Movie Reviews
Coach Carter
A fairly standard underdog sports movie. Samuel L. Jackson is always good to watch, and the young ball players are pretty good. The sports action is well done, you could actually see the plays being set up, for what that’s worth.
The Closet
A delightful little soufflé of a French farce, that knows how to add comic complications and when to get off the stage. It’s only 84 minutes long, which is about right for something like this. Daniel Auteuil is Pignon, a nebbishy, boring office worker who is about to get fired because, basically, he’s dull. A cipher. His new neighbor is a retired industrial psychologist and knows a great ... Read more »
Closer
With some people, the worst thing they can ask is “Tell me the truth,” and the worst thing they can say is “I love you.” They don’t want the truth, and they don’t have the foggiest notion of love, except of self, and are concerned only with possession. This movie is a very cynical view of human beings that, I’m sorry to say, is all too often accurate. It reminds me very much of Mike ... Read more »
Close Your Eyes
Also known as Doctor Sleep. Gets off to a good start, but becomes a bit hard to believe toward the end. It’s really, really tough to make a really creepy movie, one that works for me beginning to end. There was some good stuff here, but not enough to recommend it.
Clockwise
Michael Frayn wrote Noises Off, what I consider to be the funniest stage play ever written, outside of possibly the works of Oscar Wilde. At least, it is the funniest one I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen it twice, and nearly hurt myself both times. (Unfortunately, the 1992 Peter Bogdanovich film was not nearly so funny, though it had its moments.) He is the master ... Read more »
Click
Sort of a combination of It’s a Wonderful Life and Bruce Almighty. A man gets a miraculous device that works like a TV remote, fast forwarding, pausing, with director’s DVD commentary … the whole works. For a while they work some pretty funny variations on this. But, it being an Adam Sandler movie, there is a mean streak to some of the ... Read more »
The Clearing
There’s a paradox at work here, or at least a big inconsistency. People are all the time complaining that most thrillers follow a formula so rigid that you can predict, almost to the minute, where a particular tired scene will happen. So when one comes along that doesn’t follow the mold, that goes off in directions you don’t expect … nobody goes to see it. This film pulled in less ... Read more »
The Descendants
Matt King (George Clooney) opens the movie narration by pointing out that, though they may indeed live in paradise, the citizens of Hawaii face all the headaches, hardships, and heartaches everybody else has. Quite true. When your wife or mother is comatose and will never get better, it sucks no matter where you are. But as the movie goes on and they lounge on white beaches, canoe out in ... Read more »
Cleaner
Nice idea, not so good execution. Samuel L. Jackson is an ex-cop who has started his own “biohazard clean-up” business. That can mean a lot of things, but mostly it’s cleaning up after murders, suicides, and bodies that weren’t found until they were pretty ripe. It’s nasty work, but somebody has to do it, and not many families are up to it. There has already been another movie about this, ... Read more »
City of Lost Children
The story is obscure and possibly a little pretentious, but this is well worth seeing just for the amazing images and sequences. By the director of one of the most charming and biting comedies I’ve ever seen, Amelie.