Trance

Sometimes a movie gets too complicated for its own good. The director, Danny Boyle, has some really fine movies in his portfolio, and this is certainly an ambitious one. But it goes a few steps too far.

The premise is promising. (The promise is premising?) James McAvoy is involved as the insider in a huge heist of a Goya from an auction house, where someone has just agreed to pay ... Read more »

The Tramp and the Dictator

A real find! It’s a “Making of” sort of documentary about one of Charlie Chaplin’s greatest films, and certainly his most courageous. At the time he made The Great Dictator, it wasn’t thought to be a wise thing to make a film angrily lampooning Adolph Hitler. America was still neutral as regards the Nazi regime. Chaplin did it anyway, and it is a triumph. By that ... Read more »

Traitor

Here’s a rarity, an action/spy movie that is intelligent, not exaggerated, that spends more time pondering some of the moral questions of espionage and, especially, “black” ops, than staging phony car chases and fistfights. It may be the only time in years that the hero is a devout Muslim. So what happens? It doesn’t do any business while people flock to see the stupid stunts in Quantum of ... Read more »

The Train

One of the better train movies, and one of the better WWII movies. Burt Lancaster is a stationmaster in the last days of Occupied France. Paul Scofield is an art-loving Nazi colonel who intends to steal a trainload of “degenerate” art he has been assembling. The Resistance wants the train stopped before it reaches Germany. (This is “based on fact,” but the real story is that the French ... Read more »

Trailer Park Boys

Julian and Ricky are the focus of a group of losers in a big trailer park in Nova Scotia. A documentary crew are following them around after they get out of jail, I guess hoping to see how they reform themselves. Julian and Ricky are dumb. They are really, really dumb. How dumb are they? Well, there are more than 6 billion people in the world. Eliminate the mentally retarded (they have an ... Read more »

Trafic

Raymond Chandler was a genius who wrote six novels and a book or two of short stories from 1939 to 1953. His influence is felt even today in the genre of hard-boiled detective fiction, and indeed, in literature in general. Then in 1958 he wrote a pathetic little item called Playback, that I believe would not even have been published if it hadn’t had the Chandler ... Read more »

The Town

First, one of the all-time bad titles. It gives you absolutely no idea what to expect, you have to see the poster or the trailer for that. What town? “Our Town?” Are we talking Thornton Wilder, bare stage and a few chairs and ladders here? Small town? Big town? Families? No, the town in question is Boston, and this is about a bunch of highly professional robbers. The sort who are really ... Read more »

Toys

This should have been the excellent Barry Levinson’s take on Willy Wonka, and it was apparently a heartfelt project … but all the visual splendor and whimsy just doesn’t add up to anything.

A Town Called Panic

Here is a very odd movie. One is tempted to say it’s Toy Story on an acid trip, but somebody’s probably already used that line. What it is, is Toy Story as if written and directed by actual children. Remember how when you were playing with your toys, having them interact, you would always hold the one who was ... Read more »

Tower Heist

I don’t recommend comedies, because we all laugh at different things. But I will bring to your attention a comedy that we enjoyed, when we hadn’t really expected to. It’s called Tower Heist. It’s very much in the style of Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder stories, and for the first 3/4ths I had a real good time. It’s obviously inspired by Bernie Madoff. Alan Alda ... Read more »