A very disappointing documentary about a Marine outpost called ‘Restrepo’ in remote Afghanistan. It had none of the characters, none of the action, none of the suspense, none of the message of Matterhorn, the book about a Marine company in Vietnam that Siri and I had both just finished reading. The use of talking […]
A showcase, if not vanity project, for Patricia Clarkson, the movie stands or falls on how you view her character’s actions. We’re handicapped by not knowing much about where she comes from and what her husband is like, until it is too late. But existing in a kind of vacuum doesn’t excuse her blithe […]
For all appearances, a vanity project for Robert Duvall, who played a character we’ve seen him play many times before, interesting as a sideshow but not the main feature. Bill Murray’s character was the only one with any hint of complexity, but the highly superficial story hardly let him develop it. The story itself made […]
Are foreign films more “realistic” because a) they stick to more realistic plots – e.g., no gratuitous car-chase scenes; or b) because they use actors I’ve never seen before? If Matt Damon had played the young prison guard and Bruce Willis the tough-guy prisoner, would I have reacted as I did to Julianne Moore and Annette […]
The kids may be all right, but this movie was about their parents, and the relationship between Julianne Moore and Annette Bening left me cold. Maybe my unfamiliarity with lesbian couples, in person or onscreen, influenced my lack of understanding; but the director’s obsession with showing us a lesbian couple bothered me, especially when these […]
An attempt at mind-bending with convoluted plot and visual pyrotechnics, Inception winds up a silly movie that makes no sense on any of its purported four levels. While that is not unusual in Holllywood films today and could be somewhat forgiven if the acting were enjoyable, Christopher Nolan’s movie also suffers from horrid miscasting and […]
The milieu is the costar of this story of a heroic 17-year-old girl’s fight to save her family’s home from the bail bondsman. It’s remarkable that director Debra Granik could find so many scrungy-looking hillbillies who could act so naturally. The people live by their own moral code, but they also raise livestock, cook, sing […]
The contrast, on back-to-back nights, between Donald Margulies’ new play, Time Stands Still, and a revival of the Arthur Miller chestnut, A View from the Bridge, made me reflect that a golden age of drama, like the Greeks experienced or like the Rodgers and Hammerstein era of the musical, has passed. Margulies’ work was facile […]
This movie signifies the decline of French civilization, or French cinema, or the career of Alain Resnais. Or maybe, as other reviewers claim, it is a masterpiece. To me, nothing made sense. Unlike Marienbad, where inscrutability created a mood and fomented ratiocinization, here the musical score was unduly portentous and the characters left me cold. I […]
A pitch-perfect sendup of the music business, school of Spinal Tap. Numerous laugh-out-loud scenes mixed with man-love, gross sex, and nebbishy boy-girl love – the Judd Apatow formula that I’m a sucker for. Sean Combs was a revelation – give that man an Oscar! – while Russell Brand and Jonah Hill were brilliant. (How did […]
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