Category: Film Reviews

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…

B4 and I watched this Steve Correll/Anne Hathaway (Smart/99) vehicle reframing the silly TV show of the 1960s. that was the logical extreme of the Bond/Secret Agent/I Spy/Man from UNCLE cycle. Correll’s fun, but too old by far for Hathaway. The Rock plays the superagent all aspire to be and bed. It’s not as bad…

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

A very traditional sports-is-politics-brings-nation-together flick from Clint Eastwood. It stars Matt Damon (ok) and Morgan Freeman (who’s up for an Oscar tonight) as the captain of S Africa’s rugby team and Nelson Mandela (guess who plays which role?) Freeman is very impressive as the saintly NM who sees what others can’t and is willing to…

Anglo-American wizardry in a JK Rowling. prequel to the Potter cycle. This one’s set in NYC, a truly backward, morally loose and up-tight and corrupt place in the 1920s, where Newt (Eddie Redmayne) a wizard explorer arrives with a set of illegal fantastic beasts in his valise and all hell breaks loose. It’s clear why…

A very well-crafted film that only occasionally

Anita Hill’s story and the battle over Clarence Thomas’s nomination are brought to light in this 2013 documentary by Frieda Mock. It examines the impact of Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment and their long-term effect on her and the issue more broadly. I was disappointed that I didn’t learn very much new from the film,…

A well-done story of conjoined twins and their eventual separation. The death of one. The hooker who cares. Most of the acting is good, although the dialogue becomes quite stilted in parts.

Another children’s story based on the book, but oh so much more interesting and better done. Rather painful sometimes, but the happy ending is worth the wait (although I am not a fan at all of Rosie O’Donnell and don’t like her work here either). Unfortunately, there are parts of the book that are ‘implied’…

A wonderful neo-realist film from Majid Majidi, the Iranian who also did “The Color of Paradise”. This is a superb and sad film about a young man, Lateef, and the construction site he works on. Afghan refugees are used and abused as cheap and illegal workers at the site. When one is injured, his daughter…

Another con/heist flick with Cooney and the gang, including Julia (well, not intentionally at first). It’s ok until it just becomes too cute about her looking like Julia Roberts. Fun in parts and worth watching just to see the gang work together again, including Reiner, Pitt, Roberts, along with Catherine Zeta Jones, but nowhere near…

A wonderful set of character studies that makes the alternative very normal and

Another film from Alejandro In~a’ritu (it really doesn’t look like that), writer/director of “21 Grams” and “Amores Perros”. Uxbal (Antonio Banderas), is a man living on the edges of criminality and the trade in illegal workers. He’s the connection for African and Chinese laborers-exploiters in Barcelona. He cares as a single parent for his two…