Movie Reviews
Contagion
(cough) Excuse me. (cough, cough) Sorry … That’s how this picture opens. Can you imagine that that might be the most frightening sound you ever heard? Well, it could be, and it could happen overnight …
Here’s one of the best movies of the year, and it completely slipped under my radar. Didn’t they promote it enough, or was I just nodding off? Whatever, it is by Steven Soderbergh, ... Read more »
The Dish
There is a brand of humor that I think of as distinctly Australian. I can’t easily define it, but I know it when I see it. It’s in films like Muriel’s Wedding, and Danny Deckchair. It’s wry, and it’s understated, and I love it. This movie is not a knockabout comedy, and in fact it is quite touching in places. It is possibly the most ... 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 »
Dirty Pretty Things
I’ve now seen Audrey Tautou in four movies, and she was excellent in all of them. In fact two of them (Amelie, and He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not) are among the best films I’ve seen in years. See all of them.
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 »
Dinner at Eight
This is one of my favorite social comedies. It’s based on a play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, screenplay by Frances Marion and Herman J. Mankiewicz (who wrote Citizen Kane, no matter what Orson Welles might tell you), directed by the legendary George Cukor. It reminds me of Grand Hotel from the previous year, in that it takes a ... Read more »
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 »
Die Hard 2: Die Harder
It always becomes a question of how many unbelievable things can you ignore and still have fun. The usual supertanker-load of high caliber bullets are expended, 99.99999% of them hitting nothing important, 100% of them missing John McClane, even though about 50% of them are expended in his general direction. Well, that’s standard, if you can’t shrug that off you shouldn’t bother with films ... Read more »
Conspiracy Theory
A paranoid Mel Gibson gets the shit kicked out of him while driving a taxi.
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 »