Village Vidiot

Interesting if predictable and sort of amateurish film about kids at a theater camp. The gay boys, the one straight guy, the girls (some pretty, some not, but all very talented), the Sondheim groupies fawning over the great man. Vicious sabotaging of one girl against another, the fat black girl with the heavenly voice whose…

Interesting documentary about Ed Wood, with lots of fascinating interviews and tape of him and his work. Yikes, what a goof

Interesting atmospheric set of stories of lost love and street life, cops, and lovers in Hong Kong. Directed by Wong Kar-Wai, with the attitude of the French New Wave and a touch of film noir. Very enigmatic, and a tad funny, but I essentially think the thing is overrated and Quentin Tarrantino’s intro and outro…

Interesting and, in some places, very funny movie about a group of liberal/progressive grad students who invite conservatives over and, if they can’t change their minds over dinner, kill them. A fun look at the dynamics of political rectitude.

Interesting and intense look at the James Jones novel from Terrence Malick. It stars Sean Penn, Elias Koteas (in a stellar piece of acting—very moving), Woody Harrelson, Nick Nolte, and even George Clooney and John Travolta have somewhat pointless cameos. They bring no star power to them and are a little distracting. When the film…

Interesting and enjoyable drama about a woman, her teenage son, and her mother as they try to cope with the death of the woman’s husband after a long, drawn-out disease. Starring Emma Thompson and her real life mother. Wonderful work by all the supporting actors and actresses, including a pair of older, funeral groupie women,…

Intense look at the power of the energy of a young woman whose will can change the script and whose voice can shatter glass and fix roulette wheels. Lola’s boyfriend Manni is up to his eyeballs in it when he loses a bag of cash intended for a very bad man. Scripts are played out…

In part 3 of Millenium, Larson’s look at the Swedish right-wing finally comes up to surface after becoming less central to the mission in v2 The ‘secret,’ the arrogant, the anti-democratic becomes palpable played on Lisbeth’s personal history (as they were in the look at fascism and its aftermath in v1) and Blomqvist’s efforts to…

In contrast to most folk, I didn’t enjoy this one, a distaste only exacerbated by seeing that S Mnuchin (our glorious Secretary of the Treasury) was its executive producer. I know I’m in an extreme minority here regarding the film, which pleased summer audiences (including Bronwen). I don’t do gods well. I thought the acting…

Ice-T opens up his phone directory and calls the rappers he knows to talk about their art. Some are just them stroking one another’s egos, some are genuinely substantial. Not all are articulate about their craft. That’s part of the point. There are few women in the mix, and except for Eminem, this is an…

I’ve long heard good things about this small Chinese film directed by Jianqi Huo, and they’re all right. With their talk of the special zones, it seems set in the early 1980s, although American pop on the radio seems incongruous for that moment. The father is a rural postman who walks a difficult three-day route…

I’ve had a copy of this 2006 Spike Lee film for years and decided to finally watch it. In their fourth shoot together, Lee has Denzel Washington as a NYC police detective hostage negotiator who is called in to resolve a hostage crisis/robbery at a bank. We know it’s a robbery from scene one when…

I’ve been waiting to see this Guillermo Del Toro monster movie since it came out to excellent reviews. Giant subterranean, inter-dimensional creatures (Kaiju) are attacking the world from within, destroying cities They are fought by new robots, Jaegers, piloted by two people, linked to one another and the machines mentally. The climactic battle requires that…

I’ve been sick and haven’t seen much. Trouble staying awake to watch. Yuck. We enjoyed this silly Abba-fest with Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan and a cast of singing Greeks and the adults in the room laughed a lot!. Fun for all although our daughter hated us singing along with everyone. Meryl looks old enough…

I’m not usually a fan of films about the trauma of being an upper-middle class white kid in America, but this film works on lots of levels and is worth viewing. Written and directed by Stephen Chbosky, who also wrote the novel it’s based on, the film follows Charlie (Logan Lerman), a freshman in high…

I’m not someone who follows reality TV or any of the gossip mags. But who doesn’t know the story?. Well, according to this brutal comic/drama directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Steven Rogers, almost all of us. Australian Margot Robbie is a more beautiful and feminine Harding (and yes, that matters) yet she plays…

I’ll try to remember what we’ve seen and get it down. A slow summer, in any event, partly due to a good trip out to California. Still, and it embarrasses me to say it, I can’t remember what I saw in June!. This is not good

I’d never seen this minor Hitchcock dark comedy. Excellent cast of Hollywood character actors and new faces!. Capt Albert Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) is out hunting rabbits and stumbles on a dead man he fears he’s accidentally shot. Almost everyone in town comes by: a spinster, Miss Ivy Gravley,. Arnie, a young boy (Jerry Mathers not…

I wish

I went to this one in Westfield, NJ along with B- and my sister Erica. B- really liked it, Erica disliked it enormously, and I found it weak but less toxic than I’d expected. It starts very slowly, to say the least, and really isn’t funny for quite a while. It has nothing to do…

I watched this slight teen comedy about a total nerd with an amazingly dysfunctional family in Idaho and enjoyed it despite myself. Its ending is really well done. I loved the boy and girl geeks What’s lovely about the thing is that they truly remain geeks and you do understand why other people find them…

I was underwhelmed by this sentimental, rather formulaic Steven Spielberg-directed and produced very big film. Not a bad movie, just rather more traditional than I enjoy. Some of shots seemed like homages to “Gone With the Wind”. A tenant family spends too much on a special horse that is truly special. He saves the farm…

I was underwhelmed by this mediocre Merryl Streep/Alex Baldwin/Steve Martin vehicle about Jane Adler (Streep) who surreptitiously reunites with her lawyer ex (Baldwin) at her son’s graduation and after. She’s been alone and crafted a rich and amazing life on her own. Into her life comes Steve Martin’s Adam, the architect redoing her amazing California…

I was somewhat underwhelmed by this. small, multiple award winning fairy tale from Israel about an Egyptian band’s visit gone awry, although I think Bronwen liked it more than I did. I would have liked a bit more edge. Still there are parts to enjoy. The band arrives and takes the wrong bus, arriving in…

I was somewhat disappointed in this Don Cheadle look at the great trumpeter during a period of absolute desolation when he couldn’t produce. His music dissolved. Co-starring Emayatzy Corineladi as Francis Taylor, the dancer he loved and damaged and Ewan McGregor as a free-lance journalist seeking to learn what’s happened to the great man, the…