Category: Film Reviews

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

Helen Mirren (be still my heart) is wonderful as QEII during the Princess Di death march in 1997. Who knew Blair saved the monarchy (as his wife says, “all you Labour MPs wind up kissing the Royals’ arses”). What an interesting film. The real T Blair swings both ways, sleeping with both Bush and the…

Hugh Grant stars in this good and very interesting look at a man without a life. He doesn’t want one. He lives off his deceased father’s income from a song written decades before. He goes from woman to woman. Then he discovers single women with kids and realizes they are pastures of plenty. He goes…

I actually enjoyed the first of this duo. It was fun, campy, silly, well-meaning, and largely inoffensive. Reese Witherspoon is a fun ditz, Elle Woods, who goes off to Harvard Law School to win back her disgusting frat-boy boyfriend who sees himself on the fast track. The plot is irrelevant, Witherspoon’s performance is all, and…

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…

Fun look at the abortion issue with Laura Dern and a fine cast. It suggests that both the pro and anti-abortion forces are basically the same in their attitude and tactics. Funny and horrifying in part. Dern is a great doper loser shown in all her glory. Good work by lots of folks including Burt…

Good but very weird, early (1988) Atom Etgoyan film about a young woman who works in a hotel as a maid obsessed with a coworker, a young male actor who has yet to get a speaking part and, instead, has only done work as a silent extra. The film is odd, dispassionate in some ways…

Good, if overrated and overacted film about nature and human nature, love, insects, and incest, class and caste in Victorian England.

Funded via Kickstarter, this Charles Kaufman weirdly lifelike animated piece follows Michael Stone, an analyst and popular writer on customer service (David Thewlis voice) through his day and appearance as the key speaker at a conference of customer service managers. He is, quite literally in his dreams, falling apart and that serves as the perfect…

Good documentary about the Fox Cable News network. A serious attack on that reactionary bastion. Worth seeing

Good, playful piece with fine acting by Pam Grier, Samuel L Jackson, Robert DeNiro, Michael Keaton, Bridgett Fonda. Quentin Tarrantino meets Elmore Leonard. Less scattered than Pulp Fiction. Rather like “Get Shorty” in tone but darker, edgier production. Fun. About gun runners being tracked by the feds and their use of a stewardess as bait…

Funnier than anticipated boxing movie about a Don King clone who finds another great white hope and uses him well. It’s good on race, sports, and class

Good film from Mike Mills looking at the struggles of 38-yo Oliver (Ewen McGregor) a graphic artist who has always had problems establishing a successful relationship. He learns his widowed father (Christopher Plummer) is gay, has taken a young lover, and is dying of cancer, although he is living with more passion than he ever…