Category: Film Reviews

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…

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…

Funny comedy by Mike Judge based in part on his “Milton” shorts. Three cubicle rats working at ‘soulless inc’. Two are being fired, one promoted for no reason. Very funny stuff and the thing with the stapler is quite good. Still it feels like and is a cartoon come to life. One of Jennifer Aniston’s…

Good film with Kate Winslet starring in the role of Hannah Schmitz, an ex-SS concentration camp guard who has an affair with an adolescent (very well-played by David Kross) in post-war Germany. Ralph Fiennes is excellent as the boy-become-man as he reconsiders his life and love and becomes the reader. A good film that forces…

Good, well-acted piece written and directed by David Mamet. Features excellent ensemble work by a group of fine actors (Steve Martin in a lovely character bit, Rebecca Pigeon [Mamet’s wife], Ben Gazarra, and several other really fine bits of work). Story of industrial espionage and a big con. Like all Mamet-conceived work, this plays through…

Funny scary Korean monster movie When American scientists force Korean scientists to throw chemicals into the river, bad things happen. A well done monster movie that’s worth watching. Sad stuff with the death of a child. Scary monster, but officials from both the US and Korea are the foils in this one. Bureaucracy is death…

Good flick based on the book Breaking the House about MIT students who, guided by a manipulative professor (Kevin Spacey) set out to win big counting cards in Vegas. I watched this one with my daughter and it’s pretty gripping and sort of violent in parts, but exciting nonetheless. How accurate?. I don’t know. I…

Guess what, the third time’s not the charm. Elliot Gould’s Reuben falls into a coma and the gang (sans Roberts) set out to rescue him from the evil Al Pacino and a cougar played by Ellen Barkin. Double dealings abound. Not much of a surprise in the film but some fun for b

Funny, offensive, dumb film in which Woody Harrelson plays a failed bowler and Randy Quaid plays an Amish bowler superstar. Bill Murray is great as the villain. Thank goodness it’s still ok to make fun of people with hooks and the Amish. The latter don’t go to movies

Good German film that chronicles the story and lives of the Comedian Harmonists from 1927-1934. Shows the impact of anti-Semitism on this popular, jazz-influenced singing group and German society. Though popular enough to even have some leading Nazis as fans, they did not get the real point of fascism until it was too late Well…