Movie Reviews
Tully
This turned out to be less a movie review than a rant. Sorry about that.
I like to think that there really isn’t any particular “type” of movie that I either totally love or totally hate. I’m kidding myself, of course, though there are very few genres of cinema where there hasn’t been at least a few examples that I thought were above the rest. There have been a (very) few superhero ... Read more »
The Good Place
Continuing with the “embarrassment of riches” theme I started in my review of The Marvelous Mrs. Maizel, this show is forking brilliant. No bullshirt! It opens with Kristin Bell sitting on a couch looking at a wall where she sees the words
WELCOME! EVERYTHING IS FINE
While she is taking that in, Ted Danson opens a door ... Read more »
The Marvelous Mrs. Maizel
If it weren’t for The Good Place this would probably be the only good comedy in the last few years. But now we have an embarrassment of riches. Rachel Brosnahan is the perfect little Jewish American Princess, living with her dreamy hubby in a fabulous Upper East Side apartment with her two young children. She puts out more energy than ... Read more »
Catastrophe
It’s an odd name, doesn’t really tell me anything about the show, but the premise is simple. An American in London has a one-night (actually two or three night) stand with a British woman. A few months later she calls him up and tells him she is pregnant. He goes back to London to try to do the right thing. Naturally they face a lot of challenges, but by the end of the first season they ... Read more »
Isle of Dogs
Isle of Dogs (2018) (USA, Germany) Wes Anderson is one of my favorite directors. He’s got a distinctive style that is a little hard to define, but you know it when you see it. I thought The Grand Budapest Hotel was a masterpiece, and Moonrise Kingdom was not far behind. But he is a fan of stop-motion animation, and while I don’t dislike ... Read more »
Traffic
I guess if the message has not penetrated by now, it never will: The war on drugs was over a long time ago. And guess what?
Drugs won!
They will always win, and the battle fought over them will continue to destroy lives … unless we finally admit that the American problem does not have its roots in Mexico. It is right here in the Good Ol’ U. S. of ... Read more »
American Animals
In 2004 a group of four students at Transylvania University (yeah, there is such a place, in Kentucky) decide life is too boring. They need some excitement. They decide to rob the school library of its most precious possessions, including a first printing of Darwin’s Origin of the Species and a copy of the Double Elephant Folio of Audubon’s Read more »
Vanishing Point (Second Review)
In the Haight-Ashbury in the late ‘60s if you needed to get back to the East, everyone knew the best way to do it. “Yeah, man, far out! You just go to one of these drive-away companies. They’ll give you a groovy set of wheels and they’ll pay you to drive it all the way!” And it was true, though I’ve always thought it probably wasn’t quite as easy as that. ... Read more »
Roma
When Oscar time rolls around in a few days, this and Black Panther will be the only Best Picture nominees we will have seen. If you read my review of that latest superhero piece of garbage, you will know there is no contest, in my mind, at least. But is this one worthy on its own, knowing not a whole lot about the other six? I have to say that none of the others ... Read more »
Game Night
Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman headline a cast of people who are deeply into games, and gather once a week to play. Any kind of games, with cards, on a board, charades … you name it. But this evening they are all being treated to a role-playing game.
There are actually companies who do things like this, where actors put you into a scenario whereby you have to work to solve a ... Read more »