Movie Reviews
Titles starting with B
The Birdman of Alcatraz
… really should have been called the Birdman of Leavenworth, but I agree the title the book writer and then the movie producer used is sexier. But Robert Stroud had no birds during his years at Alcatraz, they weren’t allowed there. All the work he did in bird diseases, all his canary breeding, took place in Kansas.
You have to be careful when talking about a movie “based on fact.” ...
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Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Here’s something a bit unusual. I don’t think this was the Best Picture of 2014. That would be (in my opinion, but hey, it’s all opinions anyway, right?) that would be either Boyhood or The Grand Budapest Hotel. I go back and forth on that one. (Haven’t seen Selma or American Sniper, ... Read more »
The Birds
This was quite a departure for Hitchcock, and quite a revolutionary film in all ways. Hitch had always been into suspense, action, and adventure, and there was always some explanation for what was going on. Here, there is no puzzle to figure out. The birds are attacking in waves, and no one knows why, and no one really has any way of trying to explain it, and in fact it is never explained. ... Read more »
Birth
A man dies while jogging. Ten years later, a 10-year-old shows up at his widow’s fabulous New York duplex and announces he is Sean, her husband. Reincarnation. The movie gets off to a good start. The whole family is there, and they are not gullible. They react in the way you would expect intelligent people to react. This isn’t your ordinary junk stupid thriller. Nicole Kidman is terrific ... Read more »
The Birth of a Nation
One of the best, and one of the worst, movies ever made. It’s always a shock to revisit this movie and see just how horrible it is. The very first shot is of African slaves on the auction block, and D.W. Griffith, that awful man, points to this as the roots of division, or something like that, and seems to be implying that it’s the slaves’ fault. He refers to “The Cause,” i.e., human ... Read more »
Birthday Blues
Skinflint Pa won’t buy a new dress for Ma’s birthday. To raise money for a new dress, the son and his friends bake a cake with prizes in it and sell tickets to other kids. Naturally the kitchen is a disaster area.
Black and White in Color
This was the first feature film for Jean-Jacques Annaud, who went on to be a notable director. It was filmed entirely in Africa, in the very places where the almost true story happened. Certain details were changed for dramatic and comic purposes.
It is 1915, in French Colonial Africa. Back then the Frenchies controlled massive parts of the continent, including the Cote d’Ivoire. ... Read more »
The Black Book
Paul Verhoeven has directed and co-written a real old-timey war movie, refreshingly seen not from the American viewpoint, but that of an occupied country, Holland. There’s lots of action, some of it fairly improbable, but as long as you can keep moving with characters I’m interested in that’s okay. Rachel (Carice van Houten) is a Jew in Holland in 1944. Trying to flee to allied lines with ... Read more »
The Black Cauldron
This was an experiment, a movie at least a decade ahead of its time, and like several Disney experiments going all the way back to Fantasia, it was a failure. There have always been scary scenes in Disney animation, but few images of real horror. The only one I can think of is the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence from Fantasia, from ... Read more »
Black Mirror
This is about as strange a “series” as I have ever seen. I’m tempted to compare it to The Twilight Zone, in that it is an anthology series, with no recurring cast, setting, or anything else. It claims to be satirical, and I can certainly see that in some of the episodes, but not all of them. I’ve always felt that satire needs to have some humor underlying it, and ... Read more »