View From the Top

Might have worked if it had been set in the ‘60s, which is what the airline hostesses costumes look like, but I couldn’t buy it as present-day. And besides, it was pretty dumb.

Victim

Some people today apparently find the treatment of homosexuality in this film rather timid, and Dirk Bogarde’s lifelong refusal to “come out” a betrayal. They should remember that, until 1967, it was illegal in England, as it was in most US states and Canada. This was not an unenforced law. Men regularly went to prison for it. Thus, 90% ... Read more »

A Very Long Engagement

The French title translates literally (the only way I can translate, with an online program) as “A Long Sunday of Engagements.” I wonder if an idiomatic translation might be something like our expression “A month of Sundays”?

This is the second collaboration between director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who is one of the most exciting guys working today, and Audrey Tautou, maybe my favorite ... Read more »

Veronica Guerin

This lady was incredibly brave, and she paid for it, but the film lacked something for me. The ending was overdone, too. Nothing really new or interesting here.

Vera Drake

Sometimes I wish I didn’t follow the movie biz so closely. By watching the news, Ebert & Roeper, and reading reviews I usually know a lot about a movie before I see it, sometimes more than I’d really like to know. I wish I hadn’t known Vera Drake was a housekeeper who, to help out poor girls in trouble, also performs abortions. That way the scene where she casually pulls out her ... Read more »

Venus Beauty Institute

We rented this one mostly because of Audrey Tautou. She is very good, as usual, but she has a minor part. The star is Nathalie Baye, who is outstanding. The story leaves a bit to be desired, but I’d recommend it just for her performance.

Vantage Point

How would you go about assassinating POTUS? Security around the great man (or whatever jack-off currently occupies the office) was already extremely high before 9/11, and now it’s reached surreal levels. I’ve given it some thought (hypothetically, of course, in story terms), and have concluded that it would either have to be something insanely complex, or something very, very simple. Under ... Read more »

Vanity Fair

This is one of those classics that I managed to avoid in high school. I haven’t even read the Classics Comix or the Cliffs Notes version, so I came into it knowing nothing at all except the name Becky Sharp. I am informed that the novel is “funny and quietly savage” (Roger Ebert). This film version by Mira Nair is great to look at and has some funny stuff, but it’s basically about a lot of ... Read more »

Vanishing Point

After seeing The Driver for the first time, I just had to check this one out again. I saw it for the first and last time when it was only a few years old, in the Embassy Theater on Market Street in San Francisco, where you could see three second-run feature films for not very much money and get a Depression-era spinning-wheel game called Ten-O-Win into the ... Read more »