Village Vidiot

Good, if a tad long, mob movie with Johnnie Depp as an undercover FBI guy, and a great job by Al Pacino as a dumb mobster. Good film

Good, depressing dark teen comedy[?] about a geeky jr high girl’s efforts to get by and be loved. Strong performances in this, with an over-the-top Jewish family as foil. Just like my days in grades 5-10. Very painful to watch

Good work by the guy who plays the bouncer, Demi Moore’s great body, and Burt Reynolds having a good time as a sleazy senator can’t save this absolute turkey. She does have a great body though

Good western about Wild Bill Hitchcock. Well-acted, interesting script

Good piece on the death penalty with Susan Sarrandan and Sean Penn. The latter does an intense, fine job. Directed by Tim Robbins. Not great, but worth seeing, nonetheless. About the nun involved with the prisoner and his coming to redemption. I miss the wilder Sarrandan. She’s grown sooooooooo sincere. Bring back “Bull Durham” and…

Good monologue by the man who brought you “Swimming to Cambodia” and “Monster in a Box”. Interesting and funny/scary bit about his failing vision in his left eye and his efforts to find a cure. Everything from surgery to psychic surgery to sweathouses. Very interesting

Good if weird Jim Jarmusch film about an accountant named William Blake from Cleveland who gets caught up in trouble and violence in the old west. Great first half, but a tad long. Still, see it. Fine Neil Young soundtrack

Good German film that chronicles the story and lives of the Comedian Harmonists from 1927-1934. Shows the impact of anti-Semitism on this popular, jazz-influenced singing group and German society. Though popular enough to even have some leading Nazis as fans, they did not get the real point of fascism until it was too late Well…

Good flick based on the book Breaking the House about MIT students who, guided by a manipulative professor (Kevin Spacey) set out to win big counting cards in Vegas. I watched this one with my daughter and it’s pretty gripping and sort of violent in parts, but exciting nonetheless. How accurate?. I don’t know. I…

Good film with Kate Winslet starring in the role of Hannah Schmitz, an ex-SS concentration camp guard who has an affair with an adolescent (very well-played by David Kross) in post-war Germany. Ralph Fiennes is excellent as the boy-become-man as he reconsiders his life and love and becomes the reader. A good film that forces…

Good film from Mike Mills looking at the struggles of 38-yo Oliver (Ewen McGregor) a graphic artist who has always had problems establishing a successful relationship. He learns his widowed father (Christopher Plummer) is gay, has taken a young lover, and is dying of cancer, although he is living with more passion than he ever…

Good documentary about the Fox Cable News network. A serious attack on that reactionary bastion. Worth seeing

Good but very weird, early (1988) Atom Etgoyan film about a young woman who works in a hotel as a maid obsessed with a coworker, a young male actor who has yet to get a speaking part and, instead, has only done work as a silent extra. The film is odd, dispassionate in some ways…

Good but sentimental English. political flick about coal pit shutdowns in the Tory era of John Major. Well acted male weepie, (I’d rate it three red hankies), but lots of fun about a British coal town workers’ brass band and the struggle to resist a shutdown of the pit. A comic drama about the social…

Good but not great film by the guy who did “Clerks” about a relationship between three cartoonists. The focus is the one between the straight guy and the lesbian cartoonist. Funny and very quick, especially through the first 2/3 but then becomes a bit slow. I found his unwillingness to accept her racy past unrealistic…

Good and well meaning, if predictable, Ken Loach film about janitors organizing a union in LA It’s a good palliative to these anti-union, anti-immigrant, anti-worker times, but in the end, its still pretty tame. Nicely acted and fun. Postscript:. Funny, I used this movie in my Labor History class in 2002 and it evoked incredibly…

Good and strange film about the community of inbred Irish Gypsies (Romany) who prey on the greedy, gullible and unscrupulous who are always hunting for the deal that’s too good to be true. Nicely acted, strange bit on these North Carolina folk with their own language, who marry women age 12 and up, and who…

Give Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey, Chaz Palmentierri, Gary Shandling, Anna Paquin, and Meg Ryan a tight David Rabe script and watch them run. Paquin alone is too young and just not mature/sexual enough to pull it off, but it is a really interesting dark/humorous piece about LA movie coke-heads and their utter inability to sustain…

German documentary screened for Jewish Film Festival. Recounts the memories and feelings of German and Jewish women from Ulm, Germany, who get back together for the first time since WWII. Slow, 1 ½ hour film, it is interesting throughout, but drifts a great deal. No real climax except to find out that the leaders of…

George Clooney stars in this well done crime story about a lawyer whose primary job is to clean up the messes made by clients and others in the firm. He’s their “janitor”. Arthur Eadins (Tom Wilkinson) has gone off his medication and, finding clear evidence of his corporate clients’ guilt in the deaths of hundreds…

Funny, well acted, creative look at a loser who becomes the hit of a 24/7 cable show, his life. Manipulated and real. Very funny. Nice work by Matthew McConaghy, Woody Harrellson, Cameron Diaz and lots of others. Check it out

Funny, very French comedy about a knight and his peasant servant who travel in time and by accident, wind up in our present. Quite crude and funny. The peasant’s response is really quite rich. Very much the Sancho Panza without a silly Don Quixote. Not hysterical, but worth watching. Subtitles

Funny, sly movie about a small-town Midwestern theater company doing a history of their town as a tribute. A really great look at their connection to the theater as an institution, and what it means in their lives. Fine stuff on the town’s refusal to accept and acknowledge their director’s gayness. Wonderful bits with Fred…

Funny, offensive, dumb film in which Woody Harrelson plays a failed bowler and Randy Quaid plays an Amish bowler superstar. Bill Murray is great as the villain. Thank goodness it’s still ok to make fun of people with hooks and the Amish. The latter don’t go to movies

Funny scary Korean monster movie When American scientists force Korean scientists to throw chemicals into the river, bad things happen. A well done monster movie that’s worth watching. Sad stuff with the death of a child. Scary monster, but officials from both the US and Korea are the foils in this one. Bureaucracy is death…