Movie Reviews
The Lady in the Van
After reading reviews and input at Metacritic and the IMDb, I realize this will be a minority opinion, but I really didn’t like this film. Won’t go so far as to say I hated it, but it was close. This is not really the fault of the writer or actors. Maggie Smith once more nails it perfectly. No, this has to do with the main character herself. I really disliked ... Read more »
Brooklyn
I’ve seen a lot of films, from The Godfather, Part II, to The Emigrants to Avalon, to In America, about people coming to America to seek their fortunes, but this is the only one I can recall about someone going back to their home country. Saoirse Ronan is Eilis Lacey, who is able to ... Read more »
True Romance
So Christopher Walken is a Sicilian gang boss, see. He has arrived at Dennis Hopper’s trailer with two of his goons with the intention of finding out where Hopper’s son is, so he can kill him. They have tuned Hopper up a bit, slapped him around, as a prelude to some serious torturing. It is clear that Hopper has no hope of coming out of this alive. So … Hopper starts in on this monologue ... Read more »
In the Heart of the Sea
It is hard to believe now, but during much of the eighteenth century and most of the nineteenth, the cities of the world were lit, inside and out, by lamps burning whale oil. I can hardly imagine just how much oil that took every year. I mean, whales are big, but how much oil can you get from one? It must mean that literally millions of whales were slaughtered during this time, and we know ... Read more »
Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Tarantino arrived on the scene with a very bloody bang in this, his first film as director. In the very first scene he establishes something that I see in every one of his films. That is, no one writes dialogue like Tarantino. {No}} one. He has his group of thugs sitting around a big table, eating breakfast, and what do they talk about? The robbery they are planning? No, they talk ... Read more »
The Sting
I have long been fascinated by movies about con games and heists. The first heist movie I saw was probably Topkapi, in 1964, but another biggie was The Hot Rock, 1972, from a great book by Donald E. Westlake. Then comes this one about the Big Con, within a year, and both of them starred Robert Redford.
SPOILER WARNING. This has ... Read more »
The Virgin Spring
In 1965 I escaped the cultural backwater of Beaumont-Port Arthur to attend college at Michigan State University. One of the first things I noticed was that I could see the sort of films they just didn’t show in Southeast Texas. Silent films. Movies where they talked funny, and you had to read subtitles. A whole bunch of classics that they just didn’t show on TV.
I joined the film ... Read more »
Flawless
I have always loved movies about con games and heists. This one looked promising. It is 1960 and Demi Moore works at a company in London that controls most of the world’s diamonds. (It is not a secret, but most people don’t know that diamonds are not actually all that rare. The price is kept high by not allowing too many to be sold at once.) Thus, this company has literally three tons of ... Read more »
Trumbo
In the annals of things my country cannot be proud of, the Hollywood Blacklist certainly ranks far below the genocide of the natives, the horrors of slavery, and the internment of 100,000 Japanese during World War II. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a worthy time to remember.
I don’t think there was ever a more aptly named Congressional body than the House Un-American Activities ... Read more »
The Danish Girl
Before there was Christine Jorgensen, there was Lili Elbe … and that’s just about as far as the historical accuracy of this “Based on a True Story” movie goes. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but what the movie was based on is a novel, that was “inspired” by the true story of Lili. Go to Wiki and the list of inaccuracies is quite long. (I was going to make a joke here about penises, ... Read more »