Movie Reviews
(500) Days of Summer
Summer is the girl he knows he’s going to spend the rest of his life with. But the narrator tells us it won’t turn out that way, right up front. This a smart romantic comedy, cleverly written and presented by hopping back and forth through the 500 days of a relationship. There are many good things here, but the best was what I think of as a “Read more »
The 400 Blows
300
Another comic-book movie. Another green-screen movie, shot entirely in a warehouse in Toronto with all scenery CGIed in later, like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, but with no sense of humor. Based—very loosely—on the Battle of Thermopylae between the Spartan Greeks and the Persian Empire of Xerxes. I figure history may have ... Read more »
84 Charing Cross Road
Here is a movie for book lovers. If slow pace bothers you, stay away, because there is little action. The pleasures here—and for me and Lee, they are considerable—are in the acting, the writing, and the restraint. It is based on a real story that was told in a book and a play. Anne Bancroft is a rather eccentric woman living in New ... Read more »
75th Annual Academy Awards Short Films
Every year if you watch the Oscars, as we do religiously, there comes a time when they give out the awards for short films, and you see a five-second flash of movies which, unless you live in Los Angeles, I can practically guarantee that you have never seen, as they have played in maybe three theaters in the whole world. The winners are some of the most grateful of the evening: this is ... Read more »
6ixty-nin9
(Ruang rak noi nid mahasan) (Thai, 1999) I loved this little film! Every once in a while you discover a gem that no one has heard of, and this is one. It is a crazy mixture of Hitchcock, the Coen Brothers, the Read more »
50 First Dates
I really hate Adam Sandler. It’s almost a personal hatred. Almost single-handedly he has lowered the standards of funny movies to a level I’ve never seen before. But from time to time he has tried to do a movie above this shitty level. I hate him so much that I haven’t seen Read more »
50/50
Hey, let’s make a comedy about a young man dying of cancer! Doesn’t that sound like a great idea? Well, of course, it doesn’t, and I was dubious, but I have to say they mostly pulled it off. It’s probably because the writer went through a similar experience himself, and knows what he’s talking about. The scenes ring true, showing the way people react, which ... Read more »
49-Up
The latest and possibly last of the monumental study of human growth that began in 1964 with Seven-Up! I wrote an extensive essay about the series, which you may read if you wish, so I won’t repeat any of my raves here, merely update.
… and there’s ... Read more »