Movie Reviews
Titles starting with B
Broken Flowers
There’s not a lot I could say about this without a spoiler warning, so here it is: SPOILER WARNING
An “aging Don Juan” (Bill Murray) gets a letter from an ex-lover who says he has a 19-year-old son he hadn’t known about, and the son may be seeking him out. He doesn’t want to get involved, but his nosy neighbor pushes him to the ...
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Broken Wings
I couldn’t dislike this movie. It deals with an harassed family, mother and 4 children, dealing with the death of the father 9 months before, from a bee-sting. They react in different ways, and in the end are somewhat drawn together by a near-disaster. But it wasn’t all I’d hoped. Maybe it was just too much suffering, or maybe some element I can’t put my finger on was missing. Not bad, but ... Read more »
Brooklyn
I’ve seen a lot of films, from The Godfather, Part II, to The Emigrants to Avalon, to In America, about people coming to America to seek their fortunes, but this is the only one I can recall about someone going back to their home country. Saoirse Ronan is Eilis Lacey, who is able to ... Read more »
Brooklyn Castle
Here’s a little documentary that will probably make you as furious as it makes me … and maybe at the same time give you some hope for the Facebook, smart phone, short-attention-span generation. I.S. 318 (and I’ve never understood why New York City schools can’t be named after people or neighborhoods like they do everywhere else) is a good intermediate school (what we would have called a ... Read more »
Brother Bear
This is a gorgeous film to look at, but the story didn’t really get to me that much. It’s a simple tale, and rings true as an Indian legend, though I don’t know if it is one. It involves a boy wanting to become a man, but rejecting his assigned totem of the bear. His older brother is killed by a bear, who it turns out was just guarding her cub. The younger brother vows revenges, kills the ... Read more »
The Brothers Grimm
Reduced expectations: The reviews were so bad I didn’t expect much, so I enjoyed it more than I might have. Which is not to say it’s good. Terry Gilliam is the master of the stunning visual, he’s miles ahead of most of the idiots out there trying to amaze us. But his weakness has always been story and, to some extent, character. He’s best when he is completely over the top, so we don’t ... Read more »
Bruce Almighty
I’m not a big Jim Carrey fan. I’ve liked about half his movies. This one is in the good half. Some great sight gags. I laughed.
Brute Force
This is one of the better prison escape movies. It’s quite a big production, with huge sets filled with hundreds of extras. It was written by Richard Brooks, who went on to a career as a writer, director, and producer of some great movies. It was directed by Jules Dassin, an underrated guy in my opinion, whose career was interrupted when he had to flee to Europe to avoid being called ... Read more »
Bubba Ho-Tep
See, Elvis Presley, in an aluminum walker, and JFK (played by Ossie Davis) are in a nursing home in Mud Creek, East Texas, when it is threatened by an ancient Egyptian mummy who sucks souls. He can suck them from any bodily orifice, but prefers to take them out of the asshole. It being a nursing home, the souls are small, practically used up, so he needs a lot of them. Elvis and the ... Read more »
Buck Privates
This was Abbott and Costello’s second movie, but the first where they got top billing. They were big stars on radio, and had been big stars in vaudeville, and with this picture they became big movie stars. It was a huge hit, one of the top-grossing films of 1941. And it’s really not much of a movie … in movie terms. But if you look at it as a vaudeville show, it’s damn good.
There ...
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