Movie Reviews
A Monster Calls
It’s about a child, Conor, whose mother is dying of terminal cancer. At night he is visited by a huge walking tree, voiced by Liam Neeson, and the tree tells him three fables. Each of them shows him a moral, until at last he is forced to confront his own demons. It’s done well, and the stories are interesting, but perhaps unsurprisingly it was a box office flop, barely even earning back ... Read more »
I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore
I’m sometimes amazed that anyone is still making quirky little movies like this. Ruth, played by Melanie Lynskey, comes home to find that she has been burgled. They took her laptop, and her grandmother’s silverware. The cops make it clear that they aren’t going to do much about such a penny-ante crime, and she is so incensed that she starts her own hunt. This leads her to Tony (Elijah ... Read more »
Kong: Skull Island
Exploring new frontiers in how stupid an action movie can be! Will somebody please tell filmmakers to leave that poor monkey dead at the base of the Empire State Building? It’s getting ridiculous. This one is big enough to eat a helicopter. I cared about these characters about as much as I cared about the ... Read more »
The Edge of Seventeen
Hailee Steinfeld stars in a coming-of-age story about a young woman who is having a very tough time with adolescence. Well, didn’t we all? She narrates it, and is alternately funny and sad. There is good supporting work by Woody Harrelson and Kyra Sedgewick.
Steinfeld was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her part in True Grit, a totally ... Read more »
Lion
Dev Patel has been all over the place since his first movie, the surprise smash hit Slumdog Millionaire. (Eight Oscars, including Best Picture!) He has been very good in several movies, including the crowd-pleasing The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its sequel.
Usually when a film is “based on a true story” it is really better ... Read more »
Life
The best way to describe this would be Alien Lite. It’s the same basic premise, played out on the International Space Station. A probe returning from Mars has a dormant cell that soon starts to grow when they cultivate it. Sure enough, it gets bigger and bigger and someone makes a stupid mistake, letting it loose in the station. It is adaptable and very fast. It ... Read more »
Death Wish
I have to admit it. A guilty pleasure. I believe in the rule of law … but I also recognize that sometimes the law isn’t enough. Which is not to say I precisely endorse vigilante actions. But I have to admit something else. If anyone in my family was subjected to the horrors that descended on Paul Kersey’s family, and I knew who the culprits were … and the law ... Read more »
Man of Aran
This is the third of the documentaries of Robert J. Flaherty. He only made five of them. I remember being knocked out by it, as I had been earlier by Nanook of the North, when I saw them at film society screenings at Michigan State. Back then I thought it was all accurate, telling it like it is …
But it wasn’t. Flaherty’s reputation has suffered since his ... Read more »
Passengers
It’s a pretty horrible situation. There’s a colony spaceship on its way to another star with 5,000 people in cold storage. But there is a malfunction and one of them is revived, while still 90 years from the destination. It’s impossible to go back in the deep freeze (which seems implausible, but is necessary to the plot). After a year with no one to talk to but a robot bartender, he wakes ... Read more »
Gosford Park
Here we get a long and far from affectionate look at a group of some of the most useless, boring, entitled, crass and unfeeling people who ever lived. I’m speaking, of course, of the British aristocrats and upper classes. Luckily, the movie is actually about some much more interesting people: the army of menials who serve them downstairs.
Robert Altman liked to experiment, and this ... Read more »