Movie Reviews
Die Hard
When all is said and done, this is one of the best pure action movies around. I say this in spite of certain plot idiocies inherent to the genre, at least these days. Things like the inevitable standoff with a gun to the head of someone dear to the hero, forcing him to drop his gun, the bad guy who points a gun at the hero’s head when he has absolutely nothing to gain other than giving the ... Read more »
The Dictator
Sacha Baron Cohen can be a very funny man. I nearly hurt myself watching Borat: Cultural Learnings … etc., etc. I haven’t seen Brüno, but I intend to one of these days if I can talk Lee into seeing it. He can also be quite good as an actor, in small parts like the cop in Hugo and the barber in 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 »
Diamond Men
Robert Forster is one of the most under-appreciated men working in movies. Maybe some day he will get his big break, like William H. Macy did in Fargo. This might have been a routine “old pro teaches a lesson to the young upstart” formula, but it is much more than that. Excellent.
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 »
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.
Confessions of a Superhero
One of the pleasures of living maybe a mile and a half from Grauman’s Chinese Theater is that we get to drive by that two-block tourist stretch quite often. There’s always something going on; in fact, that street is closed off about as much as it’s open, for one thing or another, for as much as 10 days at Oscar time. One of the things that is always happening is the costumed characters ... Read more »
Confessions of a Nazi Spy
Quite an unusual movie here. It was the first to boldly name who the bad guys were—German fucking Nazis—and the first to have Nazi in the title. As such, it was very controversial in some quarters of America: the fascist German-American Bund of traitorous turncoats, for one. It has been said that, after the movie was released, the FBI or someone in government told the producers not to make ... Read more »
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Anybody who believes that Chuck Barris, creator of “The Gong Show” and other television brain rot (that look positively tame compared to the unthinkable pustulent atrocities currently being broadcast as “reality television”) actually worked as a hit man for the CIA is probably dumb enough to vote for George Bush again. I personally think Barris never intended that ... Read more »
The Company Men
You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t get real upset when I see people in “middle management” lose their jobs. I’m not without sympathy, really I’m not, I know they suffer. But still … Ben Affleck works for a company called GTX. They started out small, just Tommy Lee Jones and Craig T. Nelson, building boats, then ships. Now one of their clients is Royal ... Read more »