Movie Reviews
Men In Black III
Every once in a while an SF movie comes along that shows us something new. It can be a new visual idea that, in no time at all, everyone is copying, like Alien. Maybe it’s just a new slant on an old story, but that’s good enough for me. The point is, it’s fresh. Men in Black was such a movie. Everybody loved the idea that not only have ... Read more »
The Men Who Stare At Goats
The opening title reads something like “More of this story is true than you would believe.” The US military, hearing that the Russians were looking into psychic powers and their possible uses on the battlefield, really did start an ESP unit to look into the possibility of remote viewing, invisibility, walking through walls, stunning or killing people (or in this ... Read more »
Nine Lives
More like slices of lives. This is nine short films, each a single 12-minute take. That sort of thing can be little more than a final exam exercise for film school key grips, steadicam operators, and focus pullers (some of the unsung heroes of nuts-and-bolts-filmmaking), but this is a lot more than that. I think it’s more like a sonnet. The poet sets himself the limitation of ... Read more »
Men in Black
Every once in a while a fairly new idea pops up in a film. (Probably not a completely new idea; there are very few of those going around. But we are grateful for what we can get.) Ghostbusters was such a idea. This one was another. For around two hours we are introduced to a new universe, a place where things are not what they seem, or not what we have always ... Read more »
Men Behaving Badly, Series 2
I rented this DVD because I so much enjoyed Martin Clunes in “Doc Martin” that I wanted to see him in a completely different role. This is the series that made him a big star on the telly. I looked at the reviews and noticed that most people weren’t enthusiastic about the first series, which was about two flatmates in London, politically incorrect beer-swillers, slobs, and ... Read more »
Night Train to Munich
Cracking good thriller with Rex Harrison as a secret agent daringly penetrating into Nazi Germany and Paul Henreid as a German pursuing him. Margaret Lockwood is the Woman in Peril. There’s a real nice shootout on a cable car in the Alps at the end. One of the distinct pleasures here are two minor characters imported from Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, two years ... Read more »
Memories
Okay, I give up. I was resistant to Japanese anime for years. I guess I was prejudiced against it. Which isn’t fair, because it’s such a broad term. Basically, it’s the Japanese term for animation, and I love animation … but I don’t love Spongebob Squarepants, and I don’t love Speed Racer, and I don’t love The ... Read more »
Night Must Fall
CONTAINS SPOILERS Danny (Robert Montgomery) is a handyman—I thought he was Irish, but it seems he was supposed to be Welsh—who comes to work for nasty old Mrs. Bramson (Dame May Whitty) and soon charms his way into her heart with his gift of gab and willingness to lie. Olivia (Rosalind Russell) is the niece who is constantly belittled and abused—it’s a ... Read more »
Memoirs of a Geisha
It’s a good story, though melodramatic. It is totally gorgeous to look at … though it is often a cold beauty, like Geishas themselves.
There’s this endless and heated debate as to the nature of a geisha. Some say she’s a prostitute, pure and simple. Maybe so. The only thing I’m sure of is, she’s not anything like a prostitute as we know it in the ... Read more »
Memento
One of the best films of the year. Revelation piles on revelation, and the viewer is left just as much at sea as the protagonist, who suffers from anterograde amnesia: he can’t remember anything more than a few minutes ago, and yet still manages to discover the causes of his predicament through imagination and determination. I can’t recommend this highly enough. In fact, just writing this ... Read more »