Movie Reviews
Wallander
Henning Mankell wrote a dozen novels featuring Swedish detective Kurt Wallander between 1991 and 2009, and he sure did get a lot of mileage out of them. There was a series of Swedish TV movies from 1994 to 2007, starring Rolf Lassgard. Then there was another Swedish TV series from 2005 to 2013, starring Krister Henriksson. As if that weren’t enough, there is this BBC production, shot in ... Read more »
Bridge of Spies
Inspired by real events. Based on a true story. These words almost guarantee you’re getting a highly fictionalized account. I wouldn’t trust more than half the stuff you see in this movie. Fact: Rudolf Abel (real name Vilyan Genrikhovich Fisher) was a Soviet spy who was arrested and convicted in 1957. Fact: Francis Gary Powers was a U-2 pilot for the CIA who was shot down over the USSR. ... Read more »
George Gently
Another of those cop shows the British do so well. Martin Shaw portrays Gently, an Inspector for the constabulary of Northumberland, the northernmost county in England. He is assisted and supplied with a lot of very good comic relief by Sergeant John Bacchus, who is ambitious, impulsive, and no better than he has to be. Gently is a fully realized character, devoted to his job but seldom ... Read more »
Annie
Every now and then there is a movie idea so stupid it should have been aborted in the womb. Hey, let’s remake that musical about the little girl with the empty eyes and the one red dress. Let’s update it to the 21st century, and let’s have Annie be black. (Not a bad idea in itself, but there’s more!) Let’s change Daddy Warbucks to a cell phone mogul named Will Stacks. Let’s re-write the ... Read more »
The Keeping Room
Three women, two white and one slave (Brit Marling, Hailee Steinfeld, and Muna Otaru), are trying to stay alive in the closing days of the Civil War in the South, and must fight off two renegade Union soldiers. It’s possible I might have liked this film if two things had been different. One, I admit I wasn’t really in the mood for a film this bleak, so it may have colored my judgement. But ... Read more »
Tracks
In America there is the Appalachian Trail, 2200 miles long and a very tough hike, but only the bunny course compared to the Pacific Crest Trail, which starred in the recent movie Wild. There is nothing like it in Australia, so far as I know, so a crazy woman named Robyn Davidson made her own. Starting out in what must be the most godawful town in the ... Read more »
A Walk in the Woods
Bill Bryson is one of my favorite non-fiction writers. He is wryly funny and observant, self-deprecating, able to puncture the pretensions of people wherever he travels. At one point in his life he decided to hike the Appalachian Trail, which begins in northern Georgia and ends in Maine, almost at the Canadian border. (There is an extended trail that runs from Key West to the northern tip ... Read more »
Oscar Nominated Shorts 2015
Seeing these films that hardly anyone ever sees either before or after the Oscars has become a yearly ritual with us, since we began seeing them at the Academy Theater in Beverly Hills. Here in Portland they are shown at the non-profit Hollywood Theater. We both agreed that this year’s crop was not quite up to the high standards we have come to expect.
Animated:
Bear Story ...
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Labyrinth of Lies
What did you do in the War, Daddy? My generation in America and Britain can ask that question of our fathers and not have to worry about finding out the old man was a fucking Nazi, or even worse, a fucking SS Nazi. Not so in post-War Germany. So what did the fathers’ generation do in the years after the War? Why, they re-wrote history. That, or ignored it, pretended it never even happened. ... Read more »
Foyle’s War
It is 1940, England is at war and it’s not going so well. British forces have been defeated in Norway, even though they outnumbered the Nazis 13,000 to 2,000. They are getting their butts whipped in Belgium and France, too. Dunkerque is not far in the future. Christopher Foyle is a detective in Hastings, Sussex, in the south of the country, doing his bit on the home front. A lot of his ... Read more »