Movie Reviews
The Next Three Days
Does this ever happen to you? You watch a movie on TV, add it to the list of movies you intend to write to a friend about, or talk about, or write a review about, and then you forget about it for a couple of months, and when you sit down to write … you can’t recall much about it? It’s not necessarily a bad movie, it’s just not great, and in the end, not very memorable. That’s what happened ... Read more »
Ordinary People
I never warmed to this one quite as much as most people did. I’m not putting it down (much), but it didn’t strike me as the Best Picture (which it won) of that year. I think Raging Bull will last longer. Likewise, Martin Scorsese should have won instead of Robert Redford, in the first picture he directed. But I guess that is all sour grapes. There is nothing at ... Read more »
Sleepless in Seattle
Nora Ephron co-wrote and directed this charming trifle of a romantic comedy. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are not really together enough to develop a lot of “chemistry,” as the relationship between cinema lovers is known, but there is a special bond that develops because of the efforts of Tom’s young son to bring them together. Believe it or not, I’ve never seen An Affair to ... Read more »
The Aerial
A movie that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen is occasion for great joy for me. And I guarantee that you’ve never seen anything like this one.
Having said that, there are several movies it reminded me of, in one way or another. First there is Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, with its 1940s and ‘50s machines. Then there is Read more »
Panic Room
Jodie Foster made a series of pretty damn good thrillers starting with this one, and going on to Flightplan, Inside Man, and The Brave One (really more of a Death Wish vigilante/revenge flick).
A panic room is a place within a house or apartment where the residents can retreat in the event that ... Read more »
The Big Shave
(6 minutes) One of those films that have received a lot of acclaim, and leave me a bit mystified, like the works of Kenneth Anger, to which it has been compared. (I attended a showing of Anger’s works hosted by the man himself while attending a film class at Michigan State. I found them puzzling—I was 18, fresh out of small-town Texas—but interesting.) It consists solely of a man shaving. ... Read more »
It’s Not Just You, Murray!
(15 minutes) Scorsese’s second short Tisch film. This one won a lot of awards, and I can see why. The production values are miles ahead of his first one, and it has an actual story that’s pretty funny. He would later use the technique of having the protagonist talk about himself in Goodfellas. It is obvious that he had recently seen 8½, ... Read more »
What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing In a Place Like This?
(9 minutes) Here is the first of three short films Martin Scorsese made while a student at Tisch School of the Arts. You can see it on YouTube, if you wish. I don’t really recommend it. It’s rather incoherent. Looks good, as usual, but I had very little idea what was going on.
Who’s That Knocking at My Door?
Somebody’s been going to film school and watching a lot of French Nouvelle Vague movies. Not that this is a bad thing, not at all, but if Martin Scorsese’s name were not on it, it would be easy to mistake this for Godard, Truffaut, or Resnais.
It has a tangled history. It is usually named as Scorsese’s first film (originally titled I ... Read more »
Hillbilly Elegy
The reviews were downright vicious. Some called it one of the worst movies of the year. Many others said it is the worst movie Ron Howard has ever made. The smackdowns were so bad that The Onion ran a story with the headline “Defensive Ron Howard: ‘You Try Making A Good Movie About Fucking Hillbillies.’” I sampled a few articles about it, and it seemed to me that ... Read more »