Reviews

There are two movies here: One is Ray Charles on stage, the other is Ray Charles in the rest of his life. The movie begins with Ray (Charles) Robinson leaving Georgia to move to Seattle, and his earlier life is told in flashbacks. The flashbacks are effective in showing the childhood traumas and lessons that drive Ray, but I was not engaged. Even Ray's battles with heroin feel a little off-key. Everything is tied up into a nice little package, and you know that you are watching an authorized biopic.

But who cares? The music is worth the journey. Ray recreated some of his earlier music, and remastered other material. You watch Ray's development from a Nat King Cole wannabe into a man who broke all the barriers in the music industry. With Jamie Foxx's incredible performance, it works. You absolutely feel you are watching the young Ray Charles, it is almost impossible to imagine a better performance. The music gave me chills and brought tears to my eyes.

Jamie Foxx's performance and Ray's music easily overcome the script's limitations.

What is it about the late 1930s that captures the imaginations of screen writers, production designers and art directors?

Filming the movie before a blue screen makes possible a very consistent look, which is pretty...well...consistent. Girls with red liptstick. Men in hats. Planes flying across scenery that turns into maps. Formations of flying robots that look like nightmare Nazi propaganda posters. Airplanes with flapping wings that look like secret weapons of the Luftwaffe. And, oh yeah, a plot.

Jude Law's Sky Captain is poorly exposited. Where does he come from? Does he work for the government? Why is he flying a P-51 Mustang before the beginning of World War II? But he has a sidekick named Dex Dearborne , which gives him the chance to say "Get us out of here, Dex!" You know you're going to be on relatively safe ground.

The intrepid 30's career gal pal is played by Gwenneth Paltrow. She should have reviewed a few Kathryn Hepburn movies, or Jennifer Jason Leigh's delightfully over-the-top fling in Hudsucker Proxy. In any case she doesn't have enough edge, er, moxie. She plays it with a sense of entitlement, and not enough of a chip on her shoulder. Career gals from the 30s had to push hard to get anywhere in a man's world.

Law and Paltrow are on the screen so much that there relationship needs to work, but there is more fizzle than sizzle. There are a couple of genuinely funny bits, and a very cute payoff at the end of the movie, but not enough to believe there is genuine spark. Chalk it up to a script that almost gets you there coupled with actors whose personas are too cool to put it over the top.

The evil German scientist (is there any other kind?) plot is a little to pat, and the movie suffers from not having a bad guy persona to root against. Angelina Jolie gives a great turn as a captain of the dammdest RAF squadron you've ever seen. Many 14-year old boys will be falling to sleep with visions of eye patches dancing in their heads.

The novelty of watching movie made on blue screen never entirely fades, but ultimately, the plot and characters are not up to carrying the load. It's entertaining as a novelty movie, and the look worked for me, but the incomplete plot and lack of chemistry let you down.

Bob Fosse in the 21st Century? Chicago works. Fosse's love/hate relationship with fame and celebrity is showcased in Roaring Twenties Chicago, with the stories of 2 incarcerated murderesses (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger) and their manipulative, cynical attorney (Richard Gere). The movie moves seamlessesly between the external and the inner world of characters, expressed as musical numbers.

Great fun. Well directed and acted. Gere, Zellweger and Zeta-Jones are surprisingly good hoofers and singers. Something to relish in the moment, and hum while getting out of the parking lot.

This movie just wants to be entertaining, and when it's this well done, there ain't nothing wrong with that.

Someone with cajones should recast this as the O.J. Simpson trial.

What makes Chinatown so good? It begins with Robert Towne's screenplay, which resonates on many levels. The story is about water, "Where life begins", as wealthy businessman Noah Cross (John Huston) tells J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson), a private investigator with more moxie than polish. Who controls water has power. Water runs underground, its ebb and flow controlled by forces that we do not understand.

You can think of water as the unconscious, the id, capitalism, the government, the powers that be, insert your own symbolism and it works. It's the classic Noir cosmology: the hero is just a little man in the big city, and there are forces beyond his control that determine his destiny. "You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me you don't", Noah Cross tells Gittes. The implications reverberate through the lives of all the characters.

