Movie Reviews
Mary & Max
Australian Adam Elliot won the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 2004 for “Harvie Krumpet.” This is his first feature film, and it’s a doozy. It’s all in traditional claymation, no CGI effects. This is such a demanding medium, and has produced so many very good films over the years. Here we have an 8-year-old Australian girl who becomes a pen pal with a lonely, obese man with Asperger’s ... Read more »
Naqoyqatsi: Life as War
The third in the Qatsi trilogy by Godfrey Reggio. The first two were all regular photography, of real things and places, doctored only by slow motion and time lapse here and there. This one is entirely different. Just about every frame is morphed some way or another, with fisheye lenses, solarization, slomo, multiple images, and most of all, acres and acres of ... Read more »
Martian Child
This is based on a novelette (later expanded into a novel) by my friend David Gerrold. David was the first professional SF writer I ever met, way back at Westercon in Oakland, 1975, where he was the guest of honor. The short version of this story won the Hugo and the Nebula award, which is a little odd because it is not really science fiction … but what the hell, a good story is a good ... Read more »
Nanny McPhee
The story works okay, though it’s pretty predictable. Emma Thompson morphs from “the ugliest woman in the world” (as described in the books) to … well, Emma Thompson, and it doesn’t get much better than that. I could listen to her voice all day long. The kids are bratty enough to scare the Addams Family, and it is fun to see them learn the error of their ways. ... Read more »
Martha Marcy May Marlene
A young woman escapes from a weird cult in the country and goes to live with her rather uptight sister in her huge house while she figures things out. I’ll give any decent movie half an hour to draw me in. At the thirty-first minute I realized I just wasn’t interested in seeing the rest. Don’t take this as a negative review. It’s like Winter’s Bone, I guess. I ... Read more »
The Marriage of Maria Braun
This was a huge disappointment, and I can’t say why without issuing this
SPOILER WARNING!
Maria gets married as Germany is falling apart in 1945. Her husband leaves at once for the front, where he is presumed dead. Maria looks for him and never believes he’s dead, but has to get on with her life. She becomes a bar girl, picking up ... Read more »
Marooned in Iraq
Probably the only Kurdish film I have ever seen, and a real winner. Some cultures are so foreign, so alien, they might as well be from Mars for all I know about them. These people have nothing, they have been torn by war forever … and yet it is almost a comedy. Sure, there are horrors, and a sad ending, but it still manages to be upbeat. Plot: an old musician enlists his sons to ... Read more »
The Naked City
This is a remarkable film for a variety of reasons. It’s the only movie I can recall with spoken opening credits. A narrator identifies himself as producer Mark Hellinger (he died just after seeing the final cut), and then names the writers (Albert Maltz and Malvin Wald) and the stars (Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, and Dorothy Hart). He probably named the director, Jules Dassin, but I ... Read more »
Marie Antoinette
Today on the radio we heard a story about the Ferrari motorcar company. One popular model sells for $200,000 … but you have to wait two years to get one. That is frightening enough in itself, that there are that many people ready to spend that kind of money for what is really just a toy car, of no practical use whatsoever. But the capper was that you could buy one on eBay or suchlike ... Read more »