Category: Film Reviews

Interesting look at art and a stressful marriage. Ushio Shinohara (80 as the film begins) and his wife of 40 years, Noriko (58 at the start,) , have managed to survive in NYC through occasional sales of his super-pop cardboard sculpture of motorcycles, paintings, and his better known boxing paintings that reflect his pummeling canvas…

I was honestly surprised by this movie. It’s based on the bestselling sentimental novel of the same name by Frederik Bachman, but it isn’t cloying and it’s worth a look for its take on connection, aging, immigration and Sweden today. Ove ( Rolf Lassgard, one of Sweden’s foremost dramatic stage actors) is a 59-yo widower…

I’ve been sick and haven’t seen much. Trouble staying awake to watch. Yuck. We enjoyed this silly Abba-fest with Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan and a cast of singing Greeks and the adults in the room laughed a lot!. Fun for all although our daughter hated us singing along with everyone. Meryl looks old enough…

I was looking forward to seeing this film with Ben Affleck as Nick and Rosamund Pike as Amy because of the cast and because, well, it made such a big splash as a novel. Everyone (except me) was reading it. I wait years and then usually find out yes, everyone was right (eg, The World…

I’ve been waiting to see this Guillermo Del Toro monster movie since it came out to excellent reviews. Giant subterranean, inter-dimensional creatures (Kaiju) are attacking the world from within, destroying cities They are fought by new robots, Jaegers, piloted by two people, linked to one another and the machines mentally. The climactic battle requires that…

I was quite captivated by, and more than a little scared of, Notorious RBG after seeing this very well done and moving film. Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an intense, thoughtful jurist whose commitment to using law as a vehicle to enable equality of opportunity, is a remarkable testament to her courage and her…

I’ve had a copy of this 2006 Spike Lee film for years and decided to finally watch it. In their fourth shoot together, Lee has Denzel Washington as a NYC police detective hostage negotiator who is called in to resolve a hostage crisis/robbery at a bank. We know it’s a robbery from scene one when…

I was really disappointed in this highly touted mass-market remake of the original with Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas. Yucky plot, a weird mix of swords and kung-fu type choreogrpahy, a zorro-like batcave, plot twists that make no sense at all, and just plain strangeness. Occasional good humor. No nudity to redeem the film

I’ve long heard good things about this small Chinese film directed by Jianqi Huo, and they’re all right. With their talk of the special zones, it seems set in the early 1980s, although American pop on the radio seems incongruous for that moment. The father is a rural postman who walks a difficult three-day route…

I was really looking forward to seeing this film. It has a wonderful cast including George Clooney, Kate Blanchet, Bill Murray, Matt Daman, John Goodman, Bob Baliban, Jean Dujardin, and Hugh Bonneville, and was produced , written, and directed by Clooney who did such wonderful work in “Good Night and Good Luck,” and it focused…

Ice-T opens up his phone directory and calls the rappers he knows to talk about their art. Some are just them stroking one another’s egos, some are genuinely substantial. Not all are articulate about their craft. That’s part of the point. There are few women in the mix, and except for Eminem, this is an…

I was somewhat disappointed in this Don Cheadle look at the great trumpeter during a period of absolute desolation when he couldn’t produce. His music dissolved. Co-starring Emayatzy Corineladi as Francis Taylor, the dancer he loved and damaged and Ewan McGregor as a free-lance journalist seeking to learn what’s happened to the great man, the…

In contrast to most folk, I didn’t enjoy this one, a distaste only exacerbated by seeing that S Mnuchin (our glorious Secretary of the Treasury) was its executive producer. I know I’m in an extreme minority here regarding the film, which pleased summer audiences (including Bronwen). I don’t do gods well. I thought the acting…

I was somewhat underwhelmed by this. small, multiple award winning fairy tale from Israel about an Egyptian band’s visit gone awry, although I think Bronwen liked it more than I did. I would have liked a bit more edge. Still there are parts to enjoy. The band arrives and takes the wrong bus, arriving in…

In part 3 of Millenium, Larson’s look at the Swedish right-wing finally comes up to surface after becoming less central to the mission in v2 The ‘secret,’ the arrogant, the anti-democratic becomes palpable played on Lisbeth’s personal history (as they were in the look at fascism and its aftermath in v1) and Blomqvist’s efforts to…

I was underwhelmed by this mediocre Merryl Streep/Alex Baldwin/Steve Martin vehicle about Jane Adler (Streep) who surreptitiously reunites with her lawyer ex (Baldwin) at her son’s graduation and after. She’s been alone and crafted a rich and amazing life on her own. Into her life comes Steve Martin’s Adam, the architect redoing her amazing California…

Intense look at the power of the energy of a young woman whose will can change the script and whose voice can shatter glass and fix roulette wheels. Lola’s boyfriend Manni is up to his eyeballs in it when he loses a bag of cash intended for a very bad man. Scripts are played out…

I was underwhelmed by this sentimental, rather formulaic Steven Spielberg-directed and produced very big film. Not a bad movie, just rather more traditional than I enjoy. Some of shots seemed like homages to “Gone With the Wind”. A tenant family spends too much on a special horse that is truly special. He saves the farm…

Interesting and enjoyable drama about a woman, her teenage son, and her mother as they try to cope with the death of the woman’s husband after a long, drawn-out disease. Starring Emma Thompson and her real life mother. Wonderful work by all the supporting actors and actresses, including a pair of older, funeral groupie women,…

I’d wanted to see this Korean thriller from Jooh-ho Bong for quite a while and it did not disappoint. Very well written and acted, it looks at a single mother (wonderfully played by Hye-ja Kim) who supports herself selling medicinal roots and herbs, whose son, a slow and rather irascible young man, is accused of…

I watched this slight teen comedy about a total nerd with an amazingly dysfunctional family in Idaho and enjoyed it despite myself. Its ending is really well done. I loved the boy and girl geeks What’s lovely about the thing is that they truly remain geeks and you do understand why other people find them…

Interesting and intense look at the James Jones novel from Terrence Malick. It stars Sean Penn, Elias Koteas (in a stellar piece of acting—very moving), Woody Harrelson, Nick Nolte, and even George Clooney and John Travolta have somewhat pointless cameos. They bring no star power to them and are a little distracting. When the film…

I thought this an interesting little film about a French sportswriter (Yvonne Attal who also wrote and directed the film and is a less well known actor) who is more than a little envious of his much more successful and better known English actress-wife (Charlotte Gainsborough—Attal’s real life companion). He follows her to London where…

I went to this one in Westfield, NJ along with B- and my sister Erica. B- really liked it, Erica disliked it enormously, and I found it weak but less toxic than I’d expected. It starts very slowly, to say the least, and really isn’t funny for quite a while. It has nothing to do…

Interesting and, in some places, very funny movie about a group of liberal/progressive grad students who invite conservatives over and, if they can’t change their minds over dinner, kill them. A fun look at the dynamics of political rectitude.