Category: Film Reviews

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…

I really liked this Paul Thomas Anderson written and directed Adam Sandler vehicle about an oppressed, henpecked misfit filled with rage who makes his way through life badly. He finds a soul-mate (Emily Watson) almost as weird as he is, but after an intense conflict with folks from Utah (the brothers, who are brothers) after…

I really liked this sci-fi, social commentary about aliens stranded and housed in shanty-towns outside Johannesburg, SA. Very well acted and weird piece by Peter Jackson. Both SA and US content. Creepy prawnlike aliens. What happens when we ‘cross over?’. B walked out of this one. Creeped her out way too much. Stick with it….

I really liked this unusual conceit of a film from Richard Linklater shot over 12 years using actors as they aged. So much could have happened to short circuit this project, but it came to fruition and produced a film that has everyday life, real tensions and personal evolution at its core. Some of my…

I may be the wrong person to review this one, since I don’t watch teen coming of age films with great regularity. Still, I was lured by the praises on the DVD box touting its comedic brilliance Will I ever learn?. There are a few laughs in this, but the answer is clearly no. So,…

I saw this at a salon-like DVD party at Bruce Sylvester’s and that was half the fun of it. Thanks Bruce. This is an odd family road trip movie written, directed, produced, etc by Allen Wagner. It stars his mom, dad, two sisters and several friends. The dysfunctional but long-lived Wagner family take a trip…

I missed the song. Oh well, Robert Downey, Jr, is good in this so-so comic book knockoff about the arms dealer who develops a heart when he loses his own. Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow and Cuba Gooding are all wasted. Oh well. Very high tech, very glossy. First time I’ve ever seen anything in HD….

I saw this one in Minneapolis at Erica’s home. We both enjoyed this 2007 Peter Berg-directed look at anti-American terrorism in Saudi Arabia and the follow-up to car bombings at an American complex. Starring Jamie Foxx as an American FBI guy who, along with Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, and Jason Bateman go off to SA…

I never saw this 1966 British comic trifle before, and Bronwen is on a Charlotte Rampling jag, so we watched and enjoyed this one as the period piece it is. It’s heavily influenced by the long history of Brit absurdist comedy that would, in just a couple of years, yield Monty Python. This one sits…

I saw this when I was about 10 or 12 and enjoyed it once again on DVD. Frank Skeffington (Spencer Tracy—older, more tired, but real chops!) is seeking his fifth term as mayor of a New England city a la Curley in Boston. His machine is truly that, a machine. He loves the power, isn’t…

I really disliked the first hour of this introduction to Peter Jackson’s latest New Zealand-shot Middle East trilogy. Too sweet and too much like a kid’s story with silly dwarves everywhere. Bilbo (Martin Freeman) is the complacent Hobbit lured from the Shire by Ian McKellan’s Gandolf and the 13 “dwarves without a country” led by…

I survived this one, although it put Bronwen to sleep. Where are Steve Reeves, Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, and Howard Fast when we need them most?. In the early 1960s, Spartacus praises the slaves rising against their masters. Here the slaves struggle to free Rome from the bad emperor to create. . the slave-based Republic?….

I really enjoyed and was moved by this Martin Scorcese homage to early filmmakers and French culture. Hugo is an orphan who lives in the interstices of a Paris train station where he minds the time and mends machines. He meets and is befriended by Isabelle, a lovely young orphan girl cared for by Papa…

I really enjoyed the first 2/3 of this interesting Spike Joynz/Charles Hoffman collaboration about trying to write a screenplay about Suzy Orlean’s The Orchid Thief. The last third degenerates into the Hollywood chase/murder stuff that the film is, in fact, a critique of. Nicholas Cage plays Hoffman and his “brother” Donald and does a fine…