Category: Film Reviews

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

An ok if overly long piece about Marine snipers during the first Gulf War. Craziness and boredom, lack of meaning, false patriotism figure large, along with ill-health, depression and lack of meaning. No one kills anyone directly. Based on one man’s story.

A very rough look at the hunt and killing of Bin Laden. It’s about Maya (Jessica Chastain) who hunts OBL for 10 years. Issues of bureaucratic lassitude abound, but the first half hour of torture has sparked a huge debate because the film states that a key clue is provided by torture in the early…

Andy’s on his way to college now, and where does that leave his toys?. In the attic?. Sent to a daycare center where they are abused and tortured by true little ones?. And how can they make this right?. A very nice, loving, funny and playful look at meaning and aging in a disposable world…

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…

A young French priest is sent, first to Quebec City (village) and then inland to a mission to the Hurons. His journey with his Algonquin paddlers and guides, his travail, and his faith all run up against the cruelty of the cultures he visits, their mutual hatred, their openness to sexuality, and his own obstinate…

Another interesting film from Mike Leigh although I have my criticisms. This one looks at the sad and emotionally distanced life of a group of English working-class families. Indeed, my big criticism is that it is so bleak that it’s impossible to imagine people living through this without blowing their brains out. The women are…

After a horrible week that included two police killings of unarmed African-American men and the horrific assassination of five Dallas police, we were not in the mood for a heavy and painful film. Rather, we consciously chose a pleasant trifle of a fairy tale, a sweet and kind story of a group of Brit retirees…

Another kid’s flick from Nick. Not the best, but interesting about urban development. Silly in the extreme, but so what?.

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…