Movie Reviews
Calvary
Brendan Gleeson is one of my favorite actors. He is not a marquee name and probably never will be, but he’s a long way from just a character actor. He has achieved star billing in several really good smaller movies, such as The Guard and In Bruges. For a certain kind of role—smart, imperturbable, confident—you just can’t do any ... Read more »
Magic in the Moonlight
(Contains spoilers) Woody Allen has his genius days, and his mediocre days. This is one of the latter. It’s an amusing romantic trifle.
It is 1928, and Colin Firth is a famous stage magician who goes to the home of a fabulously rich family in the south of France, intent on exposing a young woman who claims to be a psychic. Right away we think of Houdini. As if we didn’t have enough ... Read more »
Pulgasari
One of the weirdest movies ever made, and not just because it is terminally awful. The story behind it is almost unbelievable. You find yourself thinking, “Who could make up shit like this?” Well, how about the human carcinoma, little fat-faced Kim Jong-un? You think The Interview was the first time North Korea got into the movie business? Think again. He is just ... Read more »
Die Hard, Live Free or
Nothing you see here regarding computers and/or telecommunications is real, it’s all bullshit. Everything you see concerning the ability of a human body to recover, or even survive, after impacting the ground at 90 miles per hour or being hit by a speeding car or jumping out of a car travelling at 70 miles per hour is bullshit. (Did you know that landing on the roof of a car after falling ... Read more »
A Good Day to Die Hard
A very sad and totally unsuccessful attempt to wring the last drops of blood from the filthy used bandages of the previous four Die Hard movies. Every stupid cliché from every bad action movie you have ever seen is here, and worse than ever. Human skin that is impervious to glass, or impact, or anything else. Thousands and thousands of bullets that are always a ... Read more »
Die Hard, A Good Day to
A very sad and totally unsuccessful attempt to wring the last drops of blood from the filthy used bandages of the previous four Die Hard movies. Every stupid cliché from every bad action movie you have ever seen is here, and worse than ever. Human skin that is impervious to glass, or impact, or anything else. Thousands and thousands of bullets that are always a ... Read more »
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Once more Andy Serkis delivers a stellar performance while wearing a motion capture suit. My goodness, haven’t we come a long, long way from the days of Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, and Maurice Evans in barely mobile rubber masks? These apes achieve total realism. If you didn’t know how it was done you would be convinced that they were actually there, on the set, and there were dozens and ... Read more »
Benny and Joon
Here is a film about someone with a mental illness that is a little more honest than two we have seen recently, those being Silver Linings Playbook and King of California. Both those movies annoyed me, as I was expected to somehow go along with the fanatical self-centeredness of the main characters. Here, Mary Stuart Masterson is a ... Read more »
Predestination
We were watching the previews on a DVD. I wasn’t paying much attention, and then I heard these words: “I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?” I zeroed in on the TV like a coonhound catching the scent of that goddam Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy. This is one of the most famous lines from one of the most famous short stories in ... Read more »
Dodsworth
(Contains spoilers) Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton are a married couple from the small town of Zenith somewhere in the Midwest. He has a big car manufacturing company. They each have a lot of money. He retires, and she wants to see the world. He doesn’t, but he is used to catering to her. They leave on the Queen Mary and already the trouble begins. David Niven ... Read more »