Category: Film Reviews

Edward Snowden was your everyday contracted NSA security analyst. Well, sort of. Working for the NSA, he saw and participated in the most massive data mining expeditions on Americans ever undertaken. He saw what he considered to be unconstitutional invasions of privacy by the NSA and proceeded to do something about it This Oscar-winning documentary…

Delightful documentary about Bill Cunningham, the NYT fashion photographer who does both society charity affairs and the Sunday fashion on the street collage. If. “The Devil Wears Prada” is a fanciful look at the darker forces of fashion, this loving bio-doc is a study of the industry’s Peter Pan. You’ll never find anyone who enjoys,…

Effective, traditional filmmaking, this chronicles the struggle of George VI to overcome his speech impediment, a task that became all the more crucial when he followed his brother to the throne on Edward’s abdication and England goes to war. Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue, the ‘unconventional’ and uncertified speech therapist who helps him overcome enough…

Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe star in this brutal Ridley Scott look at the drug ‘business’ under Frank Lucas in NYC in the early 1970s and the honest cops led by Detective Richie Roberts who brought him and ¾ of the city’s drug cops down. This is a vicious, well written and well acted bit…

Eh. Hard to discuss something so trivial and pretentious at the same time. Mindless visuals with nonsensical story line but not unpleasant. A strange combination. Always nice to see Stan Lee in his cameo. Most viewers seem to have enjoyed this. I watched it to kill time on a plane

Despite its plot flaws, I liked this subversive Chinese film that examines the new class structure that is emerging in the new China. Bronwen did not like it. A 17-yo country lad, Gui, comes to Beijing to make his way in the new world order. He gets a job as a bicycle messenger and has…

Enormously frustrating 2008 film from Charles Kaufman, who both wrote and directed this one. It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as Caden Cotard, a sickly and hypochondriacal stage director whose life falls apart as his artist wife (Christine Keener) leaves him and takes his daughter away to a life of artistic fame and decadence in Berlin….

Directed and co-written by Richard Linklater, this is the sequel to the Vietnam film “The Last Detail” by Darryl Ponicsan, who authored both books and screenplays. It’s the story of Larry “Doc” Shepherd (Steve Carrell), a Vietnam-era Navy vet with a bigger story, who seeks out Marine friends who share a past with him and…

Eric Rana stars as Bruce Wayne with Michael Caine as Alfred the Butler and Katie Holmes as Batman’s love interest. A good and very dark movie (Caine is excellent!). This is much better than the second or third of the series. Too much Eastern cosmic mumbo-jumbo and ninja-like silliness, but it’s still a good show…

Directed and written by Juan Antonio Bardem (Javier’s uncle) this 1955 Spanish b & w neo-realist/noir fusion classic studies the despair and decadence of the mid-1950s Spanish bourgeoisie and culture. A math lecturer (very bourgeois in background) and his mistress, the wife of a powerful industrialist, hit a cyclist and leave him to die. What…

Directed by renowned documentarian Steve James with Martin Scorcese as Executive Producer (both appear throughout the film), this is a love letter to the late Roger Ebert, long-time film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, and to his wife Chaz. It was begun with their collaboration before Ebert’s death. He was already unable to eat, drink,…

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…

Bronwen and I really liked this Jonathon Demme remake of the Sinatra/Lansbury classic, and yes, we know we’re almost alone in that. This one featured Denzel Washington as the Gulf War major brainwashed by the Manchurian Corporation to make one of his soldiers, again Raymond Shaw played by Liev Schreiber, a congressman and then vice…

Columbian film about Karen who leaves her loveless marriage to Mario after 10 years and, starting at the bottom, has to make her way in the world. Her tears are those of women and are also part of the theater she must create to gain enough money to survive. She meets some good men along…

Bronwen actually liked this one more than I did, but I’m just not deeply Jedi enough anymore. Missed Ford, of course, and was saddened by Carrie Fisher’s passing in real life. Mark Hamill seemed out of sorts to me. Maybe. it was me, or maybe it was the writing. It certainly wasn’t The Force. I…

Bronwen and I watched this Felliniesque Argentine/Italian piece from the early 1990s for her class on Spanish language film and conversation. It stars Marcello Mastroianni in one of his last roles, and chronicles the tale of small village in rural Argentina (what do they do there, anyway?) A young woman whose husband has just died…

Cute Australian romantic comedy fantasy about a guy (Rhys Ifans) who sails away from his mind/soul numbing life on a chair lifted by helium filled balloons. He’s ‘deposited’ into an idyllic town full of wonderful characters where he meets the true love of his life (Miranda Otto). An open life is the only one worth…

Bronwen and Bronwen are in NYC so I took myself to the movies to see this fascinating biopic about Truman Capote and the writing of In Cold Blood. Seymour Phillip Hoffman channels the dead author. He is simply remarkable. The film is very good, if a tad long. The story of his journey west and…

Bronwen enjoyed this weak melodrama, a costume period piece about an illusionist (Edward Norton) in fin de siècle Vienna. I found myself less enamored of it. In love (of course it’s mutual) with a duchess about to be betrothed to the Crown Prince, he plots a way to free her from his clutches. The plot…

Damn, not the director’s cut I thought it was (got it from Bentley), but it was nice to see this remarkably atmospheric, tightly written chestnut again. Good work by all concerned, with a real film noirish character. Sci fi detective work. Rutger Heuer and Darryl Hannah are excellent, as are many of the supporting characters….

Bronwen and I both enjoyed this somewhat predictable Clint Eastwood-directed and star vehicle (he says it will be his last bit of acting) about a 70+ former autoworker/Korean War veteran, Walt Kowalski, whose wife has died, whose neighborhood has gone immigrant, and whose country has changed. All he has left is his mint 1972 Gran…

Bronwen liked this Japanese comedy more than I did; it really made her laugh out loud. A wimpy rental car clerk has an accident because his boss is baiting him. He runs into a car owned by a Yakuza and is forced to go to their headquarters. It explodes and he winds up going to…