B Historical drama Written by Michel Marc Bouchard Directed by Mika Kaurismäki Few screenwriters can effectively boil down a monarch's career into 106 minutes. To do it right, you have to decide on what is important, create composite characters, and rearrange the order of events. In other words, you have to turn fact into fiction. … Continue reading Too much history in The Girl King
Category: Drama
Drama
A+ List: Ikiru; also a Blu-ray review
A bureaucrat, emotionally dead and cut-off from both his job and his family, discovers that he has only months to live. He has scarce time to make his empty life meaningful. He will find that meaning in Akira Kurosawa's 1952 masterpiece, Ikiru. The name translates into English as To Live. Note: I re-edited this article on … Continue reading A+ List: Ikiru; also a Blu-ray review
Truth tells the story of a disastrous hoax
B Recent historical drama Written and directed by James Vanderbilt As the 2004 presidential election came to its climax, CBS' 60 Minutes news program covered a story that should have ruined George W. Bush's chance of re-election. But an important piece of evidence turned out to be fake, turning it into a scandal about the … Continue reading Truth tells the story of a disastrous hoax
Searching for the root of all evil: My review of Experimenter
A- Biopic Written and directed by Michael Almereyda Why do so many people do what they're told, even when the orders given to them are manifestly immoral? That's what social phycologist Stanley Milgram set out to discover in the early 1960s. His testing methods were controversial, but his results could not be ignored. Michael Almereyda's engaging … Continue reading Searching for the root of all evil: My review of Experimenter
Pride, decency, nationalism, and the Bridge of Spies (also the Mill Valley Film Festival screening in Corte Madera)
A- Espionage drama Written by Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen Directed by Steven Spielberg Two superpowers, each hating and fearing the other as a military and ideological enemy, face each other off. Neither wants to back down. Neither wants to give an inch. But both know full well that if their cold war … Continue reading Pride, decency, nationalism, and the Bridge of Spies (also the Mill Valley Film Festival screening in Corte Madera)
A+ List: Grand Illusion
Most movies are forgotten five years after their release. The masterpieces last decades. And so I continue with my survey of my all-time favorite films--my A+ list. Early in Jean Renoir's 1937 POW tale, a German officer announces that he just shot down a plane. He orders an underling to find and a capture the … Continue reading A+ List: Grand Illusion
Four nights at the movies: The Crowd, Preston Sturges, a Teenage Girl, & 2 Noirs
I managed to see four feature films theatrically in the last four nights--plus another on television. Sunday: The Crowd My wife and I, along with another couple, went to the Castro to see one of the greatest silent films ever made, and arguably the most difficult American masterpiece to see, King Vidor's The Crowd. I've … Continue reading Four nights at the movies: The Crowd, Preston Sturges, a Teenage Girl, & 2 Noirs
Resnais and Stroheim at the Pacific Film Archive
Friday night, I attended two very different screenings at the Pacific Film Archive. The first, Alain Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour, is a widely-acknowledged masterpiece. The other, Erich von Stroheim's Queen Kelly, is the uncompleted final work of great but controversial filmmaker. It was my first experience seeing either film. Hiroshima mon amour Why did it … Continue reading Resnais and Stroheim at the Pacific Film Archive
The A+ List: Five Easy Pieces
Bob Dupea (Jack Nicholson) doesn't play well with others. A blue-collar worker on an oil rig near Los Angeles (such things existed then), he's moody and difficult. He treats Rayette, his live-in waitress girlfriend (Karen Black) horribly. He has one good friend, but he lashes out at him, as well. As we discover reasonably early … Continue reading The A+ List: Five Easy Pieces
Genius in decline: My review of Mr. Holmes
B+ Drama Screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher, from the novel A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin, and the character created by Arthur Conan Doyle Directed by Bill Condon Anyone who loves fiction's most famous detective knows that Sherlock Holmes eventually retired from detective work and moved to Sussex, where he took up beekeeping. … Continue reading Genius in decline: My review of Mr. Holmes
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