Movie Reviews
The World, the Flesh, and the Devil
Some sort of weird isotope (of sodium, we’re told) is released in the upper atmosphere by a nation unknown. It kills everyone it contacts, and then in five days it is spent. Harry Belafonte (for some reason I had remembered that Sidney Poitier was in the movie; I guess it was easy to confuse them, as just about the only black stars of this era) was caught in a mine collapse and it took him ... Read more »
Nick of Time
Here’s one of the dumbest thrillers I’ve ever seen. Johnny Depp is a devoted father who is hoodwinked at the Union Station in Los Angeles by Chris Walken and a female accomplice posing as cops, resulting in the kidnapping of his little daughter. Walken hands him a gun and informs him that unless he goes to the Bonaventure Hotel and kills a certain woman, they will kill his daughter. Sure ... Read more »
Jinxed!
A very minor effort from Bette Midler. She is a singer in various Nevada locations, married to an abusive gambler (Rip Torn) who has a system. One of the problems with enjoying this movie is that you have to buy into the idea that a certain player can jinx a certain dealer, who turns out to be Ken Wahl. Whenever Torn shows up at Wahl’s blackjack table he wipes him out, causing Wahl to be ... Read more »
Down the Shore
Da shore dey talkin’ about is da Joisey Shoah. Bailey (James Gandolfini) runs an almost-defunct small amusement park near the ocean. (This was actually filmed in 2008, and the park was later nearly wiped out by Hurricane Sandy.) His beloved sister has died from cancer in Paris, and the first he hears of it is the arrival of a Frenchman who married her over there. He has inherited half of ... Read more »
Larger Than Life
Bill Murray is a sleazy motivational speaker whose father dies and leaves his estate to him. This is a big surprise, because his mother told him the old man had been dead for forty years. Turns out Dad was a circus clown and about all he owned was an elephant. Now Bill is going to owe a ton of money to a sleazy lawyer unless he can get the pachyderm to California and sell her either to ... Read more »
The Hundred-Foot Journey
An Indian family is burned out of their thriving restaurant in Mumbai and relocate to Europe with the idea of opening a new restaurant. They settle in France, of all places. The patriarch is Om Puri, who is a huge star in India. (He has one of the most outstanding noses I’ve ever seen. To call it a potato would be an insult to potatoes. It is, to quote Cyrano, a rock, a peak, a cape. It is ... Read more »
Into the Woods
Yes! They nailed it! Meryl Streep replaces Bernadette Peters as the witch, Emily Blunt is the baker’s wife, Anna Kendrick is Cinderella, and Johnny Depp is the pedophile Big Bad Wolf. (Yes, a pedophile in a Disney movie!) The other names are not as familiar, but everyone can sing well.
Is there any goddam thing Meryl Streep can’t do? I knew she could sing (C&W in Read more »
Boyhood
Actually, the dates that should be in parentheses up there are (2002-2013). That’s when it was filmed. This is one of the most remarkable films ever made if only for that reason. We see the entire cast age over a twelve-year period. With the adults there’s obviously not a lot of change. With the kids … the boy, Mason (Ellar Coltrane), is six when they started filming, eighteen when they ... Read more »
Frank
Sometimes these small independent movies with a weird premise work very well, as in Lars and the Real Girl. Sometimes they don’t work at all, as in, sadly, this one.
A young man who longs to make music, but isn’t very good, joins an experimental rock group headed by a man named Frank, who wears a big, round false head 24/7. Sleeping, in the shower, eating ... Read more »
Chaplin
Richard Attenborough directed, from a script by William Goldman and William Boyd and Bryan Forbes. While Dickie A. was a competent director, even won the Oscar for Gandhi, I don’t think anyone ever described his work as anything much more elevated than that. Workmanlike. Gets the job done. There’s not anything fundamentally wrong with that—not everyone can be a ... Read more »