The production design and cinematography are beautiful. The locations capture the look and feel of pre-WW II Los Angeles. Jerry Goldsmith's score moves from lush and romantic to sparse and dissonant at all the appropriate moments. Roman Polanski shows that a Pole can understand of the American Private Detective tradition as well as the German Billy Wilder. Nicholson has the guts to play a romantic lead with a bandage on his nose through half the movie. John Huston uses his small amount of screen time to create a frightening and memorable portrait of corrupted wealth. If there is a false note in the movie, it might be in the chemistry between Nicholson's Gittes and the beautiful but fragile Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway). While everyone quotes the last line of the movie, Dunaway has a great Noir line: "I don't get tough with anyone, Mr. Gittes. My lawyer does."

This movie deserves its reputation as a classic. You can revisit it many times, and still have fun exploring the labyrinths of Chinatown.

Tom Cruise plays the scion of a publishing empire, who supposedly runs 3 magazines when he's not male bonding or bedding supermodels.

His character is so fundamentally narcissistic and unsympathetic that I found it impossible to care about him. Cruise spends much of the movie giving his "Wow, you just blew my mind" reaction as a way of indelicately telling the audience what a "heavy" movie this is.

I think both the script and the director presupposes that the characters are so attractive that their chemistry will be self-evident. It isn't. Whatever this exercise is trying to say about reality and immortality isn't worth the trip inside these shallow lives.

Can an American director known for his iconoclastic improvisations find success and happiness in an English period piece murder mystery?

Yes, Virginia, it works.

Set in the 1930's, over a ‘shooting' weekend at an English estate, Altman's characteristic layered, overlapping dialogue creates a richly textured Upstairs/Downstairs sociology lesson coupled with an Agatha Christie Murder Mystery. Maybe it's because he's an American (as am I), but I don't think I've ever seen a more enjoyable or lucid exposition of the British class system.

The look of the film is faded and decaying, mirroring the eroding class system it portrays. Juxtaposed to the muted colors are vibrant performances of the ensemble cast. I can't wait for it to come out on DVD so I can hear all the pieces of dialog I missed. If there is one frustration I have in some Altman films, it's hearing all dialog. Make sure you see this movie in a movie house with a good sound system!

As a murder mystery, Altman is sometimes heavy-handed with clues. Unlike some, I found the English Twit inspector (with his long-suffering competent assistant) funny, and at the same time, a believable product of a world where the class system and meritocracy did not see eye to eye.

This is Altman's best film in many years, and one of his best ever. It's great to see him going strong in his 70's.

Blackhawk Down is a war movie without epic scope, and that is both its strength and its weakness. The movie covers a period of a few days in the lijfe of the war-torn capital of Somalia.

The United States, based on sketchy intelligence, launches a mission to capture some top officials of warlord Mohamed Aidid, whose stranglehold on the capital city of Mogadishu was preventing food from reaching starving Somalis.

After seeing what Jerry Bruckheimer did to Pearl Harbor, I'm personally grateful the lack of back story. Mercifully, Ken Nolan keeps the story focused on the action at hand. Ridley Scott has always known make his money show up on the screen, and this movie is no exception. The action is hellish and nonstop. Nolan's script and Scott's direction do an excellent job of conveying the chaos and horror of war, without having the film dissolve into incomprehesibilty.

My biggest criticism would be the lack of information about the U.S. effort in Somalia. This mission seems to exists in a vacuum. While it was a pivot in the U.S. involvement, it begs the question: If the Blackhawk had not gone down, would it have changed our involvement?

Nevertheless, this is a tight and focused movie, not for the faint of heart. Those looking for a film that lets you experience the chaos, horror and camraderie of combat need go no further. Those who are looking for an answer as to why that combat took place should look elsewhere.

I'll always go to a Coen Brothers movie. They are not always successful, but at least they are ambitious. At least they have vision. And so it is with "The Man Who Wasn't there".

This deadpan film noir revolves around a nondescript barber named Ed, whose life is just a little smaller than he hoped, but not much. Ed uses his wife's infidelity to blackmail her lover (and employer), which leads to...well...this IS film noir...

Joel Coen sets Billy Bob Thorton (Ed the Barber) in the eye of the storm. The world whirls around Ed, who remains laconic and calm at the center, but you know that trouble is brewing.

