Movie Reviews
Titles starting with M
The Mechanic
Jason Statham is a pretty decent action hero. His face is carved out of granite, and he only favors us with the tiniest of smiles, and those infrequently. He was one of three actors that Spider Robinson and I thought might have been much better in the part of Jack Reacher, the protagonist of the terrific books by Lee Child, than pipsqueak Tom Cruise. (The other two: Vin Diesel and Dwayne ... Read more »
Mediterraneo
There’s a movie titled What Did You Do in the War, Daddy” that I like a lot. A group of G.I.s enter a small town in Italy, with instructions to take it. But the villagers are glad to see them. The Germans left town a few days ago, and they are happy to be liberated. It all turns into a drunken festival. It’s very funny.
This is sort of like that. A small ... Read more »
Medium Cool
As I write this, the second day of the RNC (the Republican National Clusterfuck) is getting under way in Cleveland. No one has been killed so far, at least not on the convention floor, but stick around. Ohio is an open carry state, and with so many angry, armed nuts about, things could get real interesting.
TCM was running a series of movies set at political conventions. We had ... Read more »
Meet the Parents/ Fockers
We had seen the first one but I didn’t remember it very well, except there was some business with a cat. So when the DVD of the second one came out we rented the first and saw it again. Funny. That genre of comedy that relies on a string of humiliating moments, which can be awful but Ben Stiller is probably the best there is at that baffled expression as if he’s been hit over the head with ... Read more »
Meet the Robinsons
Traditionally in Hollywood, if an action movie has a weakness, it is in the third act, when everything falls apart in a flurry of violence and illogic. Here we have a movie which has a really bad second act, and the reason is simple: Too many Robinsons. The movie was adapted from a book called A Day With Wilbur Robinson. If the book had ... Read more »
Megamind
It’s really a toss-up as to which interests me less, Super Heroes (SH) or Super Villains (SV). Superman and Lex Luthor. Batman and the Joker, all bore me senseless. It’s all juvenile twaddle, suitable for viewing only on a brain-dead day. (And yes, I very much do include The Dark Knight.) That’s why I value movies like The Incredibles, ... Read more »
Melinda and Melinda
(NEW REVIEW) The set-up: Four people at dinner in a trendy New York eatery. (Haven’t we been here before? Yes, we have, and with one of the same guys, Wallace Shawn, in My Dinner With Andre. Lee pointed out that the other guy even looked like Andre.) Two are dramatists, one a money-making comic writer, sort of a tubby Neil Simon, the other a respected but not nearly so successful ... Read more »
Melody Time
The penultimate of Disney’s package films, with only The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad to go. Where Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros are travelogues, I’ve found it useful to think of this one and Make Mine Music as short story collections which, I hope, gives them a ... Read more »
Men Behaving Badly, Series 2
I rented this DVD because I so much enjoyed Martin Clunes in “Doc Martin” that I wanted to see him in a completely different role. This is the series that made him a big star on the telly. I looked at the reviews and noticed that most people weren’t enthusiastic about the first series, which was about two flatmates in London, politically incorrect beer-swillers, slobs, and ... Read more »
Memento
One of the best films of the year. Revelation piles on revelation, and the viewer is left just as much at sea as the protagonist, who suffers from anterograde amnesia: he can’t remember anything more than a few minutes ago, and yet still manages to discover the causes of his predicament through imagination and determination. I can’t recommend this highly enough. In fact, just writing this ... Read more »