No Country for Old Men. For what it was, this was perfection, and what it was was quite something. Each scene was a stunning set piece, and built momentum to the next. Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin gave Oscar-worthy performances,
There was nothing new here and the presentation got repetitive. On the other hand, it is always instructive to see archival footage of the civil rights movement and to recognize, however bad matters today may be, just how far our country has come. Another way to put it is, it’s shocking to see how bad […]
This was a well-made dramatic reenactment of a little known chapter in the book of the FBI’s corrupt oppression of black leaders in the ’60s, a period we’ve visited in other recent films: Chicago 7, MLK/FBI, One Night in Miami. It didn’t, at least for me, go much below the surface. There was no ambiguity […]
I spent the whole movie wondering where it was going, and at the end I still didn’t know. Were we supposed to be impressed by how Ruben, the heavy metal drummer, was handling his deafness, or depressed? Was he courageous or reckless? It seemed, by the last shot, that he had thrown everything away, but […]
A very brave movie, in that it confirmed, indeed celebrated, all my negative stereotypes about India and Indians: corrupt, servile, class-bigoted and dirty, for starters. Politics and religion don’t come off much better. Nor does the movie sugarcoat anything with a happy ending. Our star, “the white tiger,” rises to the top by murdering his […]
It must be hard to make a dramatically interesting movie about archaeology, based on the evidence of The Dig. To keep things moving, the writers threw in an unrelated plane crash, a love affair between the mousy bride of a gay archaeologist and the proprietor’s dashing cousin, a buffoonish museum curator and the rapidly approaching death […]
The third installment of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series continued the story of systemic racism in, now, 1980s London, as (real-life) Leroy Logan, portrayed by the excellent John Boyega, tries to integrate, and humanize, the local police force. By now, whenever we see a white cop we assume the worst. More interesting is the exploration […]
How did I miss this in 2014? I’m a sucker for any rock star biopic and James Brown is…well, James Brown. Forget Ma Rainey, Chadwick Boseman’s performance as the “hardest-working man in show business” is over-the-top Oscar-worthy. Somehow executive music producer Mick Jagger synced great performances of Brown’s best hits with Boseman’s electric acting. Throw in […]
The idea of four iconic Black men from disparate fields meeting in a hotel room the night of the Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston fight in 1964 is an intriguing conceit for a stage play, which this was, but it hasn’t been translated to the screen. This was one of the slower movies I’ve watched; it seemed […]
“Mr. Rogers time-travels to North Texas c. 1870.” This movie was so hokey and so Tom Hanksy that I bailed after 30 minutes, despite the luscious photography and the hefty $19.99 streaming price.
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