There is so much to love about this obscure (to me at least) film from the mid-eighties. Willie is a mobster who ratted out his whole gang in London and ran off to sun-soaked Spain. 10 years later a couple of hitmen are sent to bring him back to Paris so that he can be …
Category: Film
Pusher (Nicolas Winding Refn – 1996) A
Hyper and fast. It's a week or so in the life of a low-level drug dealer who messes up a deal and now he is trying desperately to find money from somewhere anywhere so that he can live another day. It's like hanging with real-life versions of Vincent and Jules from Pulp Fiction. I say …
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson – 2021) A
A beautiful perfectly constructed tapestry of a movie. The framing device (more like devices) is that the French Dispatch is a weekly published in a fictitious town called Ennui, France as a dispatch from the parent newspaper based in Liberty, Kansas. The film is the final issue since the editor (Bill Murray) just passed away …
Continue reading The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson – 2021) A
The Feast (Lee Haven Brown – 2021) D
A piece of forgettable horror drivel. Not particularly creative, not scary, no one to really care about. I think it is supposed to have an eco-message of some sort. Too bad the first Welsh-language film I have ever seen is this garbage.
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock – 1954) A-
I love how the apartments across from L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) are all flat, the rooms go nicely longways in a line. Very convenient for him to watch all that is going on in every room as he recuperates from a broken leg. One of those neighbors might've killed his wife. Mr. Jeffries is convinced …
The Last Duel (Ridley Scott – 2021) A
I want to see so much more of what Ridley Scott is going to be doing if it is stuff like this in his late 80s! This is a brilliant Rashomon-style telling of a true story from the middle ages in France. Told from three perspectives and centering on an incident of sexual assault whose …
Nobody (Ilya Naishuller – 2021) B+
John Wick plus a lot of Taken plus dashes of Rambo shake it all with Bob Odenkirk's light charm and we got a fun action romp. Also...Christopher Lloyd as a badass! Who knew.
The Card Counter (Paul Schrader – 2021) B-
Oscar Isaac delivers with a very good performance as an ex-military interrogator who learned card counting in prison and is now a professional gambler. Of course he caries trauma and baggage from his time applying "enhanced interrogation techniques" for which he was one of the few who served time for since he was in some …
Rope (Alfred Hitchcock – 1948) B+
Is the James Stewart character, Rupert, a bit too smart here? Perhaps. On the other hand what the hell was Brandon thinking making the nervous mess Phillip his partner in his psychotic plan. This film is almost 80 yet it suffers nothing from the age. Tight, macabre with homosexual subtext and discussions of murder over …
Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar (Josh Greenbaum – 2021) C-
I really wanted to like this one. Jamie Dornan does an excellent and unexpectedly funny job (mostly), I loved every scene with Damon Wayans Jr's character as well. The whole thing, well, let's just say it was mostly annoying and not terribly funny. It does deserve some credit for really shooting to be something different …
Continue reading Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar (Josh Greenbaum – 2021) C-
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