Big Fish 2003
125 minutes I had forgotten that
I had seen this, and I’m glad I saw it again.
A young reporter played by Billy Crudup tries to find the truth behind
the obvious lies told by his father, played by Albert Finney and Ewan
McGregor. In flashbacks we see the”lies”
played out in a series of almost magical adventures. The fanciful stories told by Albert Finney
may not be totally accurate but there turns out to be a lot of truth in
them. I could see this again, if only to
admire the two Chinese actresses who play Siamese twins with two fully
developed upper bodies but only one pair of legs. They come to Finney’s funeral, a joyous
occasion after he died happy and reconciled with his son.
Galileo 1975
138 minutes This is an English
version developed by Charles Laughton of Berthold Brecht’s play about the 17th
C mathematician, physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei. In Brecht’s interpretation, Galileo is always
strapped for money, always complaining that he needs undisturbed time for pure research,
and sometime a bit of a charlatan, as when he presented the elite businessmen
of Venice with a telescope as the product of 17 years research when actually he
had gotten the idea some days or weeks before from a young Dutchman who had
seen telescopes in Holland. The main
action, of course, is his battle of wits with the church about whether the
earth is the center of the universe or a planet that orbits around a minor
star, the sun. Topol as Galileo leads a
distinguished cast of British actors.
This film may be old and it looks just like it has been adapted from a
play written for live theater, but it is well worth seeing. Of particular interest are the arguments put forward
by the clergy to defend the indefensible.
Machete 2010
105 minutes Robert Rodriguez’s
best movie is probably still El Mariachi,
which he made for about $12,000. That
became a trilogy; budgets were not so limited for the second and third films
after investors saw the success of the first one. He could even afford Johnny Depp. Machete follows in the same blood and
guts tradition, with the good guys finally slaughtering enough bad guys to see
that justice is done. Danny Trejo plays
the title role, an ex- Federale on the run from a drug lord named Torres, who
tried and failed to kill him. He gets
involved in a bogus assassination attempt in a border town and eventually finds
out that the bad guys are in league with Torres in the drug business. You know Rodriguez has hit the big time when
he can cast Robert De Niro, Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba,
Steven Seagal and Cheech Marin. Marin
plays a priest who videos what goes on in the confessional and gets himself
crucified by the bad guys. Jessica Alba
wastes one of the bad guys by sticking her high heel in his eye. The
whole thing is implausible, ridiculous, gory and funny. It’s part one of a Machete trilogy.
Phineas and
Ferb: Across the Second Dimension 2011
78 minutes This is a Disney kids
flick which I pulled up on Netflix instant view for my grand children. They had already watched it a couple of times
in their car on a DVD and planned to watch it again on their way home. They seemed to like it, and I have to admit
it was rather inventive. The animation
wasn’t even close to Japanese standards – more like Saturday morning cartoons,
but the concept was interesting.
Taken 2 2012
91 minutes If it wasn’t clear
before, it is now. Don’t mess with Liam
Neeson when he’s playing Bryan Mills. Mills
and his wife are abducted by relatives of the Albanian thugs and white slavers
he had killed in Taken. They are after Mill’s daughter too, but with
guidance from Mills on a phone he had secreted in his boot she evades the
kidnappers and helps her parents escape.
I lost track of how many bad guys Mills killed and how many police cars
got wasted in a car chase down the narrow streets and through the markets of
Istanbul. It’s all pretty simplistic,
but Neeson is fun to watch in action.
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