Movie Reviews
Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie
The films of Luis Buñuel are not meant to be understood, he made that clear in his very first one, the seminal masterpiece Un chien andalou (1929), which he scripted and directed with Salvador Dali. The criterion there was that any time anything at all in the “story” started to make any sense, they would immediately cut it out and go off in a random ... Read more »
The Day They Robbed the Bank of England
It’s 1901 and Irish rebels want to give one in the eye to the Brits by robbing England’s most prestigious bank. (You need a reference to open an account!) As the great Hugh Griffith puts it, “One hundred thousand pounds is a felony. A million pounds is a political statement.” So they bring in Aldo Ray, an American mining and architecture expert, to see if it can be done. And it can, but it ... Read more »
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Pretty much exactly what I expected: an overblown remake of a classic that should have been left alone. Keanu Reeves plays Klaatu, the emotionless, expressionless alien. I’d say something about typecasting, but I’m sure every reviewer who touched this piece of crap has already made that joke, so I won’t. Gort the robot has spent the last 57 years pumping iron and shooting steroids, so he’s ... Read more »
Charlie Wilson’s War
It’s hard to believe this is a true story, but it is. It’s a tragicomedy, telling the story of how one hard-partying congressman from Nacogdoches, Texas, got religion when he saw the appalling situation of the refugees from the Russia-Afghanistan war, and decided they needed help fighting off the Soviet monsters. (And monsters they were, too. It’s well-documented. They ruled the skies, and ... Read more »
The Day of the Jackal
How do you make a film about a man who is trying to assassinate Charles de Gaulle in 1963, when everyone knows he died in 1970, at the age of 80, more or less peacefully? By paying obsessive attention to detail, that’s how. This is based, very faithfully, on a book by Frederick Forsyth, and tells the imaginary story of how a man known only as the Jackal (Edward Fox, in the best role of his ... Read more »
The Charge of the Light Brigade
(La Charge de la Brigade Claire …) wait a minute. This isn’t a French film … I don’t speak French … Ah, yes, it’s an English film, in English, about a war against Russia in the Crimea to free the Turks, and the French are our allies …
The commander of the British forces, Lord Raglan (John Gielgud), is a senile old ... Read more »
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
See, here’s the deal … Neither of us had seen Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, so we decided to rent it and watch it before we saw this. Underwhelmed. The music was insipid, the SFX were primitive, even for the time. Hated the Oompa Loompahs. Wondered if the ending was the one Roald Dahl wrote. So I decided to read the book.
Maybe I’d have ... Read more »
Charade
Treat yourself. Ignore that abomination of a remake, The Truth About Charlie, and find this one on the classics shelf. Maybe the best comedy-thriller ever made.
Somebody once described this movie as “The best film Alfred Hitchcock never made.” You can easily see why. It’s a terrific blend of old screwball comedy with periods of high tension. It was ... Read more »
Changeling
Three things before I get started. One, Clint Eastwood continues his long string of movies that stand head and shoulders above 90% of Hollywood’s output. (Just forget about Space Cowboys, okay?) Two, every once in a while a movie comes along that makes me so bloody angry I want to leap into the screen and kick the shit out of someone. There are four someones in ... Read more »
Day For Night
Day For Night (La nuit Américaine) (French, 1973) “Day for night” is the term for shooting through dark filters to make it appear that it’s nighttime. Unless you have a really good cinematographer, it looks really crappy. The French call it La nuit Américaine, a tribute to Hollywood, which invented the technique.
This movie is quite simply the best ever ... Read more »