Category: Film Reviews

Antonio is the English and Latin teacher we all wish we had in what appears to be a sex-segregated middle school in 1966. He uses Beatles songs to reach his students and wishes he had those lyrics down more precisely. If only the Beatles included lyric sheets with their albums. He also protects his students…

B4 is at a party so we went to the movies and what a movie!. This is a violent, shocking, brilliant film from the Coen Brothers about a drug deal gone wrong in 1980, and the simple Texas hunter (Josh Brolin) who finds the millions left over from the deal. To say the least, it…

As I was telling my students, I don’t usually go to see romantic movies. If there is any romance, it’s accidental. The films I see are usually as weird as I am. “Brooklyn,” now up for an unjustified Best Picture nomination is an exception, and one I’m happy I made. Why would I say that…

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…

A superb John Sayles film about a small-town Texas sheriff searching for the truth about his father, himself, and his past. Great acting all around, wonderful writing, many plot twists. I thought it the best movie I saw that year, and indeed, in many years. One or two clunky little bits of excessive sincerity, but…

After Friday night’s talk-fest (“Before Sunset”) this is a comic-drama of silences and attitudes. Jim Jarmusch’s classic breakout film must have cost a few thousand to make but it stunned the film world in 1984. Willie (saxophonist for the Lounge Lizards John Lurie), a marginal gambling hipster in NY (and definitely not a part of…

Another painful Russell Banks look at the dark side of small-town New England/NY life. This time with Paul Schrader directing, sometimes over-directing. They sculpt an anguished look at a small town sheriff/road worker with a toothache (Nick Nolte) who is slowly falling apart as his mom dies. His daughter rejects him for her divorced mom…

A tough one to review because the presentation is quite ambiguous. Freddie Quell (Juaqine Phoenix) is an alcoholic, sailor/navy vet, suffering from war and booze induced trauma returning from WWII who can’t keep a job and is wandering aimlessly when he stumbles onto a yacht hosting Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a self-proclaimed prophet a…

Alfred Hitchcok’s classic Cold War tale of a NY ad-man, twice-divorced,. hard drinking, still tightly connected to his mother, caught up in a deadly spy game featuring American and foreign agents. Some marvelous tight comic and tense dialogue and plot twists. Featuring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau, Leo G Carroll, Mt…

Another positive review?. Gee, I don’t know if I can stand being so predictable. Both Bronwen and I really liked this rock and roll fantasy staring Jack Black. He’s the failed rocker who fakes his way into a gig in a private school to pay some debts. There he discovers that his class is full…

A very disappointing film for several reasons. One, directed by and starring Robert Redford, this 2013 offering deals with a subject I care and know about, the radical antiwar movement of the 1960s and ‘70s and Weather in particular. It posits RR (73 or 74 when the film was made) as a former Weatherman gone…

All warfare carries with it the moral dilemma of civilian death, now politely termed collateral damage. Drone warfare examined in this film brings with it exceptional elements. In this film, we see some of those complexities and moral difficulties as British, Kenyan, and American team members stalk Al-Shabab militants in Kenya for capture on the…

Another year another film from Mike Leigh. This one chronicles a very happy, centered couple (Tom and Gerri-Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) over the course of a year as they work, garden together (B loved that),. and interact with family and friends who aren’t anywhere near as together or happy In particular, it follows Mary…

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