Movie Reviews
Smart People
Dennis Quaid is a college professor mourning the death of his wife, and just going though the motions of teaching. He has a fuckup adopted brother (Thomas Haden Church) who shows up looking for a place to stay. He has a super-smart daughter (Ellen Page) who is not so much worried about doing well on the SATs, as fearful that she will not ace them, two perfect ... Read more »
True Grit
When I first heard that the Coen Brothers were remaking this film, I was pretty sure it was a bad idea. They proved me wrong, completely and gloriously wrong. I’d be happy to be wrong like that a hundred times a year. So, was the original maybe not as good as I remembered it? I was curious to see it again.
No, I wasn’t wrong. This is still a great film, and a great performance by ... Read more »
Slumdog Millionaire
This is the current front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar, and of the ones I’ve seen (and I admit, I haven’t seen many) it is the best. The only movie I can recall this year that I enjoyed more is WALL-E, and the Academy in its wisdom elected not to nominate that. The story is Dickensian, though tougher than anything Oliver Twist had to endure. It uses an ... Read more »
True Crime
A pretty good thriller, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, that for some reason never found its audience. It’s a race with the clock, Clint being a reporter who is convinced that a man on death row is innocent. His nose for news is really all he has going for him, as he is a drunk, a womanizer, and a terribly neglectful father. The race gets pretty ridiculous at the end, literally ... Read more »
Troy
Not as bad as I had expected, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. I was forced to read The Iliad, which I think is highly overrated, in college, and this movie is sort of accurate, though it leaves out the gods. Achilles was a pain in the butt in the book, and he’s even more of a pain in the butt in the movie. So Brad Pitt was the perfect casting choice. Orlando ... Read more »
A Slight Case of Murder
Donald E. Westlake was one of the best writers who ever lived. Not just one of the best at hard-boiled crime (under his pen name of Richard Stark), not just the best comic writer ever, with his John Dortmunder series and others. One of the best writers, period. He had a fair number of his stories made into movies, and almost always they fucked it up. Of the Dortmunders, at least six movies ... Read more »
Trouble With the Curve
Ol’ Clint has turned out to be a much better director than he is an actor, and he’s not a bad actor. Judging from his last two parts, he seems to relish playing crotchety old men who are not aging gracefully. But Gran Torino, which he directed, is a much better movie than this one, which he didn’t. This is from a first-time director, Robert Lorenz, who worked as ... Read more »
Sleuth
I was so excited when I heard about this project. The original Sleuth (see above) is one of my favorite movies. It is a funny and tense battle of words and wits between Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, played out in a mansion that is a wonder to behold. It was so good that, normally, I would have thought a re-make would be a terrible idea … and then I heard ... Read more »
Trouble in Paradise
Nobody ever topped Ernst Lubitsch in sophisticated romantic comedy, and this is one of his best. Herbert Marshall is a high-class jewel thief and he has to choose between two women: His partner in crime, a pickpocket, and a rich owner of a perfume company. I’m a big fan of movies about non-violent rascals, and this one is a gem.
Sleuth
On a recent trip to Portland I was digging through old VHS tapes and LaserDiscs (yes, I have a working LaserDisc player, and quite a nice collection of those big old silver platters!) in the cobwebbed confines of the Varley Vault in Mom’s basement. I came across a copy of this, which for some reason has become quite the rarity. It seems there was a DVD release, but it must have been quite ... Read more »