Movie Reviews
Titles starting with U
Unforgettable
I have a feeling that in a month or two, maybe three, I won’t remember a thing about this movie. Ray Liotta is a medical examiner in Seattle who was accused of murdering his wife, and got off because of tainted evidence that was thrown out. Most people still believe he did it, and he’s desperate to find the real killer. Linda Fiorentino is a scientist who has made some kind of serum from ... Read more »
Unforgiven
CONTAINS SPOILERS. There’s a lot of actors who could have made this movie work fairly well, as a routine action western. But only Clint Eastwood could have elevated it to the status of a classic, and that’s simply because he’s the last credible mythic western movie star, from the tail end of the golden age. He was no John Wayne, and that was a good thing, because ... Read more »
The Uninvited
Ray Milland and sister Ruth Hussey in a haunted house in England. This movie doesn’t intend to scare the pants off of you, though there are some eerily disturbing scenes. What sets it apart is its good sense of humor, mostly in Ray Milland’s skeptical character who gradually comes to believe in the ghost, yet still can’t take it too seriously.
The Uninvited
A young woman, Anna (played by a young Australian actress named Emily Browning, who was Violet in the Lemony Snicket movie) witnesses her invalid mother killed in an explosion, tries to commit suicide, and spends some time on a mental ward. When she comes home she and her sister begin to suspect that Daddy’s new girlfriend, who used to be Mommy’s nurse, might have murdered their ... Read more »
United 93
At 8:42 AM on September 11, 2001, United Flight 93 took off from Newark Airport headed for San Francisco. Aboard were 40 human beings (33 passengers, 7 crew) and four men who looked just like human beings but were actually monsters. Shortly afterward, shouting “Allahu akbar!” (which in the past has translated as “God is great!” but lately has often meant “God ... Read more »
The United States of Leland
A 16-year-old psychopath ups and stabs an autistic boy to death one day. He offers no explanation, and we see him in juvie hall, and the people whose lives he affected by the murder. He was ignored by his father, played by Kevin Spacey in a real snooze of a performance. Nothing much happens, and I wonder why I was supposed to care about any of these people, particularly Leland. Screw this ... Read more »
Unknown
Here’s an adequate thriller. The story is puzzling and hangs together reasonably well, Liam Neeson is always fun to watch, and it doesn’t strain the bounds of credibility … too much. For a while I’ve meant to make a list of Things You Have to Accept If You Want to Enjoy a Modern Action Movie. It would save me a lot of time, I could ... Read more »
Unknown Pleasures
The director is a cinematographer, and this film looks great. But it’s about disaffected Chinese youth wasting their lives, and a little of that goes a long way with me.
Unleashed
Luc Besson, who wrote this, is a highly-overrated Frenchman who made one film I liked (The Professional), and lot of crap (The Messenger, The Fifth Element, La Femme Nikita, The Big Blue). Oh, yeah, all those films were interesting to look at, but they had one failing I just can’t abide: They were dumb. Really dumb. Besson’s reputation has kept me away from two ... Read more »
Unsane
Stephen Soderbergh is a director whose films have been all over the map. He “arrived” with the small indie sex, lies, and videotape, which won the Palm d’Or at Cannes. He followed it up with the box office bomb, Kafka. He followed that with five other experimental bombs, and then suddenly here’s Out of Sight, ... Read more »