Category: Film Reviews

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…

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…

DVD. Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandan, and Charlize Theron star in this well-paced Paul Haggis (dir, writer, producer) vehicle about the impact of the war on some of the American soldiers who are serving. Jones plays the retired Army MP father of a soldier sent to Iraq and damaged, along with all his comrades. Jones…

Ed Harris starred in, directed, co-wrote and produced this interesting, sort of quirky, western about a sheriff (Harris) and deputy (Vigo Mortenson—very good and not as dark as usual) for hire arriving in a town after the murder of the previous sheriff and his two deputies by the rancher, Jeremy Irons, and his men. Hell,…

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…

Darker and more interesting in some ways, this is nonetheless less satisfying than the two earlier and sweeter pieces. Certain elements don’t hang together unless you’ve read all the books (which I have) and the film is choppier and less complete that the others. Why, for example, does he conjure his father’s stage image?. In…

Bronwen and I both just tolerated this light romantic comedy with so many untenable elements in it. Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton are both ok, although I am just sick of movies about rich people in the theater/movie/music/advertising world. Don’t these folks know any normal people?. A few very funny scenes, a nude scene by…

Bronwen really hated this funny homage/satire of Vietnam War films with Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr, Nick Nolte, Matthew McConahey, and a bizarre and wonderful bit of work from Tom Cruise (who I usually hate). A film crew of imploding stars go to Viet Nam to make a film about the war. Very…

Darn, old age really sucks. Here’s our more recent viewing

Bronwen and I both liked this painful yet straightforward story of Vera Drake, a straightforward working-class woman of 1950 who, for 20 years, ‘helped girls out’ of a pregnancy out of an understanding that they did not want to have a child, or with married women, more children. It’s not hard to get, but it…

Bronwen usually hates movies like this and she only went to it with me in the theater as a ‘favor’. Imagine my surprise when we both really enjoyed this very well-written, witty, well-made, sometimes visually stunning, curious sci-fi Marvel Comic treat. Well-acted by all, Paul Rudd reprises his role as Scott Lang, Ant-Man, enduring the…

David Mamet conceit about a successful coverup of a sexual groping by the President. DeNiro and Hoffman are wonderful, but the film bored Bronwen, and I found it smug and, despite its tight 96 minutes, overly long. It breaks down, especially when Woody Harrelson makes his appearance as a moronic psychopath soon-to-be hero. But oh…

Bronwen and I both liked this sad and well written boxing movie produced and directed by Clint Eastwood. A strangely loving and kind film about a horribly violent world populated by unusual men and women. It stars Eastwood and Hillary Swenk as a boxing manager and a woman fighter. This one won the Oscar for…