Movie Reviews
12
This is billed as the Russian version of 12 Angry Men I’d rather describe it as “inspired by,” as there are significant differences, not all of them made necessary by transplanting the story into a different culture. The biggest difference is that in the original, we never saw the defendant. Here, we constantly flash back to scenes of the boy’s life. ... Read more »
11:14
Here’s a little indie gem that’s developing a cult following. If you like weird, anything-can-happen movies like After Hours or Into the Night or Miracle Mile, films that don’t go where you expect, you will like this. Also, if you like fractured time lines, telling a story from the end back ... Read more »
10 Items or Less
We were so uninterested that after 30 minutes (or less) we abandoned the three items in our cart and didn’t even make it to the check-out line.
9
A major disappointment. The trailers looked fascinating—and in fact, visually, the movie is wonderful. But that is far from enough these days. Ten years ago I would have been stunned by the CGI animation. Five years ago I might have been impressed. Today, I yawn. I have seen many movies that have inspired video games, and quite a few that were based on video ... Read more »
The 5 Obstructions
(De Fem benspænd) (Danish, 2003) What an odd little movie. The grand old man of Danish cinema, Jørgen Leth, made a 13-minute experimental film called “The Perfect Human” in 1967. Leth’s student ... Read more »
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
This is a truly exceptional movie. It got a 97 at Metacritic, an almost unprecedented score. It is set in the 1980s, in the Bucharest of the Ceausescus, two of the more bizarre psychopaths ever to run a communist worker’s paradise. Abortion is illegal, and two ... Read more »
3:10 to Yuma
SPOILERS HERE. This is a considerably pumped-up remake of a 1957 movie based on an Elmore Leonard short story. Outlaw and murderer Ben Wade has been captured because he did a really dumb thing. Now he has to be put on a train to the prison in Yuma, but his gang will ... Read more »
3 Women
There’s Mildred (Millie) (Shelley Duvall) (Olive Oyl?) and then there’s Mildred (Pinky) (Millie) (Sissy Spacek) (Carrie?) and then there’s Willie (Read more »
2 Days in Paris
We loved Julie Delpy in Before Sunrise and its nine-years-later sequel, Before Sunset. Here is a film she practically made all by herself. Her parents are played by her real-life parents, and she even ... Read more »
Casino Royale
It’s kind of sad when the best thing about a movie is its soundtrack. I owned it when it was new, being a fan of both Burt Bacharach and the Tijuana Brass. It is still very, very good. The rest of the movie … well, I liked it a lot when it was new, but that was in the Swingin’ Sixties. I had recently taken my first acid trip, and many images in this film reproduced those visuals with ... Read more »