Movie Reviews
Lucy
I scanned several reviews of this film, and there was quite a consensus: It’s fun to look at, and it gets pretty stupid toward the end. I would have to agree. It’s based on that hoary old bit of misinformation that “everybody knows,” that humans only use 10% of our brains. Pure bullshit. So right off the bat we’re dealing with bad science. But heck, that can be okay, just accept the ... Read more »
Enough Said
James Gandolfini’s next-to-last film. He meets Julia Louis-Dreyfus at a party. They go out together and, to her surprise, she likes this big bear of a man. She is an upper-class masseuse, going house to house to get the kinks out of her clients. One of them is Catherine Keener, who she becomes friends with. One of the things they talk about is Keener’s ex-husband from hell. Keener has ... Read more »
Something New
Race is such a bitch. Things are almost infinitely better than they were when I was growing up in Texas, but we still have such a long way to go. Good news: Every day I see bi-racial couples, and little children who would have been called mulattos, or quadroons, or even mongrels when I was young. More and more every day. Where I grew up, it would have been unthinkable, especially a black ... Read more »
Austenland
A good idea, that soon was piddled away on a script that never could bring me in, and some performances that were really pretty bad. Keri Russell is Jane, a fanatic Austen fan. She saves up and flies to old Blighty, to an improbable place where the world of Jane Austen is recreated by actors who cater to the lonely women who pay to come there. I kept waiting for something interesting to ... Read more »
Pride and Prejudice
For some reason we had a Jane Austen week recently, without really planning it. We saw The Jane Austen Book Club, which we liked, and Austenland, which we didn’t. Then this shows up on TCM, and somehow I’d never seen any of the approximately forty versions and variations of the book that have been made over the years. This is one of the ... Read more »
Wadjda
In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to drive. Well, everybody knows that (as they say in the Geico commercials). But did you know that in Saudi schools the Pythagorean Theorem is taught as being a miraculous gift from Allah? Did you know that strange men are not supposed to even hear the voices of young women? That the Koran is to be handled with a tissue, and never when a ... Read more »
Magnolia
Paul Thomas Anderson proclaims this is his favorite of the films he has made. We begin with three strange events narrated by Ricky Jay (the only man alive who could flay you alive with playing cards at twenty paces). His point is that strange coincidences do happen:
A man named Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was murdered by (maybe; they could have been set up) three men named Green, ... Read more »
A Most Wanted Man
Three things you will not get in a film based on a novel by John le Carré are epic shoot-outs with thousands of rounds expended, massive explosions that people safely run away from, and huge car chases through city streets. Lord, if there were only more films like that! But he has had amazing success, or luck, or whatever you want to call it, in having his dense, ... Read more »
Scene of the Crime
Van Johnson is a LA cop investigating the murder of another cop, who may be dirty. He had $1000 in cash on him when he was killed. Van doesn’t believe it, of course, and this being 1949, I didn’t expect he would be, either. Dirty cops was not a subject they made a lot of movies about in those days. He’s married to Arlene Dahl who, you’ll never guess … that’s right, who wants him to quit ... Read more »
Night Falls on Manhattan
Two cops, Ian Holm and James Gandolfini (two years before his big break as Tony Soprano), are staking out a place where they think Jordan Washington, Harlem’s biggest drug dealer, may be staying. Foolishly, they decide to go get him without calling for SWAT first. Jordan fires through the door with an AK or an Uzi, badly wounding Ian. Almost at once every cop in New York City (well, at ... Read more »