Movie Reviews
The Great Wall
This is one of the goofiest big budget films you are ever likely to see. Goofier than Transformers or Godzilla, if you can believe that. When you find yourself laughing during the scenes that are supposed to be intense and scary, you know a picture just wasn’t thought out well. How in the world was Matt Damon convinced to sign on? ... Read more »
The Light Touch
I’m on record as being a big fan of movies about con games or heists. This one is about a plan to steal a famous picture and then sell a copy to a very rich buyer … or something like that. I didn’t really get all of it because there was a problem. It just didn’t really click. There was something missing, some element that should have pulled me in. Damn me if I know what it was, but it just ... Read more »
The Official Story
There’s no way I could get very deeply into the swamp that is Argentine politics. There was Juan Peron, who the Argentines apparently worshiped, then his wife Eva, who Andrew Lloyd Webber was interested in, and his second wife, Isabel, who was president from 1974-76. She was overthrown by a military junta, exiled, and is still alive today in Spain. She is 87, and if she returns to her ... Read more »
Battleship Potemkin
Every once in a while a movie come along that basically changes everything, or at least marks a turning point between the old and the new. In 1915 it was The Birth of a Nation. In 1941 it was Citizen Kane. In 1968 it was 2001: A Space Odyssey. In 1994 it was Pulp Fiction. In 1925 it ... Read more »
Tulip Fever
Before the dot.com bubble popped in the 1990s, before the stock bubble burst in 1929, there was tulip mania in Holland in late 1636. Prices for rare bulbs soared to ridiculous heights. Wikipedia lists this as the price paid for a single bulb of the Viceroy strain:
Two lasts of wheat 448ƒ
Four lasts of rye 558ƒ
Four fat oxen 480ƒ
Eight fat swine 240ƒ
Twelve ...
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Ida
(pronounced EE-dah)Ida was raised postwar in a Catholic convent in Stalinist Poland and is very devout. She wants to take her vows, but the Head Penguin tells her she must meet her aunt first, the only surviving member of her family. She doesn’t want to, but obeys, only to learn that she is actually Jewish. The two set off on a road trip to find out what happened to Ida’s parents and Aunt ... Read more »
The Great Beauty
This movie is very colorful, and it is full of compelling images, like a giraffe in an empty courtyard at night. Some truly awesome images. A furious little girl hurling cans of paint at a giant canvas as “art critics” stand around and watch. Her paintings sell for millions. Another piece of performance “art”: a naked woman runs and hurls herself into a stone wall (actually Styrofoam), ... Read more »
Amour
I sometimes wonder why people bother going to horror movies when there’s something like this around. You want horror? Watch an alert, vital senior citizen (Emmanuelle Riva, 85, the oldest person to be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar) descend through the stations of the cross starting with a stroke, going through partial paralysis, to the inability to walk, falls, incontinence, a ... Read more »
A Separation
Sometimes, with the very best movies, there’s not a lot I can say other than rather broad generalities. It’s a courtroom drama, but it’s not like any courtroom you’ve ever seen, taking place mostly in drab bureaucratic offices and hallways. Not a bewigged barrister nor flamboyant defense attorney to be seen. The plot is pretty easy to summarize. It concerns a middle-class couple who are at ... Read more »
The Counterfeiters
Best Foreign Language Film, 2008. Another based-on-fact WWII movie. Seems like we’ve been seeing a lot of them lately. This one takes place in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where a band of Jews with certain skills have been assembled to forge documents and currency for the SS. They are “pampered,” by camp standards, with sufficient food, comfy beds with sheets, and even a ping-pong ... Read more »