Category: Film Reviews

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…

Best seen on the big screen, this is a meditation on American history and culture from director Kelley Reichart and screenwriter Jonathon Raymond (“Wendy and Lucy”). It picks up a wagon train lost mid-stream in 1845 as they struggle to make their way to Oregon. It is a moment in history where nothing is yet…

Bizarre trip into NYC by a dysfunctional LI family trying to find out if the husband (Stanley Tucci) of one daughter. is having a fling with a woman named Sandy. Very dark. Anne Meara is great as the tyrant mother. Everyone calls this a comedy, and it is funny, but it is very painful. Parker…

Bizarre, surreal Greek fantasy of a family isolated in a compound. The family as fascist, patriarchal authoritarian model and what happens when the world outside begins to intrude. Very brutal, weirdly comical in points, and very disturbing. Sexual but utterly flat and unemotional in its sexuality. A new vocabulary to mask meaning. Bark like a…

Blech. Don’t bother. Except for Leslie Jones as Patty, who got the tone right, this was a serious waste of comedic talent for the three other women starring in the film as well as my time

Bobby (Ben Affleck) is a 160 k/yr hot-shot 36-yo salesman for GTX Corp in their ships division when he and 5,000 other workers are laid off when the division is closed to improve the Co’s bottom line. His sales boss, Gene (Chris Cooper), follows shortly thereafter and the layoffs waged by the corp head (Craig…

Boring film that refuses to take risks with fantasy and plotline about an aspiring opera singer who flees the alter in Venezuela and runs to Paris. She lives with other Latinos, and makes her way in the city. Could have been so much more. Subtitled

Both Bronwen and I enjoyed this very nice Italian romantic comedy (subtitled) about a married woman finding herself in the big city of Venice. On a bus holiday with her ingrate family, she’s accidentally left behind at a rest area. Instead of waiting for her plumbing supply entrepreneur husband and her two teenage sons to…

Both Bronwen and I liked this film about love, parents and children, music, and passion. It is a very humane, rich, and fascinating non-linear study that follows a violin from creation during the 17th century in Italy to its latest sale at auction in Canada. The film travels, with the violin, around the globe. The…

Both Bronwen and I liked this interesting film written and directed by Tim Robbins, although I think I enjoyed it more because it hit on more stuff I know well. It compresses lots of stuff into a short historical frame, including stuff that didn’t happen at that time, but it is fiction not history. The…

Both Bronwen and I liked this interesting look at the Manchester England punk/new wave scene of the late 1976-late 1980s. Seen through the eyes of the Tony Wilson, Granada-tv interviewer, smug elitist intellectual, and rock host turned impresario (he himself minimizes his role as anything but facilitator), it chronicles the emergence of indie rock, punk…

Based on a true story and characters with an excellent mini-documentary feature attached. It’s 1984 in London and the miners are on strike as Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party move against one of the last bastions of union power in Britain with police and scabs with the goal of closing many pits. A gay…

Both Bronwen and I loved this 2003 look at characters we first saw in 1987. I didn’t like the first one that much, quite frankly, all talk and no content. Sex was there but never there. This one is much better. The leftist Remy, a failed teacher, lothario, and non-publishing American historian (yikes!) is dying…

Based on a true story. Interesting and engaging look at a rather unhappy couple and their daughter who, as Jews, have fled Germany. Jettel (a beautiful daughter of the Jewish bourgeoisie) follows Walter (a former lawyer) to Kenya where they work farming for others. She is miserable and angry at him and her lot; he…

Both Bronwen and I really enjoyed this bizarre fantasy about a geeky puppeteer who finds a passageway into JM’s brain, rents trips, and then takes over the actor. In the process he losses both his wife and the woman he is infatuated with. About control, love, gender bending, lust, art, creativity. Starring JM but mostly…

January 17, 2016, theater. Based on Michael Lewis’s book, this creative, funny, terrifying, and infuriating movie chronicles the meltdown of 2007/8 and the housing bubble, financial skullduggery, and almost universal corruption among the banks, Wall Street high flyers, the political establishment, and the financial media that led us lemmings over the cliff into crisis,…and then…

Brilliant, four-hour look at a man (Jean Paul Bellmondo) whose life parallels Jean Valjean’s life and the story by Hugo. Set during WWI-WWII period. Serious and very meaningful look at antisemitism. Excellent cast, very well written. A wonderful movie. Subtitled. See this film!

Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) is a recently retired Argentine investigator/counselor with two obsessions: a horrific rape/murder case long concluded but not resolved because of the intervention of the dictatorship, and Irene Hastings (Soldedad Villamil), his former boss (now a judge) and permanent unrequited love. He begins to write a novel about the case and it…

Best Actor, Gary. Oldman. Europe is collapsing beneath the Nazi onslaught and Britain increasingly stands alone. To build a war cabinet, Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) resigns and the Conservatives accept their black sheep, Winston Churchill, who is acceptable to Labor, although he disrespects them. The Tories – and the King (Ben Mendelsohn) – would prefer…

Best Picture Oscar for this Ben Affleck vehicle about the rescue of the 6 hostages from the Canadian ambassador’s house in Teheran in 1980, a momentary bright spot in a terrible two years. Everyone looks as they did and shines in this “so crazy it just might work” (someone actually says, “here’s where someone should…

B+ and I really enjoyed this look at a man chronicling his own last year of life, the banality of his work, his marriage, his parenting, his failed adulthood, and much more. It is a fine film, especially as a first movie, and is very well acted by Kevin Spacey, Annette Benning, Chris Cooper, and…

B3 and I both really liked this 2006 look at the Irish rebellion of 1920-21 from Ken Loach. An exciting and sometimes brutal look at the horrors of the events of that period. Torture is the name of the game in all imperialist battles. The film won Cannes’s Palm D’Or that year. Very tough to…

B3 and I liked this simple, elegant, and kind 1998 Miyazaki anime much more than b4 who felt it was pretty boring. Two young girls and their father move to the country to be closer to their mom’s hospital. The younger and older girl encounter the spirits of the forest and their old house. It’s…

B3 and I saw this lovely 1ittle 1987 film (called “Out of Rosenheim” in the somewhat longer German release) with Marianne Sachebrecht (Jasmine) and CCH Pounder (Brenda) when it first came out and it holds up very well. We wanted our daughter to see it, and our neighbor, Ron Pounder, loaned us the DVD. Two…