When a documentary maker sets out to chronicle someone’s life, he or she never knows if something dramatic will occur that will make the finished documentary exciting, emotional, or at least interesting. In this case, the story of horse trainer Buck Branaman, nothing happened and the result is, frankly, boring. If watching horses in a […]
There was no shortage of ambition, or pretension, in Terrence Malick’s fifth opus, which complements, for some reason, the evolution of the universe with the arc of one average man’s (Malick’s?) life in Waco, Texas. Young Jack has steely eyes, and his bildungsroman might have made a good story, although how he morphs into the […]
A quintessential samurai movie (I forget the Japanese word for this genre), replete with the gathering of ronin, the revenge motive, the uncouth jester, and the bloody battle at the end. There is a hint, maybe more, of a larger message: what a waste this is, wouldn’t it be better if we devoted our energies […]
After wandering out of Bad Teacher, I dropped in to the adjoining theater to see why the local paper had given this movie four stars. Accordingly, I didn’t see the first twenty minutes, but I sort of think that any “explanation” I missed is beside the point. This was E.T. for the age of video games, and […]
A vile movie. If the moviemakers’ idea of fun is mocking public school teachers as fat, naive and overly conscientious and contrasting them with a glib, irresponsible gold-digging character played by glamorous Cameron Diaz, then my audience didn’t get it. After fifteen minutes of buffoonery producing nary a laugh, I quit the theater, not wishing to […]
When a movie has a simple message to deliver, it can do a lot worse than getting Owen Wilson to deliver it. Moreover, he was the best Woody Allen-character surrogate I can remember, channeling Woody’s physical moves and intonations without the harsh edge or credulity strain when beautiful women fall for him. That simple message and […]
An impeccable documentary, if there is such a thing, telling the story of chess master Bobby Fischer from beginning to end. The interviews were just the right length: all contributed to the story’s momentum and came from people who seemed to know whereof they spoke. The climax of the Spassky match was folded neatly into […]
The plot, I think, ultimately made no sense, and many steps along the way weren’t credible, but the journey itself was powerful and disturbing. The two women actors, especially the daughter played by Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin , were extraordinary, and the overall depiction of Arab-on-Arab violence was hauntingly, and depressingly, real for someone who lived with […]
A trifle, although being French and filmed on Corsica, it was not without interest. The basic premise was absurd – an uneducated chambermaid goes from nothing to chess champion in a few months, and remains beautiful while staying up to practice all night and holding down two jobs during the day. Then there is the […]
“Cute,” was the word I heard most often from the decidedly older crowd leaving the Friday night $3 movies at the Hopkins Cinema, and that struck me as just about perfect. Like an Adam Sandler movie, it was sweet-spirited, with the bad guys not really being bad, just pompous. Sure, no one could be as […]
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