Movie Reviews

Animal Kingdom

(Australia, 2010)

One of the bleaker films you would do well to avoid, unless you really dig this sort of thing. It got rave reviews, and I guess it deserved them, particularly Jacki Weaver as the smiling head of a criminal family of people I’d rather jump into a pit of vipers than spend any time with. A young man, her grandson, calls Granny “Smurf” Cody to calmly report that her daughter, his mother, has ... Read more »

Grumpy Old Men

(1993)

It’s only a so-so comedy, though it has its moments. The story is faintly ridiculous, with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon as neighbors who hate each other, play sophomoric tricks on each other, and get into a competition to see who can nail the beautiful, free-spirited new neighbor, Ann-Margret. Jack was 68, Walter was 73, and Ann Hyphen was 52. Conceivable, I guess, but hardly likely. But ... Read more »

Chocolat

(UK, USA, 2000)

The film is in English and was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. It is one of those films that is pure magic. The lovely and fascinating Juliette Binoche comes to a small French village in 1959 with her young daughter and they open a chocolate shop. It is Lent, and everyone is supposed to be denying themselves any pleasure. This is rigidly enforced by the mayor, Alfred Molina, a ... Read more »

The Monuments Men

(2014)

Most of the reviews pointed out how old-fashioned this one is, and I can’t disagree. It has no impossible stunts or bloodbaths, which is cool, because the unit this story is based on operated mostly within our lines. Their mission was to rescue art works that had been looted and hidden away by the Nazis. And as they retreated, they often destroyed it all, as they had already destroyed the ... Read more »

My Brilliant Career

(Australia, 1979)

Aside from a small role in a forgotten film, this was Judy Davis’s first movie. And what a movie it is. She quickly became an international star, to the point that I’ll bet a lot of people have no idea she is Australian, born in the beautiful city of Perth, where I spent a week some years ago. She is equally good at drama and comedy, and it’s about time she won an Oscar. She’s one of my ... Read more »

Lies and Alibis

(2006)

We have been watching and greatly enjoying the new television series “Fargo,” which is not a remake of the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece but a new story that is sort of “inspired” by the movie. What’s the connection here? It was written by Noah Hawley, who also scribed this one. I’ve always had a soft spot for films about con games, and this is a good one. Steve Coogan is a con man who has ... Read more »

Iron Sky

(Australia, Germany, Finland, 2012)

In 1947 Robert A. Heinlein published Rocket Ship Galileo. It was his second novel, and the first of his classic juveniles. It was also probably the weakest of his novels. The story concerned three teenaged boys and the Nobel Prize-winning uncle of one of them, who build a revolutionary new rocket and take it to the moon. (If the story sounds a little familiar, ... Read more »

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

(2013)

Another hobbit movie. What can you say? Well, the escape down the river in barrels with orcs and elves on both banks was well-done. If you like that sort of slam-bang action. The giant spiders were pretty creepy. (I read somewhere that Peter Jackson is so arachnophobic that he can’t even look at footage like that. He has to have someone else edit those scenes.) The dragon was good, voiced ... Read more »

Tenderness

(2009)

At the age of sixteen, a boy kills both his parents. But he is tried as a juvenile, and when he turns eighteen he is released. Russell Crowe is a cop who is convinced the kid wasn’t temporarily insane, he’s a born psychopath, and he sets out to get the kid. It sounds interesting, but I’m afraid it’s not. At a little more than the halfway point I was getting bored, so I looked up the plot ... Read more »

Godzilla