Without giving too much away, I thought the movie was 20 minutes too long, and could have done without flying saucers, and a certain scene of auto-erotica that seemed just too implausible. Billy Bob Thorton, Frances McDormand and Tony Shalhoub give captivating performances. Joel Coen has some great fun with lighting in Black and White. But like "The Big Lebowski" the Coen Brothers seem unable to resist the temptation to put one too many brushstrokes on the canvas.

Worth seeing? Yes, but it could have been better. But the Coens on an off-day are better than most movie makers...

I kept thinking of ‘Body Heat' during this modern noir movie of a small-town bored femme fatale, a rich husband and a man who thinks with the wrong part of his body. Despite numerous shots of a thermometer hovering around 100 degrees, obligatory shots of the ineffectual fan and broken coke machine, you never see anyone sweat in this movie. Just one of the details Dennis Hopper misses. Decent script. Don Johnson, Virginia Madsen and Jennifer Connelly give competent, if not scintillating performances. Madsen is nowhere near Cathleen Turner, but some of the sex is pretty steamy.

The best part of the movie is the music, by Jack Nitzsche, with performances by Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker, and Taj Mahal, among others. It's worth a rental. Try to see it on DVD if possible. If you like blues, consider the soundtrack for your collection.

Grace of my Heart, looooosely based on the life of Carol King, feels like a made-for-television production for the Lifetime Channel.

That is not to say that there wasn't a tremendous amount of work that went into this movie. It is easy to see that the people that made it cared about the subject matter. But the awkward line that the film walks between fact and fiction never allowed me to sink into the story. I was always trying to pin down the characters (Don Kirshner? Leslie Gore? Cindy Weil?) instead of being engrossed in the story. And while the music tries to capture the magic, (Goffin even penned a few tunes) it ain't the original. No song in the film comes close to King/Goffin's `Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?'

Illeana Douglas does a credible turn in the title role, John Turturro struggles a little with the schizophrenic record-producer, cut-throat businessman, creative visionary, but-friend-in-the-end role he's tasked with.

I would have rather seen a film that was free enough to be pure fiction, or honest enough to be more factual.

I'm someone who knows close to zero about ballet. I was drawn to this film by its reputation.

I will leave a detailed analysis of the film to other viewers who know its history. I'll just say that the staging of the actual ballet of ‘The Red Shoes' is brilliant. Powell and Pressberger have managed to take you into the subjective world of the dancers while keeping them on the stage. It is perhaps the finest cinematic representation of art's magical ability to transport the artist into another world.

One note on the Criterion DVD transfer: while the color saturation is good, there seems to have been a problem with the timing. You can watch an actor's flesh tones change several times in the course of a few seconds (which is a little distracting). Given the great quality of Criterion's other transfers, I can only assume that this is a problem with the source material. The audio quality also suffers by comparison to modern standards.

But my complaints about the transfer do not diminish the accomplishments of Powell and Pressberger in turning the story of ‘The Red Shoes' into a great ballet and a haunting metaphor about art, artists and sacrifice.

Don Roos' fast-moving script presents the viewer with a truly memorable character: DeDe Truitt, a cynical, manipulative, trash-talking 16-year old, who says of herself "I don't have a heart of gold and I don't grow one later on, okay?" Christina Ricci's performance is simply perfect.

DeDe leaves her home in Louisiana after her stepfather's funeral to live with her gay half-brother in Indiana. I don't want to bust the plot, but DeDe's manipulations leave a string of broken hearts, upturned lives and (surprise!) healing and resolution. This film can stop on a dime between nasty and sentimental and give you 5 cents change.

The supporting performances are solid, with Lisa Kudrow showing surprising versatility as the bitter school-marm. Her character's transformation literally changes her face.

Sometimes the shoestring budget shows, and some of Roos' setups show the marks of a first-time director, but these are minor complaints. Any comparisons to "Heathers" are "Clueless". This film is a gem, one of my favorite comedies of the 90's.

I had hopes for this movie. Parts of it were very funny, but it ended up being another in a series of dumbed down Saturday Night Live sketch comedies for the 90's.

The film takes more than a few liberties with the chronological order of things. Arlene sings Olivia Newton John's "I Honestly Love You" in Rosemary Wood's tape recorder before Haldeman and Erlichman resign. They resigned in April of '73, and the song wasn't released until 1974.

