Movie Reviews
Fahrenheit 451
Science fiction movies from this era are usually a mixed bag, at best. Most of them totally suck. A very few have something intelligent to say. I thought this one was a little of both. It was not a happy production, François Truffaut being uncomfortable working in English, a language he never did master, and Oskar Werner behaving like a prima donna asshole most of the time. The screenplay ... Read more »
Cut Bank
A couple are out on the flowery prairie filming a promo for their little town when, in the background, a USPS truck stops and someone gets out of another car and shoots the mailman. Or does he? Very quickly we find out that all is not what it seems.
This will remind you of Blood Simple or A Simple Plan, maybe even of Read more »
Kingsman: The Secret Service
Samuel L. Jackson is a crazy billionaire with a hair-brained plan for world peace that involves killing about six billion of the seven billion people now living. He plans to do this by giving out free SIMM cards to everyone who has a cell phone, which by now must be at least six billion people. Trouble is, when he activates them people go into a berserker rage, ... Read more »
Ex Machina
Here’s a story idea: A young, naïve scientist is summoned to a mountaintop castle where a mad scientist is laboring to create life. He has done it, but his creation is not happy, wants to get out and see the larger world …
No, that sounds a little too familiar. How about this one: A beautiful maiden is held captive in his castle by a beast. A young man falls in love with her and ... Read more »
Tommy
I really miss Ken Russell. He may have been one of the most uneven directors to ever stand behind a camera, his work being all over the map including some dreadful ones, but that’s largely because he was always willing to take a chance, to try something new. When he was at his best, there was no one in the world who could touch him for startling imagery, except maybe Stanley Kubrick. His ... Read more »
Ocean’s 11
In the right part, Frank Sinatra was a pretty good actor. I’m thinking of roles like Von Ryan’s Express, The Detective, and The Manchurian Candidate. This is not one of those roles. Akim Tamiroff can also be good, but he’s given nothing to work with here other than going apoplectic every two minutes or so. ... Read more »
Class Action
I felt tired no more than fifteen minutes into this. Gene Hackman is a Crusading Lawyer who is beginning a case against a car maker whose vehicles have a slight tendency to bursts into flames when rear-ended. We’ve seen him a million times before, and usually played better. His daughter, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, has sold her soul to a huge firm and cares about nothing but making ... Read more »
The Other Man
Liam Neeson thinks he is happily married to Laura Linney, but in the early scenes it is clear that she is at least thinking about having an affair. And then she is gone, without explanation. Sorting through her stuff, he finds evidence that she has been seeing Antonio Banderas for at least a few years. He is enraged, tracks him down. He is a handsome and wildly romantic Latin lover, ... Read more »
You Kill Me
I’ve felt for a long time that Téa Leoni is one of the most underrated actors working today. She’s great at comedy, anyway. Here she gets involved with Ben Kingsley, who is an alcoholic hit man. When the idiot drinks himself to sleep in Buffalo and entirely misses killing the guy he’s supposed to rub out, his boss orders him out to San Francisco to dry out. He’s reluctant at first, as I ... Read more »
Child 44
In 1932 Joseph Stalin artificially engineered a famine that killed (estimates differ) at least five million Ukrainians. Could have been as many as twelve million. This genocide was known as the Holodomor, and most Americans have never heard of it. But if you’re wondering why Ukrainians are less than pleased with murderous pigfucker Vladimir Putin’s illegal theft ... Read more »