Category: Film Reviews

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 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…

I really enjoyed the trilogy that provides the basis for this first film. I liked this true-to-tale vision of the book. It’s very well done and very creepy indeed. Nicely acted. Very disturbing film. One difference from the book is in the ending as to why L and B leave things as they do. The…

I really enjoyed this 2010 slaughter-fest action drama from Takashi Miike. Thirteen men, mostly samurai (led by Koji Yokusho—”Shall We Dance”!) including a Ronin and men in training, but also some commoners, band together in 1844 at the behest of the councilor to the Shogun to kill their lord’s evil, sadistic and pathological brother who…

I really enjoyed, frequently laughed out loud, and was also more than a little disturbed by this wacky Boots Riley vehicle He wrote and directed. He’s the frontman for The Coup, a radical hip hop band that’s influenced by folks like George Clinton. I play their albums with some regularity on my show. I found…

I really liked this bizarre look at the life of Chuck Barris, game-show creator, culture degrader, and, he says, CIA assassin. The perfect post-modern film. There is no reality but the story and who knows what’s real. Nice direction and acting by George Clooney, with a fine star turn by Julia Roberts. Really fun and…

I really liked this Cannes award-winning French film about a high school class, the teacher and the working-class immigrant students. It’s a rough film but very well done. Based on an autobiographical novel, it stars the writer and real students. Wow, what acting. It felt like a documentary but it’s not See this film!

I really liked this film about the young Che and a 9000 km trip around South America he took with a friend when he was 23/24. Wonderfully acted by both professional and non-professional actors (Bernardo Gael is great as Che and the guy who plays his friend is really marvelous). and directed with real skill…

I really liked this Oscar-winning look at (mostly female) backup singers in pop music including Darlene Love, Claudia Lennear, Lisa Fischer, Tata Vega, Merry Clayton, Patti Austin, Cheryl Crow, and Judith Hill, among others. It considers their place in the song and notes that in many cases they are the chorus for the audience (live…