Movie Reviews
Gone Girl
Ben Affleck comes home one day to find his wife, Rosamund Pike, has vanished. There are a few signs of a struggle, though nothing terrible … at first. But when the police start in with their luminol and other CSI techniques, it begins to seem that a murder might have been clumsily covered up. As the days go by, more and more little things seem to point to Ben having killed his wife. Since ... Read more »
The Learning Tree
It is a sad fact that groundbreaking art often doesn’t seem all that wonderful a few decades down the line. This is because once the ground is broken, others arrive and find it possible to explore with a lot more freedom the things the pioneer had to struggle to be allowed to express at all. I think that is the case here. Gordon Parks was a photographer who wrote a semi-autobiographical ... Read more »
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries
Kerry Greenwood is an Australian writer who has so far penned twenty mystery novels about the formidable Phryne (Fry-knee) Fisher, a private detective in 1928 Melbourne. These stories and some new scripts have been made into two seasons of TV shows that Lee and I have found addictive. (I am also working my way through the novels, which are nice.)
Phryne is, some media critic said, ... Read more »
Jack Irish: Black Tide
The second of this series is just as good as the first one was. We are eagerly awaiting the DVD of the third one to arrive at the library.
Jack Irish: Bad Debts
The Australian writer Peter Temple has written four novels featuring this character, and ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) has made three of them into full-length television movies. We were alerted to them by a promo on a DVD of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (which we highly recommend).
In this first episode Jack is a sharp lawyer, and very ... Read more »
Into the Storm
I truly do believe that if a herd of rhinos came thundering down the street toward a herd of teenagers these days, most if not all of them would hold their cell phones held high, jostling each other to get the best shot. And I’m talking about the rhinos; I’m certain the teens would stand their ground and get run down.) This is how people are viewing the universe ... Read more »
Carry On Jack
This is the second Carry On movie I have seen, out of thirty-one. I might watch one or two others if they appear on TMC, but I don’t think they’re good enough to actively seek them out. This one was better than the other one, Carry On Cabby, but is still a long way from being a comedy classic.
I admit that I loved the very first scene, though. It was ... Read more »
The Prisoner of Second Avenue
Not all of Neil Simon’s plays are light-hearted romantic romps. This one was his attempt to write something dealing with a more sober subject: mental illness. Jack Lemmon is already getting stressed out by city living, the little things that add up to a constant state of frustration. Long-suffering Anne Bancroft, his wife, tries to help. Then Jack is fired from his job, and sinks deeper ... Read more »
True Confessions
The Black Dahlia murder in Los Angeles in 1947 is one of those things that, for one reason or another, will never be allowed to go dark. It’s like Jack the Ripper, or Lizzie Borden. I don’t doubt that in a hundred years there will still be fiction and non-fiction about these crimes, and several others. Lord, it was gruesome enough—Elizabeth Short was found cut in ... Read more »
The November Man
Pierce Brosnan is a CIA agent on an assignment to impersonate an American ambassador and draw the fire of an assassin so his trainee sniper, Luke Bracey, can kill the hitter. But it all goes south and a child is killed. Pierce hangs up his 00 license to kill. Five years later, he is summoned out of retirement … yes, that old story. You know that he will be ... Read more »