Movie Reviews
The Peacemaker
This is among the most underrated thrillers I know of. I can’t help wondering if it’s because it was directed by a woman, Mimi Leder, who also did another film I liked a lot but no one else seemed to appreciate: Deep Impact. For my money, that one was miles above testosterone-fueled garbage like Independence Day. Or maybe my taste is ... Read more »
Reefer Madness
Not the 1938 bit of cult idiocy—which, I learn, was actually titled Tell Your Children in its original release—but the 2005 Showtime version of the Broadway musical. It premiered last night, and will surely be released on DVD one of these days. It is loosely based on the movie … at least, I think so, though I only suffered through that once, a long time ... Read more »
The Ref
This one ranks up there with National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and A Christmas Story as one of our favorite holiday movies. Denis Leary is fleeing a botched jewel robbery with a bite taken out of his ass by a guard dog, smelling of cat piss from another anti-burglar device, and is forced to take a couple hostage in their upscale ... Read more »
Payment Deferred
Charles Laughton plays a bank clerk desperately in need of money. He kills his nephew (a very young Ray Milland), and then hits it big in the currency speculation market. But the murder preys on his mind. He acts almost comically guilty; if anyone was actually hunting him he might as well have I DID IT! tattooed on his forehead. But it’s a good performance. The pacing is slow and the sound ... Read more »
Paycheck
You know what? Screw all kung-fu, karate, judo, jujitsu, knuckle-dusting, rasslin’ and calf ropin’. I cannot begin to estimate how many promising movies in the last 10 or 20 years have been totally destroyed by idiot directors (yes, I mean you, John Woo!) resorting to the line-‘em-up and knock-‘em-down school of chop-socky kick-out that ... Read more »
Red Tails
Did you know:
That with only two strafing runs from a single P-51 Mustang with six 50-caliber cannons, it is possible to blow up a German destroyer and send it to the bottom?
That it’s possible to be drenched in fuel, crash your plane which then explodes in a fireball, and escape with only 60% of your body burned?
That rookie pilots flying ... Read more »
The Red Shoes
In A Chorus Line Val (“Dance: Ten; Looks: Three”) has this to say: “Oh, yeah, let’s get one thing straight. See, I never heard about The Red Shoes, I never saw The Red Shoes, I didn’t give a fuck about The Red Shoes.” For some reason, that ... Read more »
Red Road
Sort of a combination of Rear Window, Vertigo, and Lars von Trier. The first one for the voyeurism, the second for the obsession, and Lars for the bullshit. The writer/director, Andrea Arnold, won a Best Live Action Short Oscar for “Wasp.” This is her first feature film, and it won the Jury Prize at Cannes. She is loosely associated with the Dogme 95 movement ... Read more »
Red Eye
So Rachel McAdams can play the charming ingenue in the Wedding Crashers. In this one she gets her teeth into something completely different, and much more to my taste: a take-no-prisoners, no-nonsense businesswoman. She manages a swanky hotel in Miami and finds herself on a night flight from Dallas, heading home, sitting beside a man who says her father will be ... Read more »
Red Dragon
A remake of Manhunter with the part of Lector brought up front to capitalize on Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar win. In spite of that, it’s not bad.