Movie Reviews
Titles starting with A
Amandla: A Revolution in Four Part Harmony
Tells of the role music played in the fight against apartheid. The best-known musicians here are Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela. But all the music is good.
Amarcord
Some days I think that Federico Fellini’s early, neo-realism films are his finest achievements. The some days I think it was surreal, dreamy, visually stunning films like this one, Juliet of the Spirits, and 8½ were his crowning glory. Some days it just depends on what Fellini film I’m looking at. For some reason I had never seen this ... Read more »
The Amateurs
I almost couldn’t find this at the IMDb. Turns out the original title was The Moguls. Jeff Bridges, a loveable small-town loser (very much like his performance in The Big Lebowski) joins with his quirky, loveable small-town lower ... Read more »
Amazing Grace
This is a fairly routine biopic. Not anything to dislike, unless you are a student of history, and I understand there are the usual elisions and compressions and little facts changed for dramatic purposes. But there’s really not a lot to like, either. Like I said, routine, nothing new. It’s a good story, of how one man (of course, it was really a lot more than that in the ... Read more »
Amelia
This movie pissed me off. The life of Amelia Earhart really cries out for a good movie, but this one just manages to be boring. I know there are problems to be solved, but I don’t think the screenwriter solved any of them. For one thing, there’s the problem that everyone knows exactly how she died. I think the decision ... Read more »
Amelie
One of the best films of 2001. Audrey Tautou is the most charming actress working now, and in this film she sets out to do good and right wrongs, in her own idiosyncratic way. It was written and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who created the extremely odd Read more »
Amen
From Costa-Gavras, the Greek director who specializes in political thrillers. In this one, set during WWII, a German chemical engineer is drafted into the SS (I thought you had to volunteer to be one of those cocksuckers, but never mind) to devise a way to make safe drinking water for troops in the field. He ends up ... Read more »
America in Color
I am totally opposed to the colorization of classic (or even recent) black and white films. I view it as vandalization. However, using the process on old newsreel or home movie footage yields results that are surprisingly effective. The process has come a long way since the ‘80s, when Ted Turner and others first started using it. This series, from the Smithsonian Channel, takes film from ... Read more »
The American
I guess it’s not all that unlikely that you could have an intelligent, tense, spy movie with a major box-office star and be only moderately successful. This one made its money back, but wasn’t the hit it ought to have been. In fact, I barely heard of it until I saw the DVD listed. George Clooney plays an enigmatic man ... Read more »
American Animals
In 2004 a group of four students at Transylvania University (yeah, there is such a place, in Kentucky) decide life is too boring. They need some excitement. They decide to rob the school library of its most precious possessions, including a first printing of Darwin’s Origin of the Species and a copy of the Double Elephant Folio of Audubon’s Read more »