Movie Reviews
Titles starting with C
Confidence
I am a student of con games, and of con movies. It’s a small genre, but contains some really sweet examples. This isn’t one of them.
Conflict
Humphrey Bogart murders his wife … or did he? Her things keep showing up where they have no logical reason to be. So, is she alive? Is she a zombie? Is somebody messing with his head? Or is he losing his mind? I went back and forth among these possibilities (not so much the zombie hypothesis), and had sort of settled on the last one, since one of his best friends was Sydney Greenstreet ... Read more »
The Conformist
This is easily one of the top 5 most beautiful films I’ve ever seen, right up there with Barry Lyndon, though they couldn’t be more different in most respects. The colors are gorgeous, with some scenes dappled in that special shade of red that Renoir so favored. Then another scene will be cold and gray, with fantastic lighting. Some scenes are blue, with red ... Read more »
The Congress
Okay, I tend to like weird movies, but it helps if there is just a smidgen of sense to them. This one starts off pretty wacky, and then goes completely off the rails. At the same time, it is a delight to look at. It is broadly (very broadly) based on Stanislaw Lem’s The Futurological Congress, a book I’ve never read, as I never could ... Read more »
Connie and Carla
Nia Vardalos and Toni Collette are a singing team who have been together since elementary school. They have been plugging away at it for twenty years, playing tiny venues with their corny Broadway revue, getting nowhere but refusing to let it discourage them in any way. Then they witness a mob killing, and have to flee for their lives. They end up in Los Angeles, where they become part of ... Read more »
Conquest
This was Greta Garbo’s 13th talking picture. She would only make two more movies, and then vanish from the silver screen forever. It’s a giant, overblown story about Napoleon and his long affair with Polish Countess Marie Walewska. It looks to me as if it were highly fictionalized. She is shown as a Polish patriot, happily married to a much older man, but ... Read more »
Conspiracy Theory
A paranoid Mel Gibson gets the shit kicked out of him while driving a taxi.
The Conspirator
On July 7, 1865, Mary Surratt (Robin Wright) and three others were hanged for the crime of conspiracy to murder Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of State William Seward, and Vice President Andrew Johnson. She owned the boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and other conspirators, including her son John, hatched their plot, of that there is no doubt. Whether she knew of the plot, and the degree ... Read more »
The Constant Gardener
I’ve always wondered why so many of John le Carré’s books have been made into movies. I mean, when I read a le Carré (and I’ve read them all) I have never reached the last page, closed the book, and thought “Wow! That would make a great movie!” The reason is simple. Not much happens in a le Carré book. The man does not write action ... Read more »
Constantine
Second feature at the drive-in. As a young man, John Constantine tried to kill himself. He was dead for two minutes, and went to Hell. Asked about it later, he says something like “Two minutes in Hell is like a million years.” Well, what reviewer could resist a straight line like that? So … watching Constantine is sort of like two hours in Hell. It seems to ... Read more »