Movie Reviews
Battle of the Sexes
It was the biggest sports event up to that time, with 90,000,000 viewers worldwide. You couldn’t escape the hype. I watched it, and was quite happy to see Bobby Riggs get trounced by Billie Jean King. This movie perfectly recreates that time, even going so far as to have the cinematography slightly fuzzed and faded, as if it had been shot in the ‘70s with that awful clothing and hair. What ... Read more »
Annihilation
What with the breakneck speed of so many movies these days, I’m always a little hesitant to complain because a film is too slow. But this one creeps along like a grandfather snail. Scenes that ought to breeze by at a normal clip are dragged out twice as long as they should be. There is an interrogation of Natalie Portman, who appears quite traumatized. A question is asked. Long pause. A ... Read more »
Tomb Raider
I’ve allowed a back-up of un-reviewed movies to accumulate in my To Do file. That means that some of these reviews are of films I may have seen a month or more ago. This is not a good thing for many movies, because I find that a month later I don’t recall much about them. The majority of action movies are like that. Pretty generic action. I remember being mildly entertained by this one. I ... Read more »
Black Panther
I think I may have finally learned my lesson. They said Wonder Woman was good, not the same old shit. And it was, for about the first half. Then it was the same old shit. Now this one has been praised to the skies so I broke my rule and gave a superhero movie one more shot. And it’s the same old shit. Putting a rubber suit over a black body doesn’t change the ... Read more »
The Bridge
When it was decided to make an American version of this story, there was the matter of picking a bridge. Canada was considered, in particular the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, which I crossed a hundred times in 1965 when I was working in the Motor City. (Back then, they just waved you across in both directions. Can you believe it?) Bad idea. The whole thrust of these of ... Read more »
The Tunnel
This is a re-make of the Danish-Swedish TV series The Bridge, AKA Bron, AKA Broen. There are several possible bridges they could have used in the UK, including the Tower Bridge in London and the massive Firth of Forth bridge in Edinburgh. In France there are the famous bridges over the Seine and, I assume, ... Read more »
The Bridge (Bron)(Broen)/The Tunnel/The Bridge
The Bridge (2011-2018) (Danish: Broen; Swedish: Bron) (Sweden, Denmark) Here is a story with a fascinating history, including two remakes in different settings.*
We begin with this one, the original, kicked off by the murder of a women (that’s not a typo; wait for it.). The body is left exactly on the line between Denmark and ... Read more »
The Wasp Woman
I’m not usually into bad movies, but for some reason when this title came up as I was scrolling through upcoming stuff on TCM, I decided to TiVo it. I didn’t know it was a Roger Corman production until his name appeared in the credits as writer and director. Typically, it had a shooting schedule of about a week. And as usual, Corman used standing sets, and pretty cheap ones at that. There ... Read more »
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
If you haven’t seen the 1974 version of this classic Agatha Christie story, you could be forgiven for thinking this is a really good movie. And it’s not a bad movie, not by any means. What it is, is an okay movie. If you have seen the 1974 movie, this one will make you wonder “Why the hell did Kenneth Branagh think it was a good idea to ... Read more »
Murder on the Orient Express (Third Review!)
No need to repeat myself too much in these dual reviews, of this one and the 2017 re-make. The passage of 43 years gave Kenneth Branagh a fine set of new visual tools not available to Sidney Lumet, and Branagh made good use of them. But time did not provide Branagh with the incredible star power of the original cast. Dig this: Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Ingrid Bergman ... Read more »