Category: Film Reviews

Everyone I know loved this biopic about Stephen Hawking, physicist and survivor of ALS. It’s too deferential for my taste but is really about his personal life both with his first wife and with himself. It is, after all, based on her book. Nicely acted by the principals, with Eddie Redmayne (Hawking, Oscar) doing a…

Excellent, brutal film by Gary Oldham about London working class/lumpen thugs and family life. Fine look at gender relations. Very rough stuff, but worth the struggle. The dialogue is half. “cunt” and much of it is very hard to understand (just a rough accent).

Excellent and underrated Ken Loach film about the Spanish Civil War. Like Homage to Catalonia in its political views and plotline, it’s great on showing popular democracy but may be unfair to those who believed in the CP. See this film!

Excellent, depressing film about a reclusive yet brilliant photographer played by Ally Sheedy (her first film in a decade) and a young and determined film journal assistant editor with a passion to rise quickly. Very heroin-laced, drugged out pace of life, NY art scene, bi-sexually oriented film. See this one!

Excellent and very intense film about 4 urban high school girls and their lives. Issues examined include rape, suicide, power, love, family, friendship, high school. Very heavy on the empowered attitude. Excellent acting with Lily Taylor doing a wonderful bit as a teen mom finishing school. See this one

Excellent and very interesting film about the graffiti artist gone gallery. Well acted look at the art scene and commercial self-promotion in the 1970s-80s. With David Bowie as Andy Warhol and Dennis Hopper as Julius Schnabel (who directed). Wonderful acting by the man who does Basquiat. See this film!

Excellent bio-flick about Miky Ward (Mark Whalberg in a solid, if not particularly complex, role), the Lowell, MA welterweight champion. Plagued by his family including a crack-head brother former contender Dickey Eklund (brilliantly played by Christian Bale), a harridan mother (an amazing turn from Melissa Leo), and a Greek chorus of what looked like seven…

Excellent conceit of a (mostly) silent movie following the fall and humbling of a dashing silent film star (Jean Dujardin) who cannot adjust to the move from silents to talkies and the beautiful ingenue (Berenice Bejo) who grabs the brass ring and rides the new medium even as she loves the fallen idol. A star…

Excellent dark comedy starring Matthew Broderick about a high school student government election. Brutally painful about the pathetic lives of teachers, the illusions of overachievers and jocks alike, and the stupidities of men generally. About a young overachieving woman, a real pain in the butt, who decides to become president of the student body. Her…

Excellent documentary interviews with all the former heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli intelligence service. Who are the enemies?. Well, certainly those who seek to destroy Israel. Who else? Well, clearly the Israeli right wing religious zealots, rabbis, racists, murderers, and expanders of the settlements. Who can’t be trusted?. Israeli politicians on both sides as…

Excellent English drama about a young novelist and former dealer who returns to the casino to earn some money at the request of his father. While there he uses his location as the stage for his novel. He also gets involved with people planning to rob the casino. A very well played psychological study with…

Excellent film by Mike Leigh about a young, adopted, black woman in England searching for her biological mother. Sensitive, touching and funny. Very well acted, and full of sharp and painful questions about love, life, secrets, lies, the past and family. See this film!.

Excellent French film about social and personal guilt. A couple start to receive surveillance videos of their house. Who is it and what’s going on?. It all ties into the husband’s experience as a spoiled young boy, and that, in turn, ties into France’s horrific past of mass murder of Algerians, and that, in turn…

Excellent Indian road movie about two young men who go down to Arizona to retrieve the remains of the father of one of them. Quite well done. Exceptional acting, nicely quirky. The odd moment

Excellent Michael Moore-like documentary feature about steroid use. Filmmaker Chris Lee uses his own family as a template. Three brothers, one a wannabe professional wrestler with delusions of success (Mad Dog Lee), the other an aspiring world-class powerlifter who seeks greatness through strength (Smelly), and himself. The first two continue to use to permit them…

Excellent movie by Al Pacino about doing Richard III. Funny, revealing about acting, and very well done. Covers a long period of time. You can see the other films he did at the same time as his appearance changes. See this film!

Errol Morris documentary biography of Stephen Hawking that places his best-selling book in the context of the author’s personal biography and his experience of immobilizing ALS. Shot on sets constructed to look like college offices. Very interesting presentation of the science. Morris, who has degrees in the History of Science and Philosophy, chose to largely…

Excellent small French film that looks at a woman who starts to work for a former judge who’s going to do his memoir. A good, small, slice of life film. Well worth seeing. Subtitled

ET with vengeance. Good special effects, but the writing is predictable. Fun work by Randy Quaid, Harvey Firestein, Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith. The rest is flat. Blacks and Jews save the world. Don’t we always?. Scary monsters

Excellent street film about drugs, chess, sex, power, class. A great script. Sean Nelson is superb as the chess prodigy and Samuel L Jackson is remarkable as his brilliant speed chess hustler failure of a dad. A fine and very rough film. See this film!

Directed by Stephen Frears, Judy Dench stars as the aging Queen Victoria to Ali Fazal’s Abdul Kareem, the Muslim clerk who, sent to deliver a gift to the Queen, stayed to become her friend, teacher and confident. Devoted to her until the day she died, he opened her to some knowledge of India and allowed…

Disappointing French farce about a boring accountant who gets fired. He gets his job back by staging a fake outing as gay, so that his condom manufacturing boss can’t fire him. It’s got a few funny bits (the sex scene between him and his supervisor in the factory is really hilarious) and, surprisingly, Gerard Depardieu,…

Dumb movie about a 12-step junkie, Stewart Smalley, who saves his family from itself. Touching despite the fact that it’s stupid and not funny past the first ¼ of the film. Not worth seeing

DVD. This is one odd film. A very dark Mike Figgis comedy about an assassin, played as uncool, unsophisticated, drunken and distasteful by Pierce Brosnan who meets Greg Kinnear’s computer geek in Mexico City where the former is on a job and the latter is trying to pitch his computer work. They strike up a…

DVD. This very good historical drama is excellent at relating Adam’s virtues (his devotion to the American cause) and flaws (his arrogance, his sense of superiority and his lack of understanding of others). Paul Giomatti is excellent as Adams, Laura Linney is fine as a very real Abigail, and an excellent supporting cast fleshes this…