Movie Reviews
Titles starting with C
The Celebration
In 1995 Danish filmmakers Lars von [sic] Trier and Thomas Vinterberg announced the formation of something called the Dogme 95 Collective. Ostensibly a rebellion against big-budget artificiality, it had (I’m not making this up) a “Vow of Chastity,” 10 rules that prospective members had to agree to abide by. These are the rules [from Wikipedia]:
1. Filming must be done on location. ... Read more »
Celebrity
Here is that rare Woody Allen movie that just didn’t work for me, on any level. It’s hard to say why, except that it didn’t seem to come together to amount to anything other than a series of incidents.
Kenneth Branagh is the main character, the one that Woody usually plays, a man who is a fast talker and who is eagerly seeking celebrity. He is an unsuccessful novelist, who now turns ... Read more »
Cellular
A good thriller is hard to find in these over-the-top days. That’s why I really treasure movies like The Bourne Identity and sequel, The Italian Job (both versions), and this little gem. I’m not saying you can believe any of these films, the real world doesn’t operate like that, but they don’t insult your ... Read more »
The Chalk Garden
This one strikes me as a lot of angst over not much. Deborah Kerr finds work as a governess at a country mansion. Hayley Mills is the disturbed and thoroughly unlikable (to me, anyway) teenage brat who is setting fire to things. Kerr has a dark secret, which seemed pretty plain to me from the very beginning. Hayley’s father, John Mills, plays the butler, and the great Dame Edith Evans is ... Read more »
The Challenger Disaster
Richard Feynman is on my very short list of heroes. Few people have ever been as cogent and persuasive when talking about science. He worked on the Manhattan Project, but was best known for his contributions to quantum physics. This movie is a recreation of the investigation into the failure of the solid rocket boosters on the Challenger which, just behind the scenes of 9-11, ranks as the ... Read more »
Champagne
If you watch very many of these early Hitchcock silent films, you might be struck, as I have been, by how very ordinary most of them they are. Yes, film scholars have studied them for years and can point out this or that scene that fits right in with the Hitchcock style, and they’re right, you can spot these things. But what I ask myself is, how many hundreds of other films by other ... Read more »
The Changeling
Aside from innovative masterpieces like The Haunting, which eschewed all the horror movie clichés, my feeling is that one haunted house story is pretty much like the next. Which is to say, ho-hum, even when you have George C. Scott starring. This was no exception.
Changeling
Three things before I get started. One, Clint Eastwood continues his long string of movies that stand head and shoulders above 90% of Hollywood’s output. (Just forget about Space Cowboys, okay?) Two, every once in a while a movie comes along that makes me so bloody angry I want to leap into the screen and kick the shit out of someone. There are four someones in ... Read more »
Chaplin
Richard Attenborough directed, from a script by William Goldman and William Boyd and Bryan Forbes. While Dickie A. was a competent director, even won the Oscar for Gandhi, I don’t think anyone ever described his work as anything much more elevated than that. Workmanlike. Gets the job done. There’s not anything fundamentally wrong with that—not everyone can be a ... Read more »
Chappie
There is something called the “idiot plot,” which means a story that only works if everyone in it is an idiot. This is a prime example. From start to finish, no one does anything remotely smart. If that weren’t enough, I didn’t for one millisecond buy the “AI” robot that cringes in fear though he can’t feel pain, who picks up English very, very quickly but never ... Read more »