Movie Reviews
Titles starting with M
A Most Wanted Man
Three things you will not get in a film based on a novel by John le Carré are epic shoot-outs with thousands of rounds expended, massive explosions that people safely run away from, and huge car chases through city streets. Lord, if there were only more films like that! But he has had amazing success, or luck, or whatever you want to call it, in having his dense, ... Read more »
Mostly Martha
Mostly Martha (Bella Martha) (Germany, 2001) Mmmmmmmm-mmmm good! I love food movies. Eat Drink Man Woman, Chocolat, Big Night, Babette’s Feast, Like Water for Chocolate … there’s all those and plenty of others, and I can’t think of one I didn’t like. Is it just good luck? Or is there something that inspires a director to go that extra visual and ... Read more »
Mother and Child
Sometimes you are pretty sure in the first 15 minutes where a movie will end up in the final reel. And sometimes you are wrong. Annette Bening gave up a baby girl for adoption at the age of 14. It’s 37 years later, and the child, Naomi Watts, is a lawyer successful in her field but unable to form close relationships. She has an affair with Samuel L. Jackson and becomes pregnant, in spite ... Read more »
Mother Night
Of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, I love this one the best. It’s not nearly as well-known as Slaughterhouse Five, but it has much more heart. In fact, Kurt’s novels are not known for heart. His characters are thinly drawn, and stumble through life largely unable to do anything about anything. Here, the characters are vivid, and the losses they suffer are heartbreaking. ... Read more »
A Mother’s Son
The wonderful Martin Clunes (best known as Doc Martin) is a widower with a teenage son and daughter. Hermione Norris is bitterly divorced, and also has a son and daughter. They have been living together for a fairly short time, and there are tensions between the two sets of kids, but nothing really out of the ordinary.
Then a fifteen-year-old girl is stabbed to death out on the ... Read more »
The Motorcycle Diaries
I am not an admirer of Che Guevara. In fact, I don’t like him at all. Like so many revolutionaries he probably started out with his heart in the right place, and then lost his heart entirely. He was apparently an enthusiastic torturer of political enemies. He was a Maoist, which is synonymous with murdering madman in my lexicon. He wore a Rolex to the Bolivian “revolution,” where he got ... Read more »
The Mountain Between Us
This is an okay, if pretty unlikely, story of survival. A small plane crashes high up in the mountains when the pilot suffers a fatal heart attack. The passengers, Idris Elba and Kate Winslet, survive, but he is badly hurt. A dog survives, too, and will be important in their later ordeals. They have to make their way down the mountain. It ain’t easy. This was okay until they tacked on a ... Read more »
The Mountain Eagle (Fear o’ God)
This is the only Hitchcock film that is officially listed as “lost.” (There is someone at the IMDb who claims to have seen it, but I’m dubious.) Apparently it’s not a great loss; Hitch himself said it was a terrible film. Still, since I set out to see all of them, it’s kind of disappointing. It would have been nice, and only an hour of my time wasted …
Since I can’t write a review, ... Read more »
The Mouse on the Moon
Richard Lester’s first feature film was something called It’s Trad, Dad!, which is very hard to find. This is his second. The one following this one was A Hard Day’s Night, and he was off to the races. I’d sure like to see that earlier film, and a short he did called The Running Jumping & Standing Still ... Read more »
The Mouse That Roared
Much better than the sequel, The Mouse on the Moon. Peter Sellers plays three roles. The Duchy of Grand Fenwick, smallest country in the world, declares war on the United States … and wins!