Catherine Called Birdy – 3
A silly cartoon of a film about an unappealing, unattractive 14-year-old who comes of (romantic) age in 13th century England. I couldn’t wait for it to end, so I didn’t. Monty Python, where art thou?
Author Archive for: Bob Marshall
Entries by Bob Marshall
Living – 7
A fairly literal relocation of Ikiru, by Akira Kurosawa, from Tokyo to London, with the estimable Bill Nighy playing the role created by the incomparable Takashi Shimura. As I watched, all I could see were the echoes of the Japanese original (somewhat like seeing David Copperfield as I read Demon Copperhead). By cutting 40 minutes from its source, the […]
Till – 7
This was three things: a history lesson, a collection of fine roles for Black actors, and a bravura performance by Danielle Deadwyler as Emmett Till’s mother. The challenge was creating interest in a story that is already familiar–and not a pretty story, at that. For me, it explained why the case of Emmett Till, among […]
Devotion – 6
A buddy film about fighter pilots and their planes that had the bad timing to be released the same year as Top Gun: Maverick. Its only ace was the (true) story of its Black hero overcoming racial discrimination in the military during the Korean War. Curiously, however, Jesse Brown was portrayed by Jonathan Majors with a […]
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – 7
This is all Emma Corrin – and you certainly see all of Emma Corrin. She is gorgeous and affecting as a young woman consumed by her own sexuality. By contrast, the two men in her life are underdrawn, or poorly drawn; and the larger themes involving gender, class and society, that I expect are developed […]
The Fabelmans – 7.5
A portrait of the (cinema) artist as a young man, demonstrating the power of movies, even as we sat in a mostly empty theater. The story was sweet, if conventional, and well told, per usual for Stephen Spielberg. One wonders, though, how it would play if the viewer didn’t know beforehand that the story was […]
Causeway – 5
Talk about a slow movie, this one (on Netflix) practically came to a halt several times, until it finally did. Jennifer Lawrence was fine, and to her credit she didn’t affect a New Orleans accent; can’t say the same about Brian Tyree Henry, though, to the extent I could understand him. Beyond good work from […]
EO – 5
A donkey? Really? Maybe this was a comment on life in Poland (not good) in places the donkey happened to be, although the donkey had no real role, other than looking donkey-like. Times were mostly tough – no respect – and they didn’t come to a happy end.
Top Ten 2021
Without much effort, my Top Ten for 2021 could all be movies made outside the U.S.; only a personal affinity for Don’t Look Up, a movie more scorned by the critics, prevented a shutout. Whether this had anything to do with Covid restrictions on film production, I don’t know. I do know that it relates to […]
The Banshees of Inisherin -8
While the movie was set in 1923 rural Ireland, it could as easily have been written then, by Sean O’Casey or J.M. Synge, so well it captured the tragedy of the Irish: men living a hardscrabble existence, playing music (hence the title), going to the pub, making a mountain out of a molehill and being […]
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