Tag: movies

“I’ll be back.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Terminator (1984) Elegy (2008) There’s absolutely no doubt this movie is based on a Philip Roth novel (the novel in question being The Dying Animal): it’s a melancholy, self-absorbed examination of an aging man’s character, all flaws prominently on display. Ben Kingsley and Dennis Hopper are perfect in […]

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” — Gone With the Wind (1939) The Fall (2006) That movies like this can even be made is a hopeful sign that not every single miserable thing in this cynical world is about money. The film is visually spectacular, and there’s no CGI . . . it’s […]

“Never judge a book by its movie.” —J.W. Eagan Body of Lies (2008) Did you enjoy watching Bruce Willis bleed in the Die Hard movies? Then you’ll love Leonardo DiCaprio in Body of Lies: he suffers enough to satisfy the most hardened CIA enhanced interrogator. The real hoot is Russell Crowe as a slobby middle-aged […]

Resurrecting the Champ (2006) You may not be a fan of boxing — and I’m not — but like Million Dollar Baby, this movie sucks you in. Okay, perhaps a little slow to get rolling, but it gets better and better as it unfolds. The real story’s not about boxing, of course; it’s about journalistic […]

Downfall (2004) If you have even the slightest interest in WWII in Europe, Downfall is a must-see. Who isn’t fascinated by Hitler? I lived in Germany in the mid-1950s and the images are still with me: bombed out buildings, walls with bullet holes, kids my age with twisted legs from rickets, women everywhere, almost no […]

Cleaner (2007) I didn’t know this was a straight-to-DVD release until after I’d watched it. Might that have influenced my decision to rent it? Probably, so I’m glad I didn’t know, because I really enjoyed the movie. Great cast, interesting story. Okay, maybe not the most brilliant movie, but if TV was this good I’d […]

The Counterfeiters (2008) When Germans of the current generation face their past, they do it with utter honesty. For all the Hobbesian bleakness inherent in this movie’s subject — “continual fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” — there’s a weak ray of triumph at […]

It’s in the dictionary, somewhere between “shit” and “syphillis.” Two quick reviews of movies whose main characters I could not sympathize with: Secretary (2002) My wife got up and stomped out of the room halfway through, mumbling about perverts . . . and the seriously perverted stuff hadn’t even started yet! Self-mutilation and sadomasochism, the […]