In the German film Phoenix, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust (Nina Hoss) attempts to reconnect to her past, which she cannot leave behind. Her efforts are complicated by a couple of factors; she has undergone cosmetic surgery (because of a […]
Continue reading »Month: August 2015
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) ☆ ☆
I am not a fan of updating old TV series as big feature films, even when it sometimes works (like The Fugitive). I would rather recall the old shows with fondness (whether they were good or not) and spend my movie […]
Continue reading »Ricki and the Flash (2015) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Meryl Streep can do no wrong. The greatest film actress of all time is right at home portraying a lifetime rock ‘n roller with tattoos, weird hair and serious mommy issues. Streep has proven she can sing before, in several […]
Continue reading »The End of the Tour (2015) ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Intimate character studies such as The End of the Tour may not be particularly cinematic, but they can still be terrifically entertaining. In this case, Jason Segel portrays writer David Foster Wallace in 1996, soon after the publication of his acclaimed […]
Continue reading »Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Wow! The best movie I’ve seen all year is the fifth — yes, the fifth! — entry in a franchise that I have had real problems with since the beginning. Rogue Nation is a blast all the way through, with great […]
Continue reading »Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) ☆ ☆ ☆
Stop-motion animation has been around since the silents of the 1920s, made famous by practitioners such as Willis O’Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Will Vinton and Nick Park. Park works for Aardman Animation, the company that produced Chicken Run and the Wallace and […]
Continue reading »Fighting Caravans (1931) ☆ ☆
Our fourth potential classic of 2015 is one of the more than one hundred film adaptations of the works of popular western author Zane Grey. Fighting Caravans (1931) is a wagon train story of pioneers crossing the West from Missouri to […]
Continue reading »Fighting Caravans (1931)
by Barb Lentz. The five movies Bob provided me from which to choose were these: Chinatown (1974) Fighting Caravans (1931) Goodbye, My Lady (1956) Hamlet (1948) RoboCop (1987) I chose Fighting Caravans for a couple of reasons. It is […]
Continue reading »Irrational Man (2015) ☆ ☆ ☆
Woody Allen’s films are considered light entertainment, even when they delve into darker elements of human interaction. The newest example of this is Irrational Man, a comedic drama which follows a troubled philosophy professor to a summer gig at a […]
Continue reading »Ant-Man (2015) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Superheroes come in all shapes and sizes, and now one is the size of an ant. He is Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and he is an ex-con, an industrial cat burglar. Fate, in the form of Dr. Hank Pym (Michael […]
Continue reading »