Thinking Out Loud

Category: Movies

Movie Reviews

  • Kelly Macdonald and Bill Nighy bond over extreme poverty in The Girl in the Café

    Kelly Macdonald and Bill Nighy bond over extreme poverty in The Girl in the Café

    Richard Curtis and David Yates’ The Girl in the Café, a BBC movie aired in the US on HBO, was incredibly cute, and my heartstrings were indeed pulled, but I couldn’t shake the sense the love story was mere dressing for the real purpose of the film: explicating the issue of extreme poverty to help warm the public up for Live 8. Of course, I feel heartless for criticizing this aspect of it.

    Plus, the age difference between Bill Nighy and Kelly Macdonald was so vast that — forget about their characters’ conflict over whether to battle or defer to stubborn politicians — it’s an issue unto itself. But if possible to overlook that, it’s a perfectly charming and lovely movie.

    Reykjavik should hereby pass an ordinance decreeing its name shall heretoforth be spoken only in Macdonald’s Scottish accent.

  • Eight Below

    Eight Below

    More dogs! Fewer people! In fact, how about no people at all? Then this two-plus hour slog could be transformed into a nice hour of lovely nature photography and cute fluffy pups fighting adversity.

    I hope Disney makes it clear this is a PG film not for the really little ones, for there’s a scene in there that scared the bejeezus out of a room full of seasoned adults. But it is often too cute; most notably in the scene where the dogs suddenly begin “talking” to each other. And the lovable canines remain plump and well-groomed despite starving in the tundra for 3 months.

  • The 40 Year Old Virgin

    The 40 Year Old Virgin

    Like Something About Mary and American Pie, sometimes the most well-observed character-based comedies come in disguise as crass gross-outs. They also have a tendency towards saccharine sweetness, but there are worse crimes.

  • La Cité des enfants perdus (The City of Lost Children)

    La Cité des enfants perdus (The City of Lost Children)

    After having my mind blown by Delicatessen in college, I managed to catch The City of Lost Children in the 1995 Cambridge, England film festival. Any bits of my brain left over were blown out again.

  • Lord of War is a Nicolas Cage treasure hidden in plain sight

    Lord of War is a Nicolas Cage treasure hidden in plain sight

    I initially dismissed Lord of War when the trailers and posters first appeared. In other words, it got caught in the crude mental filters that routinely handle my first-pass “ignore” of all the crap that flows through my eyes and ears all day every day. But when my regular email newsletter from Amnesty International endorsed the film, it seemed possible this was something more substantial than National Treasure.

    And it is. In an impressive marketing slight-of-hand, Lions Gate marketed it as an action comedy. But like Syriana, Lord of War is actually a very strongly-felt topical film loosely based on actual events. It has a more human and darkly comedic tone than Syriana, which often felt like a very consciously-constructed intellectual puzzle. But on the other hand, Syriana‘s strict focus is perhaps a virtue; Lord of War‘s several dramatic plotlines involving the main character’s marriage and wayward brother don’t always sit very well against the larger themes of entrenched human violence.

    For another Nicolas Cage treasure hidden in plain sight, I recommend Ridley Scott‘s Matchstick Men.

  • Red Eye

    Red Eye

    I had heard Red Eye was a refreshingly unpretentious thriller that played on Americans’ changed relationship with air travel in a post 9/11 world. While technically true, it’s actually a very disappointing runaround decidedly lacking in the most routine pleasures that come with thrillers. Where’s the expected third-act twist? Is the twist that there actually isn’t one?

  • Woody Allen’s Match Point plays with your sympathies

    Woody Allen’s Match Point plays with your sympathies

    Woody Allen’s Match Point is fantastic. Brilliant. Morally complex. Almost unbearably intense. It plays with your sympathies in way I haven’t seen since Hitchcock’s Frenzy (which I personally found cruel and sadistic, unlike Match Point). Up there with Crimes & Misdemeanors among Allen’s best.

  • Manhattan

    Manhattan

    Amazingly, upon a second viewing I didn’t care for Woody Allen’s Manhattan nearly as much as I remembered. Perhaps its status in the canon has retroactively enhanced my opinion. But it still inspires as a big, fat, sloppy kiss to my city, and a poster of Woody & Diane beneath the Brooklyn Bridge hangs on my wall.

  • King Kong (1976)

    King Kong (1976)

    About the only saving graces of this piece of gorilla dung are: A) Jessica Lange actually does a pretty good Marilyn Monroe, and B) Seeing the movie now provides some unintentional emotional oomph: Kong is actually drawn into Manhattan by the primal lure of the World Trade Center.

    Whose idea was it for Kong to walk upright? Would it have been too much work for the guy in the suit to hunch over and drag his knuckles a little? And he throws like a girl.

  • The New World

    The New World

    Why didn’t I know better? Although I stand apart from nearly all (it seems) critics and fellow cineastes, I disliked Terrence Malick’s Badlands, Days of Heaven, and Thin Red Line. And The New World is, of course, more of the same.

    The problem isn’t necessarily the pacing, although it is indeed punishingly slow. It’s partly the storytelling technique of mumbled interior monologues of inarticulate characters grappling with giant issues beyond their comprehension, in voiceover over admittedly gorgeous nature photography.

    Sample sequence from Thin Red Line: shot of stream running over eroded boulder. US Grunt: “Why… are… we… KILLIN’… each udder… in duh jungle…?” Shot of pelican. Repeat.

    And this was a screening of The New World Director’s Cut, with twenty additional minutes! Arrrrrgh.