But hey, who cares right? It's the 70's man, no one will ever know! Groovy Baby! Pass the white-out and Abba records!

Lord knows what Monica and Bill can expect in 25 years...

Peter Weir shows how a good film can be made from a solid script and very little money.

A student of anthropology attempts to understand aboriginal tribes, but is completely baffled by the cultural chasm that separates her post-graduate sensibilities from the working-class plumber who is sent to work on her apartment. Is he malicious or misunderstood? The script is delightfully ambiguous.

A little low-budget gem.

I rented this film with trepidation – its reputation as a misogynist hate-fest made me leery.

Well it IS a misogynist hate-fest, but it is still a good, albeit very disturbing movie.

The script does not walk away from the cruelty of the subject matter: two thirty-something up and coming executives decide to emotionally destroy a young woman just for laughs. But it does not play for laughs. Aaron Eckhart as Chad, especially, is one of the most disturbing character portrayals I've ever seen. He shows a different persona to everyone, the persona that will get him ahead. He is simultaneously charming, convincing, cocky and revolting, a narcissist screaming from an empty shell.

Good script, direction, and acting. Recommended, but not if your Prozac prescription just lapsed

Mr. Eastwood is evidently trying to usurp Bob Dole's position as the Viagra poster boy.

He starts this movie hitting on a woman who appears to be at least 35 years younger than he is. But he's no lecher: the woman playing his wife is only 22 years younger than he is, and the woman playing his mistress is a scant 29 years younger than he. And, of course this 69 year old man has a daughter who appears to be 3-4 years old.

Eastwood plays a fallen investigative reporter, who is partially reformed: on the wagon, but sleeping with his boss's wife. He is tasked with writing a story about a man being executed at San Quentin that night.

Is there any chance the man was wrongly convicted?

Is it possible that there is some evidence overlooked by the convict's attorneys on 6 years of appeals?

Is there any chance that Clint will figure all of this out in less than 24 hours?

Aside from some pretty obvious plot contrivances, I'm getting a little tired of Clint's on-screen persona. When Eastwood made "Unforgiven" and "In The Line of Fire", I thought it showed great promise for a renaissance of his career. Both of those movies showed a tough guy grown older, men who were used to being tough dealing with the frailties of age.

His persona in "True Crime" seems to be daring you to root against him. I did.

If I were teaching a sociology class on the 60's, I would show this movie. The art, the humor, the political sensibilities, and (of course) the music, take you right back there.

A thoroughly imaginative, funny, and enjoyable movie.

If you are looking for a sonic-boom-special-effects monster, click the BACK button on your browser.

Deathtrap was written by Ira Levin (Sliver, The Stepford Wives, Rosemary's Baby). It's a stage play, adapted for the screen. 95% of the movie takes place in the gorgeous home of playwright Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine). He's the author of a fabulously successful Broadway play, but his last 4 efforts have flopped - horribly.

An aspiring playwright, Clifford Anderson (Christopher Reeve), who attended a play-writing workshop given by Sydney, has sent him a copy of the play he has written. Sydney tells his wife, Myra (Dyan Cannon) the play is fabulous - a sure-fire hit. But is it good enough to die for? Time will tell.

Clever dialog and numerous twists and turns in the plot keep this movie entertaining from beginning to end. The whole cast seems to have a good time. It's reminiscent of another fun Michael Caine mystery: Sleuth. Worth watching.

I took my girlfriend to see this movie in 1968. At the end, I was sobbing. I didn't stop crying until we had driven a mile or so from the movie theatre. She looked at me as if I was out of my mind.

This week I bought the movie, to see how it would affect me 30 years later. Not quite the same emotional impact (well, I knew the ending), but still a very powerful movie.

Recently I heard a director say that the most important things conveyed in movies are not the words that are said, but the words that are not said.

This movie is filled with words not said. The protagonist, John Singer, is an emotional cipher. Alan Arkin had the good sense to underplay him. You can pour all of your own feelings into him.

I could quibble about some elements now, but this is, at essence, a story of the heart. Thirty years after first seeing this movie, it still stands up, and still touches my heart in a way few movies have.