Category: Film Reviews

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.

I very much enjoyed this Steven Spielberg piece on the Israeli assassination program that followed on the Munich massacre of 1972. It is really a meditation on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It offers no easy answers, the acting is good, the passion is genuine. Every now and then it slips into setups that are too easy,…

I wish

Interesting atmospheric set of stories of lost love and street life, cops, and lovers in Hong Kong. Directed by Wong Kar-Wai, with the attitude of the French New Wave and a touch of film noir. Very enigmatic, and a tad funny, but I essentially think the thing is overrated and Quentin Tarrantino’s intro and outro…

I very much liked this Phil Donahue/Ellen Spiro piece about Tomas Young, a 25-yo quadriplegic Iraqi War vet. His politicization, his candor, his pain are there for all to see. It is very graphic and disturbing. The producers juxtapose his 5-day life changing stay in-country with the banality of the House/Senate pseudo-debate giving Bush/Cheney the…

I’d never seen this minor Hitchcock dark comedy. Excellent cast of Hollywood character actors and new faces!. Capt Albert Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) is out hunting rabbits and stumbles on a dead man he fears he’s accidentally shot. Almost everyone in town comes by: a spinster, Miss Ivy Gravley,. Arnie, a young boy (Jerry Mathers not…

Interesting documentary about Ed Wood, with lots of fascinating interviews and tape of him and his work. Yikes, what a goof

I waited a while to see this 2007 film and was a little disappointed. Still, we both enjoyed this unusal Brit comedy about two misfit kids (one, repressed and fatherless from a home of religious zealots, the other out of control in an environment of parental indifference) who get together and plan a movie about…

I’ll try to remember what we’ve seen and get it down. A slow summer, in any event, partly due to a good trip out to California. Still, and it embarrasses me to say it, I can’t remember what I saw in June!. This is not good

Interesting if predictable and sort of amateurish film about kids at a theater camp. The gay boys, the one straight guy, the girls (some pretty, some not, but all very talented), the Sondheim groupies fawning over the great man. Vicious sabotaging of one girl against another, the fat black girl with the heavenly voice whose…

I was blown away by this remarkable1963 Luchino Visconti three-hour masterpiece. Burt Lancaster (dubbed) plays the Prince of Salina in Sicily as Garibaldi invades to establish a republic and unify Italy. His nephew takes sides with G but the prince stays above/outside all politics His is the class of the leopard and lion. He correctly…

I’m not someone who follows reality TV or any of the gossip mags. But who doesn’t know the story?. Well, according to this brutal comic/drama directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Steven Rogers, almost all of us. Australian Margot Robbie is a more beautiful and feminine Harding (and yes, that matters) yet she plays…

Interesting if simplistic American film about two runaway sisters, one pregnant, who kidnap a ‘nurse’ to help with the birth. This is a captive comedy, but is sort of simple-minded. Mary Kay Place is excellent as the nurse, and the young girl who plays Manny is very good. B+ liked it more than I did

I was deeply moved by this look at the brief but profound connection between David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg), a struggling novelist and Rolling Stones writer and author of the book this film is based on and the film’s co-author, and David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel), the talented but troubled author of the monster comic novel…

I’m not usually a fan of films about the trauma of being an upper-middle class white kid in America, but this film works on lots of levels and is worth viewing. Written and directed by Stephen Chbosky, who also wrote the novel it’s based on, the film follows Charlie (Logan Lerman), a freshman in high…

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…