Movie Reviews
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
In the last decade Simon Pegg has become one of my favorite comic actors and writers. In addition to great comedy films like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and Paul he has done very well for himself by becoming part of the Mission Impossible and Ice Age ... Read more »
Scorpio
You know a movie is going to be pretty bad when you are distracted by the sound engineering. All the dialog is recorded at the same level, no matter where the speaker is. It was obviously all looped, but by someone who was far, far below Hollywood standards. Add to that bad acting, and a silly story, and you’ve got a mess. The only reason I can see for making this film is so Burt Lancaster ... Read more »
The Trials of Oscar Wilde
If there was a contest to determine the wittiest man in the English language, I think Oscar Wilde would at least have his name on the final ballot. The story of his life was a terrible tragedy, as forces were gathered against him that his wit could not protect him from. He realized this far too late, and it shattered him.
Peter Finch plays Wilde here, and does okay. Most of the ... Read more »
Saving Grace
Brenda Blethyn is Grace, whose husband has just jumped out of an aeroplane without a parachute. She soon finds out why. He has squandered everything they have on business deals that didn’t work out. She is now in debt for £300,000. She’s going to lose her lovely, lovely house.
But she is a fantastic gardener, raises orchids, has terrific grounds that are cared for by Craig Ferguson ... Read more »
Grand Piano
I’m sometimes a bit of a pushover when it comes to the plots of thrillers. I’ll let a lot of improbable things go by for the sake of the movement of the story. But eventually I reach my limit, and I got there about halfway through this turkey.
The set-up: Elijah Wood is the “world’s greatest pianist,” but five years ago he choked and fled the stage after messing up “the unplayable ... Read more »
Cisco Pike
My friend Kris Kristofferson looks very, very young in this, but he was actually already thirty-six, just the right age to play a musician who used to be big but now is out of fashion and scrambling to make a living dealing pot. This was his first movie. Karen Black plays his main squeeze, or “old lady” as we used to say. The great Harry Dean Stanton is his former music partner, and Gene ... Read more »
Enemy of the State
An above-average thriller of the innocent-man-on-the-run type. Will Smith unknowingly gets involved in the hunt for a videotape that shows the murder of a senator by henchmen of the CEO of a company that specializes in surveillance and does a lot of business with the NSA. He eventually hooks up with super-paranoid—and rightly so, we soon discover—Gene Hackman, who is the man who set up a ... Read more »
Cold in July
I had a real pleasant surprise during the end credits. It turns out this was based on a 1989 novel by one of my favorite authors, fellow East Texas boy Joe R. Lansdale. He is one of those writers you can absolutely rely on to never go the easy, obvious route, a man who will constantly surprise you. He can write horror, period pieces, and he has a great series starring two guys named Hap ... Read more »
Breakfast on Pluto
Made by Neil Jordan, of The Crying Game fame, it’s another gender-bending story, and it even has Stephen Rea in it. It’s based on a novel by Patrick McCabe, though it seems they changed a huge number of details. Cillian Murphy is a transgendered Irishman who has never tried to conceal her sexual identity. She sets out for London to find her mother, who abandoned ... Read more »
Earthsea
I’ve never read the Earthsea books by our friend Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s never been my sort of stuff, magical medieval stories, but having now seen how wrong I can be after reading my other friend George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (the first five published books, anyway), I think I might give them a try. The important thing with ... Read more »