time. He lives with his sister, Gail, a filmmaker, since breaking up with his non-Jewish girlfriend after two years because, …, well, she just wasn’t Jewish and he couldn’t handle it. His successful, well-to-do and utterly intrusive parents are busting…

Ron Woodruff. (Matthew McConaughey-Oscar for Best Actor) a Texas wild man, electrician, bull-rider, carouser learns he’s contracted HIV (an anachronism in 1985, that wasn’t known) and is given 30 days to live. Seeking AZT, he journey’s to Mexico and meets a doctor who convinces him to turn to treatments for the disease and its symptoms…

Rocky Horror for 2001. Very funny, loud look at gender bending for the 21st century. Based on the off-Broadway play, this looks at a failed m2f transsexual German operation patient as he/she tries to adjust to life as an American wife/impoverished divorcee/rock star/seducer/failure/success. Fun lyrics, fun visuals, interesting take on post-cold war world. Well acted…

Robert Redford stars in this one-man study by JC Chandor (writer/director) of an older man at sea (literally) struggling to survive as he loses his radio, takes water, is adrift in terrible storms, and must eventually abandon ship. There is no dialogue. It works because of Redford Some have argued that real craft these days…

Robert McNamara is the subject of this auto-bio-documentary from Errol Morris. Morris interviewed McNamara about his life, WWII, Vietnam, and much, much more. Words of wisdom?. Sometimes. Honesty? Sometimes. Fascinating?. Always. Horrifying? Frequently. The war criminal as thoughtful policy wonk?. The loyal follower who knows the policy is doomed and acts out of love? The…

Robert Duvall and Kevin Costner are fine in this slow moving western about independence, justice, and evil. Great gunfight, but too trite for its own good. And Duvall really is good. Costner’s relationship with Annette Benning doesn’t fit or work, but the movie is worth watching for Duvall’s total control, Costner’s delivery of trite lines,…

Robert Downey, Jr, Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, quick witted, perhaps too quick witted, neo-noir piece about LA with a crook masquerading as an actor, a gay private detective, an actress and a producer running around one another. Very good dialogue but false through and through. Rather like LA itself. Too many side plays to be…

Robert De Niro stars in this Barry Levnison study of Bernie Madoff, whose 50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme rocked investors during the collapse of the housing/stock/derivatives markets in 2007/8. Michelle Pfeiffer’s wife Ruth brings appropriate selfishness, narcissism, and fragility into focus; while his sons Mark (Alessandro Nivola) and Andrew (Nathan Darrow) drown in the wake…

Ridley Scott’s revisions of the original film create an even darker and, I think, tighter and more interesting film. Big changes to the ending

Ricky Gervais is mildly amusing as Bertram Pincus, an antisocial dentist who dies during a colonoscopy and is revived only to find he can see the dead who died with things unresolved and they can see him. One, a sleazy stock guy played by Greg Kinnear, wants him to deal with his ex-wife’s (Tea Leoni,…

Richard Griffith reprises his Tony-winning role in this Alan Bennett play-to-screen work. It’s well done, although it poses a false dichotomy of history as either knowledge for its own sake or history as a tool for self-advancement. Virtuous selflessness versus soulless opportunism, with the headmaster a total repressive creep. Some of us see it as…

Returning to the original premise of the “Mad Max” post-apocalyptic vision of the 1970s, this George Miller violence and stunt festival (80-90% real stunts according to what I looked at) creates a veritable Cirque du Soleil of homicidal gags. It pits Max the Damaged (Tom Hardy, an actor I really enjoy) and war-engine driver Furiosa…

Remarkable French film starring Charlotte Rampling about the aftermath of a death/suicide/disappearance. A couple goes to the shore. He is very depressed, she’s in denial. They go to the beach, he says he’s going for a swim and never returns. Her inability to cope, to accept, to come to terms with this tragedy and mystery…

Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) is a 17-yo with an incapacitated mother, two young siblings, and a missing, meth-cooking/selling dad. She’s about to lose their hardscrabble farm and house in Appalachia hill-country because he is due in court and will forfeit the house/farm/land pledged as bond. This is an isolated, musical, patriarchal, clannish and violent place where…

Really fun indie film about men and women. Dex is overweight but full of life. He plays his line of eastern and western philosophy to woo women for 10 slacker years and then meets Syd again at a college reunion. He has to confront his own emptiness and the excitement and fear of a real…

Rather second-tier Coen brothers but, as with all their work, very well-crafted, directed, and acted. It’s a bit sour, but with some very funny parts Good acting by exceptional pros (Clooney, Pitt, McDormand, Malkevich, Jenkins, Swinton, and others) The plot is classic, convoluted Coen. Affairs galore among the middle-echelon of the nation’s security apparatus come…

Rather flat Kevin Costner film about a minor league golf pro. Sound familiar?. Well this “Bull Durham” knockoff is just that. Sort of boring, occasionally funny, and watchable only to be able to see Cheech Marin. He’s good, the movie’s not

Quirky doesn’t even begin to describe Jim Jarmusch’s cinematic style. Once again, he looks at immigration in a gritty city as he did in his early film, “Stranger Than Paradise,” where Cleveland rocks. Once again a unique, sometimes gentle and playful sense of humor suffuses his vision of life in America. In “Paterson,” he follows…

Quirky Australian black comedy about a pair of remarkably odd sisters (twenty-somethings) who vie for the affections of an oft-married and divorced dj who moves in next door in their outback community. His pseudo-philosophizing will have you cringing in your seat and their naïveté will leave you more perplexed than bemused. Surprising ending, to say…

Queen Latifah is ok in this nice, romantic piece about a proper New Orleans working woman (works in a department store). She loves to cook but won’t eat what she cooks for fear of the weight, adores celebrity chefs, and has a crush on another sales clerk (LL Cool Jay in a really nice little…

Primitive Baptist Confederate soldier Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey) deserts from the rebel army as he comes to understand the war as a rich man’s war/poor man’s fight. He takes up with a band of runaway slaves, draws other deserters, slaves and locals to him, and declares war on the Confederacy from inside Jones County, Mississippi….

Prequel 3 in the Star Trek saga. Kirk (Chris Pine) is bored with his 5-year mission and may want out, and thinks that, perhaps, Spock should replace him. But Spock’s going all last Vulcan on us and thinking of leaving. That all gets put aside as the crew of the Enterprise sallies forth to rescue…

Pedro Almodovar does a straight romance novel comedy. Not a special film. Too straight. Blech. Subtitled

Part two of our “45 Years” Charlotte Rampling anticipatory mini-series, and certainly an odd one. Actually, it’s one I’d consciously avoided for many years, but Bronwen wanted to see it. Max (Dirk Bogarde) is a former SS officer, concentration camp torturer living as a hotel night porter in late ‘50s Vienna, a city teeming with…

Painful and depressing supposed teen comedy about two high school girls who say a resounding no to just say no. Well-acted by all, but the drug and alcohol abuse are brain and soul numbing for the consumers and the viewers. The sex is meaningless and exploitative. If all teen relationships are so empty then long…