Category: Film Reviews

Bad and boring Michael Moore comedy that wastes all the stars in a film about a US war against Canada designed to lift a president’s ratings. Sad that this was John Candy’s last film. Moore complains it bombed because of its powerful critique of US politics. It failed because it stinks

As you may

Based on a nasty comic stage play, “The Gods of Carnage,” Roman Polanski brings this 80-miniut translation and adaptation for the American scene to the screen, shot of course, in Paris. Two pre-adolescent boys fight in a park in Brooklyn and one knocks two teeth of the other out with a large stick. The parents…

Ashgar Farhadi’s stellar, Oscar-winning look at the result when a teacher/actor’s actress wife is assaulted in their new home Emad and Rana are both in a production of Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” (he plays Willy) and this evokes parallels with the changes in humanist Emad’s view of his life and the world around him….

Avoid this Billy Crystal/Bette Midler comedy about ‘goofy’ grandparents sent to mind their overly modern grandkids. . Even Marisa Tomei, who I adore, seems weighed down by the trite dialogue. Still, I admit I laughed a few times

Avoid this moronic and offensive piece of supposed comedy. What a waste of some talented people. Ed Asner is positively embarrassed and Renee Zellwenger should be. Chris O’Donnell is beyond salvation. Write him off. Only Hal Holbrook manages to seem even remotely worth watching. The plot concerns a young man who inherits $100 million if…

Awful, although Eugene Levy has a couple of nice moments. The rest, Steve Martin and Queen Latifah, should be embarrassed. I was

B and I really liked this Carrol Ballard directed story of a 14-yo girl, (Anna Paquin) who goes to live with her dad. (Jeff Daniels) in Canada after the death of her mom. Distraught, she adopts a clutch of goose eggs, hatches them, raises them, and then leads them to North Carolina and sanctuary, teaching…

B and I watched this longish Chinese film about young people, their lives before, during and after Tianenmen Square. Very well acted, very explicit sexually, this explores 20 years of chaos in Chinese history/culture/life. It follows a young woman, her lovers, their lives, and their affairs from their times as passionate students probing desire to…

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…

B3 and I watched this while our daughter had a sleepover. Funny, crude look at an unintended pregnancy when a YUPPY TV person becomes pregnant due to a one-night stand with a chubby Jewish slacker. It is funny. It is also very wrong, very, very unreal albeit in a forced romantically pleasing way. It is…

B4 and I watched this Michael Moore jeremiad about the American health system at home. It’s long, with some really painful truths about how awful we are and we don’t even know it or, worse yet, simply lie to ourselves that everything’s ok. Boy, I really envy the French. Our society is going down the…

A very funny, insightful, touching piece of science fantasy from a Russian/French company about a window that lets people go between. St Petersburg and Paris. Self-critical in a sly way. See this one. Subtitled

Also known as “Cria Cuervos” or “Raising Crows”. This moody,. 1974, transhistorical drama by A Suares stars Geraldine Chaplin and a set of fine actors. Looks at a young Spanish girl’s trauma around her mother’s (Chaplin) death in the 1950s from a long disease and the philandering and emotional distance of her husband. Shortly thereafter…

Anthony Weiner’s fall from lion of the liberal political establishment to punchline is chronicled in this painful look at his disastrous 2013 run for mayor of New York. Sexting scandals that reflect personal need for adulation , connection and intimacy with women, [psycho-historians will have a field day with this] lead to his resignation from…

A very funny, very well acted Woody Allen piece with a stellar job by Mira Sorvino (Oscar winning) as the hooker birth-mother of his adopted son. See this one

An accurate, overblown and over the top historical film about the Dreyfus Affair with Oliver Reed and Richard Dryfus. Very melodramatic in style. I did not like this one. Directed by Dryfus

A very good concept film with a weak ending. Sweet little Renee Zellwenger (in her first good role in ages) sees her nasty husband executed in a gangster-like hit/scalping and flips out. She imagines she is in the world of a TV soap opera and is leaving hubby for her ex-fiance, an MD on the…

An important and sad film that is well acted but not very well written. Great work by Don Cheadle as the hotelier in Rawanda who saves thousands of Tutsis, a Hutu Schnindler, but he’s already there as his wife is Tutsi. Nick Nolte as the Canadian colonel who cares and isn’t allowed to fire. Very…

A very interesting and unusual documentary about Ray Johnson, a performance artist and fine graphic artist in the NYC scene during the 50s-90s when he finally committed suicide. Bronwen knew him a bit. Even his most intimate friends and lovers really didn’t know him. He remained brilliant, eccentric, idiosyncratic and opaque throughout his life, and…

An interesting, well acted, if sometimes overly melodramatic look at the life and loves of the DePres sisters, one of whom became a ‘wife’ and the other a brilliant cellist, married Daniel Berrenboim, and died of MS Painful and sometimes overly florid with the classical music

A very quirky comedy about the impact of a new gun on a New Jersey couple. An odd, sort of off base film, that’s nonetheless interesting