Movie Reviews
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Actually, three weddings, a funeral, and then a wedding that doesn’t happen … but who’s counting? This was one of the first of a very successful string of British comedies that did very well in the US, too. For a while it was the highest-grossing British film of all time. (Now it’s either Mamma Mia! or Notting Hill, depending on how you ... Read more »
Europa Europa
Europa, Europa (Germany/France/Poland, 1990) You have to be reminded of The Pianist, the 2002 film by Roman Polanski. That was the true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who, with a great deal of dumb luck, managed to survive the Holocaust without ever being sent to an extermination camp, largely by living like a cockroach in the walls and crawlspaces, to ... Read more »
Escape From Planet Earth
I knew it was bound to happen. A few months ago I was in the hospital having my left knee replaced. It hurt quite a bit … unless I popped an oxycontin every hour on the hour. There wasn’t much to do there except watch the extremely limited selection of movies playing on a blurry little lo-def TV screen, so I did that. And I must have been even more loaded than I thought because, though I ... Read more »
Four Lions
Got a lot of praise as being a satire on the foolishness of religious fanaticism, where four Muslim idiots from London decide to become suicide bombers. They are naïve and stupid. I just couldn’t get the joke, though. I read about how it unfolded after I stopped watching it, and the only thing I could see that was amusing was that they did manage to off ... Read more »
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Just what I’ve come to expect from Charlie Kaufman, that is, a mind-stretching exercise in fractured reality. This is even better than Adaptation and Being John Malkovich. Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote in The Chicago Reader: “Only once in a blue moon does a screenwriter who isn’t a director become known as an ... Read more »
Four Feathers
Perfectly awful, especially if you’ve seen the classic original. Completely misses the point time after time and omits the best parts of the story. Avoid this at all costs.
The Four Feathers
This is one of the all-time great adventure films, done on a grand scale, in Technicolor. It has a cast of thousands, and they are employed to great effect in the huge desert battle scenes. Whatever you do, do not, do not take a look at the horrible 2002 remake. It will leave a bad taste in your mouth for months.
That said, I have to mention that almost ... Read more »
Four Brothers
Same old story, starts out good, gets stupid at the end. Most impressive scene: a car chase in the snow on icy streets. This was shot in Detroit and Canada, and the Trivia section at the IMDb informs me that the temperature never rose above 24 degrees during shooting, and that all the snow, including the falling snow, was real. I’m dubious. If it’s snowing when you do your ... Read more »
Fosse
In 1978 Bob Fosse created a show called Dancin’. “Created” seems the best word for it, as there was no plot, just segues between dance numbers, of which there were a lot. I guess there was some singin’ in the show, but basically it was exactly what the title said. A whole lotta dancin’, all of it choreographed by Bob Fosse himself. As far as I know, no recording ... Read more »
Fort Apache
The first of John Ford’s “Cavalry Trilogy,” all starring John Wayne, the second being She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and the third Rio Grande. It’s not as good as the second one, but it’s pretty damn good. Henry Fonda steps out of his usual character to play stiff, bitter, and ultimately disastrous Colonel Thursday, newly in charge of the ... Read more »