Movie Reviews
Titles starting with N
Nim’s Island
Somebody at IMDb said this was like Indiana Jones for little girls. Maybe, but I think the better parallel is Romancing the Stone, that wonderful, unlikely match of adventure and humor that was such a big hit in the ‘80s. Both stories involve a female novelist who writes adventures and ends up having an adventure herself. In this one, though, the novelist is ... Read more »
Nine
Or in Base 2, 1001. We re-join Guido the blocked Italian director from 8½ , this time played by Daniel Day-Lewis. As in everything he ever did (he claims to be retired now) he is quite good in a role that requires some singing. This movie was based on a Broadway production starring Raul Julia. On Broadway, he was the only male ... Read more »
Nine Lives
More like slices of lives. This is nine short films, each a single 12-minute take. That sort of thing can be little more than a final exam exercise for film school key grips, steadicam operators, and focus pullers (some of the unsung heroes of nuts-and-bolts-filmmaking), but this is a lot more than that. I think it’s more like a sonnet. The poet sets himself the limitation of ... Read more »
No
Long before our September 11th, that date was infamous in South America. That day in 1973 a military junta led by a murderous thug named Augusto Pinochet and enabled by our very own CIA overthrew the freely-elected government of Chile and murdered the president, Salvador Allende. In the years to come he, and we, were responsible for well over a thousand other murders, 30,000 cases of ... Read more »
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
I’ve been reading these books since almost the beginning of the series, in 1998. There are now nine, with Tea Time for the Traditionally Built due out in a few months. There are not many books I look forward to more than these. Slim little volumes, understated writing, simple stories about uncomplicated (not simple) people. Precious Ramotswe is one of the all-time great literary creations, ... Read more »
No Country For Old Men
I’m the farthest thing from a Cormac McCarthy fan you could ever find, except possibly for my friend Spider Robinson. I hated, hated, hated The Road. I don’t know how I finished it. That hatred was a pale thing compared to my reaction to Blood Meridian. I only managed about 70 pages before throwing it across the room. I would have ... Read more »
No Direction Home
What can you say about Bob Dylan anymore? He’s approaching his elderly years, as are all of us who came of age listening to his music. He’s doing it in a fairly dignified manner, still doing concerts, but he can pull it off, like Crosby, Stills and Nash, who never jumped and shouted during performances, not like The Rolling Stones, those wrinkled rebels who look way beyond stupid doing the ... Read more »
No End
I saw and enjoyed Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors Trilogy. But not this one. It takes place in the ‘80s, when Poland was under martial law because of the Solidarity Union demonstrations. One woman’s lawyer husband dies suddenly … only he is still around for us to see, observing the action. His wife takes up the cause of a jailed man who her husband was trying ... Read more »
No End in Sight
George W. Bush. Dick Cheney. Donald Rumsfeld. Paul Wolfowitz. Condoleezza Rice. If reading those names, if seeing those faces doesn’t make you feel vaguely like vomiting by now … there is no hope for you. You’ll be a fascist all your life. This movie unfolds like the main case for the prosecution in the trials for war crimes, corruption, and criminal incompetence that should be the first ... Read more »
No Escape
Owen Wilson and Lake Bell and their two lovely young daughters arrive in the Third World country of Cambolaonamland (it was filmed in Thailand and was probably meant to be Cambodia, though no country is actually named) just in time for the assassination of the Prime Minister and the beginning of truly horrifying riots targeting anyone with white skin. The carnage is incredible, and ... Read more »