The Agony and the
Ecstasy 1965 138 minutes
I guess we can blame Irving Stone, the author of the novel , for any
historical inconsistencies. Charlton
Heston was about perfect as the crabby, unwashed, and temperamental
Michelangelo. Rex Harrison as the
mercurial Julius II had a bit of Henry Higgins in him, but he made it work, and
he got is ceiling painted. That’s an
actor. At the beginning of the film they
did something I’d never seen before; they gave us a little tour and explanation
of some of Michelangelo’s work even before rolling the opening credits. This flick may be old, but it’s still good. For comic relief, there’s a debate whether
the earth is round or flat.
.
Anything Else 2003
109 minutes Yes, I’m trying to
work my way through Woody Allen’s entire oeuvre. This is a bit of fluff about a young writer
in NY named Jerry Falk who falls in love at first sight with Amanda, played by
Christina Ricci. He dumps his fiancé and
has Amanda move in. She’s the girl
friend from hell. Woody Allen plays an
aging comedy writer who has become the Falk’s mentor and is pushing Falk to
move to Hollywood with him to collaborate on a comedy writing job. Falk asks him for advice about Amanda and
Allen is happy to oblige. Eventually
Falk and Amanda part ways and Falk is ready for the Job in Hollywood. He has to go alone, because Woody, who is a
gun nut, has shot a policeman because he objected to a speeding ticket.
.
Bang the Drum Slowly 1973
97 minutes This is a baseball
movie that could have used a little more baseball. Robert De Niro plays a catcher with Hodgkin’s
disease. His friend, who is the team’s
best pitcher, helps him conceal his ailment until they finish the season. Paul Newman played the pitcher in a 1950s
movie of the same story.
.
Cassandra’s Dream 2007
108 minutes This is two first
rate actors, Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell, trying to make something out of a
3rd rate script. Colin has
serious gambling debts and Ewan needs some investment capital. Their rich uncle persuades them to murder a
whistle blower, who is about to take him down.
They do it, which is when I should have turned this off.
.
The Flaw 2011
82 minutes An interesting
documentary on the financial collapse of 2008.
.
Her 2013
126 minutes Joaquin Phoenix
plays a young writer who falls in love, that’s romantic love, with the advanced operating system he
purchased to run his life. I only lasted
a few minutes.
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit 2014
105 minutes With Chris Pine as
Jack, Kenneth Branagh as the Russian bad guy, Kevin Costner as the jaded CIA
agent and Keira Knightly as the clueless girl friend who helps the good guys
save the world, how could you go wrong.
When you know what you’re getting into, it’s easy to suspend belief and
just sit back and watch the car chases.
Melinda and Melinda 2004
105 minutes The film switches
back and forth between two stories. In
both of them Radha Mitchell plays a woman who drops suddenly into the lives of
a married couple. In one story she’s an
old friend known for screwing up her life and needing rescue. In the other she’s a stranger who moves into
the building and needs help. At times I
found it hard to keep the stories separate, because both involved young
affluent New Yorkers living the good life.
It’s pure Woody Allen. You may
like it; I wasn’t sure.
.
The Monuments Men 2014
118 minutes George Clooney leads
a team of somewhat aging art historians, architects and so on in an effort to
recover art stolen in Northern Europe by the Nazis during WW II .
There was concern that the Nazis would destroy the art works when they
finally accepted that they were losing the war.
I had really been looking forward to this film, and I found it a
crashing disappointment. It’s a great
story that somehow got fractured in the transfer to the screen. I haven’t read Robert Edsel’s book, The Monuments Men, but I have to assume
that it is as interesting and moving as Saving Italy, his book on the work of
the monuments men in Italy. Skip the movie
and read one or both of the books.
Page
Eight (Masterpiece Contemporary) 2011
99 minutes Johnny Worricker is
an aging and dedicated MI5 agent, who learns that a major cover up of British
involvement in American torture operations is underway. He has to decide what to do about it. This is as cool and cynical as any spy thriller
I’ve ever seen.
.
Primo Levi’s Journey 2006
92 minutes This was a bit of a disappointment. Levi
survived Auschwitz and then had a long journey home after he was freed by the
Russians. His trip took him east deep
into the USSR before he turned south and then west to get home to Italy. The film goes to all the places he went, but
it seems to be just a travel movie through featureless villages. Maybe I was sleepy, but I didn’t feel like I
learned much about Levi or his trip except that he made it.
.
Spaceballs 1987
96 minutes I will watch anything by Mel Brooks including
this spoof of the Star Wars series. The
best two things in the movie are the female version of C-3PO who accompanies
Princess Vespa and a giant vacuum
cleaner with which Rick Moranis AKA Dark Helmet hopes to steal the air from
Princess Vespa’s planet. Needless to
say, that can’t be allowed and the vacuum lands on a beach. The wreckage looks like the head of the
statue of liberty; as two apes on horseback ride up, one says “There’s goes the
planet.” Oh, and there’s a guy named
Lone Star who is a lot like Hans Solo.
He’s the one who destroyed the vacuum cleaner and rescued Princess Vespa. When he goes to see Yogurt he learns he’s a
prince so he heads back to Vespa’s planet and marries her. George Lukas loved this movie.
.
The Starving Games 2013
83 minutes This is a spoof of
The Hunger Games and, according to Netflix, The Avengers, Sherlock Holmes and the Harry
Potter saga. I wasn’t too aware of references
to anything but the Hunger Games. In any
event it was mildly amusing. Kantmiss is
the heroine. She’s good, but she’s not
Jennifer Lawrence.
.
The Wolf of Wall
Street 2013 179 minutes Martin Scorsese keeps this running at a
frantic clip for nearly 3 hours.
Leonardo DiCaprio, who has experience playing a con man, plays Martin
Belfort who moved from mainline dishonesty on Wall Street to flogging penny
stocks until he had the capital to open
his own totally dishonest brokerage firm. He toys with the FBI until he gets nailed and
plea bargains his way into a relatively brief time in the slammer. It’s all scams, booze, sex, drugs, yachts and
Maserati’s and someone should get a count of the F-words. Perhaps we can develop a new rating scale –
FPM for F-words per minute.
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