Movie Reviews
Encounters at the End of the World (Second Review)
When the producers of this film asked Werner Herzog to make a film in Antarctica, he told them he wouldn’t make one more film about fluffy penguins. I don’t think anyone expected that he would, Werner is not that sort of film-maker. He has always been interested in extremes, in human behavior, in environment, in just about anything. So what he made is an excellent study of many things down ... Read more »
Death in Paradise
Ben Miller, of the sketch comedy team of Armstrong and Miller, is D.I. Richard Poole, a painfully straight-laced cop who is sent to the tiny island of Saint Marie in the Caribbean to solve the murder of another cop. He does, and then finds himself re-assigned to this “tropical paradise,” which he hates. The heat, the lack of resources, and worst of all, the impossibility of getting a ... Read more »
Jupiter Ascending
It’s all just another super-detailed video game, isn’t it? As in so many movies these days, your jaw will drop from the detail work that went into the settings and the super-fast action scenes … and if you’re anything like me, your jaw will drop again in a big, fat, yawn. It’s the yawn that will remain in your memory. You won’t know much about what’s going on, and you won’t much care. ... Read more »
Ladies in Retirement
Ida Lupino is the housekeeper-companion to a retired lady whose money seems to have come from prostitution. The lady has been very good to her, but Ida abuses her kindness by bringing in her “crazy” sisters, who are about to be put into an institution. It’s going to be for a few days, but it stretches into months, and finally the lady is at wits end and orders them all out. Ida, who has ... Read more »
Ginger and Rosa
It is 1962 and these BFFs are seventeen. Ginger’s father is the worst sort of “idealist:” one who rejects all the rules of society, especially the ones that are inconvenient for him. Iconoclast, non-conformist, pacifist, he went to gaol rather than even drive an ambulance or be a medic in the war with Hitler, which is admirable in my book. But when Rosa begins to fall for him, he lets it ... Read more »
Welcome to Me
Borderline Personality Disorder is not insanity, it’s not quite schizophrenia, it’s not bipolar disorder, it’s not quite neurotic depression or dysthymia. It is said to be on the borderline between psychosis and neurosis, but what I think it really is, is a crock of shit. It is one more chunk of the population, carved out by the headshrinking profession in their steady march toward the ... Read more »
American Sniper
What I’d like to do first is review this as just a movie, a war movie, without all the baggage it has gathered. The right embraced it, the left condemned it, which made the right embrace it even more. (As always, the best way to get people to buy something is to tell them it’s not good for them, and they shouldn’t like it. I’m sure Clint Eastwood was delighted with every attack on this ... Read more »
Much Ado About Nothing
Hey, gang! Joss has got this swell house in the Santa Monica hills where we could get together on Sundays and read plays and stuff. It’s got lots of rooms, and in the garden there is an actual Greek amphitheater. Must have cost him major bucks, but he sure as heck has them from directing The Avengers. Hey, we could maybe even do Shakespeare!
If it sounds ... Read more »
The Fantasticks
Harvey Schmidt and Tom “Not the Singer” Jones wrote a small musical based on a rather silly story by the great Edmund Rostand (Cyrano de Bergerac), with a touch of Romeo and Juliet and {A Midsummer Night’s Dream,}} among several other influences. It opened off-Broadway on May 3, 1960, with Jerry Orbach starring … and closed in 2002, ... Read more »
Wild Tales
Part One: Pasternak. A man and a woman get to talking aboard an airliner as it is taking off. She speaks of her first boyfriend, Pasternak, a failed composer who she dumped many years ago. Upon hearing the name the man tells her, with some surprise, that he is a music critic, and was on the panel who totally ravaged Pasternak’s work and ruined his musical career. Behind him, a woman can’t ... Read more »