Like Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Masterminds takes a dramatic situation and plays it for laughs. A terrific comic thriller could have been made from this real-life caper; what we have instead is a slapstick comedy of errors. The movie makes […]
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The Dressmaker (2015) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
We stay in the South Pacific (following New Zealand’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople) with a quirky tale from Australia entitled The Dressmaker. It is comic, dramatic, mysterious, troubling, heartrending and beautiful — one of the best films of the year. Dress […]
Continue reading »Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) ☆ ☆ ☆
Movies can succeed in many ways, one of which is taking a dramatic story with troubling aspects and making a wacky comedy out of it. That is what has occurred with Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a New Zealand production. An […]
Continue reading »Little Men (2016) ☆ ☆ 1/2
The title doesn’t do this movie any favors, suggesting as it does another Louisa May Alcott edition or a ensemble piece of height-challenged actors. Instead, this realistic drama spotlights how a budding friendship between two adolescent boys is threatened when […]
Continue reading »The Magnificent Seven (2016) ☆ ☆ 1/2
This is film is a textbook example of why remakes of classic films rarely measure up to the originals. The original, a 1960 western, based itself on the 1954 Japanese classic Seven Samurai, is a marvelous film that made stars of […]
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The idea behind this feature is simple. I want my wife Barbara to see more really good older movies, and I want to see more classics myself, so I determined to start a blog wherein we view and review them. […]
Continue reading »Double Indemnity (1944) ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Writer-director Billy Wilder was just reaching his peak in the early 1940s, hitting his first grand slam with this noirish murder mystery. It was so well-received that its two word title, swiped from insurance industry lingo, has become more synonymous […]
Continue reading »Mr. Church (2016) ☆ ☆ ☆
I must confess I had never even heard of this film before my local art house picked it up, and had no idea what it might be. Actually, that situation is a wonderful way to experience a movie, for I […]
Continue reading »Sully (2016) ☆ ☆ ☆
Some events seem destined for movie production; such is the case with “the Miracle on the Hudson,” the January 15, 2009 incident when pilots Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and Jeff Skiles successfully landed an airliner on the Hudson River after a […]
Continue reading »North by Northwest (1959) ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
I love the fact that Cinépolis, a new movie theater company in my area (its big business is in Mexico), is showing revivals of classic movies once a week. Films like A Clockwork Orange, GoodFellas and Alfred Hitchcock’s classic North by Northwest. […]
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