Category: Film Reviews

I admit it, films like this comic/drama freak me out and characters like Charlise Theron’s Mavis Gary make me want to hide. A depressed, divorced, narcissistic, alcoholic, arrogant bitch/former prom queen, she ghost-writes a series of young adult novels that has run its course. She sets out to woo her hometown boyfriend away from his…

I am ashamed to admit it, but I actually enjoyed this totally mindless piece of brain candy from Adam Sandler about the seemingly moronic bayou-born 31-year old waterboy who becomes a football phenom and uplifts everyone around him. Boring side work by Henry Winkler, but Kathy Bates as his possessive and not totally dense mama…

I am not a great fan of Barbara Streisand, but I enjoyed this silly, popular story of a mother/son road trip. Seth Rogen is an engineer-inventor on a road trip to try to sell his new cleaning product. Babs is his ever intrusive, loving, overwhelming mom. He finds things out about his mom that encourage…

I appreciated and enjoyed film much more than Bronwen, although I have to admit and caution that it very much alien territory to me as well. Even though shot in color, the film feels like the clothing worn by most Chassids, black and white. I can’t really evaluate what’s ‘right’ and what’s ‘wrong’ about the…

I can’t believe it took me 12 years to see this film. Jaime Bell stars in the title role as a young (11-year old), working-class boy who prefers ballet to boxing. He is tarred as a ‘pouf’ by his family and community, both locked in conflict over a mine strike that includes his dad and…

I can’t believe it’s been 2 ½ months since I saw and reviewed a film. During that time, we’ve watched all five seasons of “Breaking Bad,” staring Bryan Cranston as chemistry teacher-turned meth cook and demonic, sociopathic family man, Walter White. Well-acted, with excellent work all ‘round. Taut writing and a real focus on character…

I can’t believe we haven’t seen a film in two weeks but it’s true. Anyway, Bronwen won a pair of tickets in her department raffle and so we saw this at the $925 a ticket (yikes!) Kendall. Nice art deco. The film is the latest from Pedro Almodovar and is another in his series of…

Happy Labor Day. Jiro Ono is a national treasure in Japan. He is 85 and the world’s greatest sushi chef. His eldest son is still his apprentice. His youngest is a chef but no one matches his artistry and his creativity. He dreams of sushi. I dream about teaching history but I’m not a national…

I didn’t like this teen chick flick very much, I’m afraid. Too simpleminded and in all honesty, almost none of the characters are very interesting. Another movie with rich, remarkably talented kids, all of whom have the world at their feet. Even the one who works at the Walmart clone. B- liked the movie Yucky…

Hard to imagine that this is the first time I ever saw this John Sayles classic, but it’s, embarrassingly, true. A well-crafted tale about the Matewan coal wars in West Virginia. Chris Cooper is superb, Hazel Dickens sang most of the songs, and it does ring true. Sayles himself plays this very bizarre right-wing preacher….

I don’t get the rating system. A very, very tense fine drama from 2008 about two poor mothers: one white with an absent husband whose gambling has bankrupted the family in the impoverished part of Upstate New York, the other, a Mohawk widow who smuggles aliens into the US via the frozen river that has…

Hard to imagine, but I’ve never seen this 1952 classic of the Cold War western genre. Gary Cooper, Grace Kelley, Lloyd Bridges, and Henry Morgan, among others, tell the story of the sheriff (GC) who’s about to leave it all and go off with his new Quaker bride (GK) when he hears the baddest man…

I don’t normally enjoy stories about those elite groups of socialites, heirs, and heiresses. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. But this look inside the life of one set of that elite group won me over. Set in the first couple of years of WWII, Meryl Streep plays the title character, Madame FFJ,…

Hard to say one enjoyed this disturbing look at the last day of Oscar Grant, III, who was killed at Fruitvale Station in Oakland, CA on New Year’s Eve by a BART transit cop. Well acted by Michael B Jordan, he’s portrayed as truly resolving to turn his life around. It’s been bumpy. His mother,…

I don’t normally like horror films but this one’s an exception. Written and directed by Jordan Peele, it has enough humor to make this work. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose (Allison Williams) are going to her house for a weekend to meet her parents. He’s a Black photographer and she’s a white woman. What does…

Hard to say we enjoyed this disturbing Palestinian feature about resistance by three young men on the West Bank. Omar is a baker and he and two friends decide to take up arms against the occupying Israeli forces with life-altering consequences. Entirely from the Palestinian side, it paints a picture of Israeli brutality but not…

Hedge-fund oddity, Michael

Give Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey, Chaz Palmentierri, Gary Shandling, Anna Paquin, and Meg Ryan a tight David Rabe script and watch them run. Paquin alone is too young and just not mature/sexual enough to pull it off, but it is a really interesting dark/humorous piece about LA movie coke-heads and their utter inability to sustain…

Good, depressing dark teen comedy[?] about a geeky jr high girl’s efforts to get by and be loved. Strong performances in this, with an over-the-top Jewish family as foil. Just like my days in grades 5-10. Very painful to watch

Good and strange film about the community of inbred Irish Gypsies (Romany) who prey on the greedy, gullible and unscrupulous who are always hunting for the deal that’s too good to be true. Nicely acted, strange bit on these North Carolina folk with their own language, who marry women age 12 and up, and who…

Good, if a tad long, mob movie with Johnnie Depp as an undercover FBI guy, and a great job by Al Pacino as a dumb mobster. Good film

Good and well meaning, if predictable, Ken Loach film about janitors organizing a union in LA It’s a good palliative to these anti-union, anti-immigrant, anti-worker times, but in the end, its still pretty tame. Nicely acted and fun. Postscript:. Funny, I used this movie in my Labor History class in 2002 and it evoked incredibly…

Good, if not entirely accurate, presentation of the life of David Helfgott, the schizophrenic Australian pianist. Well played and acted, it suggests his illness is due to his father’s cruelty, not chemical imbalance. Interesting, though, and moving in its way.

Good but not great film by the guy who did “Clerks” about a relationship between three cartoonists. The focus is the one between the straight guy and the lesbian cartoonist. Funny and very quick, especially through the first 2/3 but then becomes a bit slow. I found his unwillingness to accept her racy past unrealistic…

Good, if overblown drama about a brilliant working-class man who is a janitor at MIT. Well acted, but I found myself getting angry at the academia-bashing. Minnie Driver is wasted. Robin Williams as working-class Irish shrink is a caricature as are most of the academics. Touts working-class machismo as real masculinity, if warped by violence….