Village Vidiot

Meryl Streep (Oscar nomination) and Tom Hanks star as Katherine Grahame and Ben Bradlee in this look at her coming into her own as the Post’s publisher in the battle over the Pentagon Papers in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated history. She’s excellent, he’s ok, if a bit theatrically gruff. Bradlee is also played as a bit…

Merrill Streep and Stanley Tucci shine in this story of Julia Child and Julie Powell (Amy Adams) who works her way through Julia’s cookbook to find salvation. I couldn’t connect with Adams’s character but Streep and Tucci (who’ve worked together before) have real chemistry. See it if only for them. Powell’s narcissism bored me. By…

Maybe it was just the small screen and the fact that it was on a plane, but I was less impressed with this sequel that featured the usual cast of playful mammoths, sloths, and saber-toothed tigers. The work was funny but just lacked the sparkle of the original

Marvelous film in Tamil about a woman suicide bomber and her decisions around whether she should kill herself while taking out a VIP. Is it Sri Lanka or India?. It doesn’t matter really. It’s a fine film that also looks at the isolation of revolutionaries from their emotions and their own culture. Very good Distributed…

Mark Whalberg stars as a composite of many Boston police officers (Irish to the core) when the Patriots’ Day Marathon bombing took three lives. Other actors play real people, the police Commissioner, Governor Deval Patrick, the young man who the bombers carjack, the bombers and the wife of the elder brother, the MIT cop they…

Margaret Cho standup. Explicit, fun, and in your face sexual stuff from this talented, large, bi, Korean comedienne

Mamet’s play done well by Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz with fine work by Sean Nelson as the boy, Bob. Losers and paranoia reign. But you have to like Mamet to like the film. It really is the play brought to the screen and as with all Mamet, the lines reign supreme.

Magical image of the red balloon follows a young boy and his new Chinese film-student nanny in Paris and the balloon is a goal for them both. It brings the young woman to Paris and probably brings her to the young boy. His mother (Juliette Binoche), self-absorbed, overworked, plagued by her problems with men (she…

Lovely, touching, thoughtful and fun film about a Japanese businessman who becomes obsessed with a ballroom dance instructor and takes lessons to be near her. Dance liberates him. Wonderful commentary about repressive aspects of Japanese society, and also about attempts to be like others. Lots of fun. About the physical, cultural, spiritual aspects of dance….

Lovely French comic drama about a six- year old boy and his family as they try to/have to deal with his understanding of himself as a little girl. A child transsexual Lots of fun stuff about French culture, life, sexuality, neighborhoods. Many a dark moment and tone to the piece, but a fun film. Both…

Loved watching this wonderfully perverse Hitchcock piece about the ambiguities of voyeurism. Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Raymond Burr, are all excellent. Fascinating photography. It’s a fun film in all its ways as the injured photographer spies on his neighbors and uncovers a murder. But it’s the ambivalence of the whole thing that really makes it…

Little Bronwen and her friend Katherine liked this story of a fish world at the bottom of a reef with its shark mobster rulers and its timid fish and crustaceans. The adults in the room didn’t like it. It’s nowhere near as good as “Finding Nemo”. The hero, Will Smith’s Oscar, works at a whale…

Light embarrassing sex comedy about 4 male high school seniors who make a pact to lose their virginity before they graduate. It’s got enough truth to make me feel uncomfortable but is only playful, not nasty. If this is the way kids really are these days, then damn, I’m in trouble as my daughter gets…

Light comedy of a mob boss (Robert De Niro) who comes unglued as a Mafia war is about to begin and needs the services of a shrink (Billy Crystal). The two men psychoanalyze one another and help each other to grow in a set of all too predictable episodes capped by the grand catharsis as…

Light and trivial film about a 30-something who still lives at home with his parents Matthew McConaughey is good, Sarah Jessica Parker is ok. Cathy Blake and Terry Bradshaw steal the show as the parents who hire Parker to seduce their son and get him out of the house. The premise is rather crazy and…

Lesser John Waters film about an amateur shutterbug in Baltimore who becomes an art world discovery in NY when a gallery agent sees his work. Some nice comic bits on occasion, but rather flat effort at over the top humor that doesn’t make it there. Lily Taylor is good as the agent and Christina Ricci…

Leonardo DiCaprio is a thief specializing in penetrating people’s dreams to steal secrets. He is offered a chance to finally reunite with his family after many years, he takes it and plots a special caper, that of implanting a thought in a ‘mark’s’ mind. The dreams go into other dreams as they layer down to…

Kenneth Branagh wrote and directed this ensemble piece about a very odd production of Hamlet done in the English countryside at Midwinter. Lots of fun although it gets sentimental about ½-2/3 of the way through. A pity, because otherwise it’s quite witty and quick. A great bit on auditions

Kate and Geoff Mercer (Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtney–she’s incredible and he’s a pleasure to watch as always), are celebrating their 45th anniversary with a grand party as he was sick for their 40th. He receives a letter, however, that informs him that the body of his previous lover from before he met Kate has…

Julia Louise Dreyfus, James Gandolfini, Catherine Keener and Toni Collette star in this lovely little Nicole Holofcener (writer/director) adult romantic comedy. Dreyfus plays Eva, a divorced masseuse, who meets Albert (wonderfully and sensitively played by Gandolfini), a divorced TV historian/archivist and his ex, Marianne (Keener), a narcissistic poet at a party She starts to see…

Judy Davis, Sam Neill, Geoffry Rush, and F Murray Abraham in a wonderfully bizarre Australian film about an Aussie commie woman’s crush and one-night stand with Joe Stalin. Her son becomes an organizer for the policeman’s union. Very funny, weird, great soundtrack, Abraham in a farcical turn as Uncle Joe. No American would ever make…

Jon Stewart wrote and directed this story of Mazier Bahari’s (well-played by Gael Garcia Bernal–Bronwen has a crush on him–in some excellent cross-cultural casting) imprisonment for espionage in Iran based on the latter’s memoir, Then They Came for Me. An Iranian-Canadian filmmaker and journalist working for Newsweek,. Bahari was covering the 2009 Iranian presidential election,…

Johnny Depp again, this time as a voiceover in this short (77 minutes) macabre, funny, and perverse look at life, love, and death. Interesting, Bronwen and I both liked it, enjoyed the music (Danny Elfin) and liked the romantic plot, but neither little Bronwen nor her friend Katherine liked it. The voices are fun. But…

John Woo’s excellent homage to American and French gangster and action film makers, including Scorcese and Peckinpaugh. Based in part on a Japanese Yakuza film, this balletic bit of Hong Kong triad cinema follows the dance between an assassin (Chow Yun Fat) and a cop (Danny Lee) as the former tries to get out of…

John Travolta, Gene Hackman, and lots of other stars strut and preen in this filming of an excellent Elmore Leonard novel. I read the book and enjoyed it more, but don’t let that stop you from enjoying the film