More than 25 years after the final Fox Moto film, a British production company, Lippert Pictures, revived the series with Henry Silva in the lead. Oil fields in Iran (still called Persia in the film) are ablaze and the executive […]
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Halloween II (1981) ✰ ✰ ½
Made three years after the original but set on the exact same night (October 31, 1978), Halloween II is as direct a sequel as a film can be. Michael Myers, shot but not dead, is on the loose again and […]
Continue reading »Halloween (1978) ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰
John Carpenter wrote and directed Halloween in 1978, kicking off the American slasher film era that was to last ten years. The film’s central character, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), is a virginal babysitter whose friends are murdered by a […]
Continue reading »Before I Hang (1940) ✰ ✰
Boris Karloff played a number of mad scientists over the years. Before I Hang is a typical example. At the outset, Karloff’s physician is sentenced to murder for killing a patient in what sounds like euthanasia. In prison, he is […]
Continue reading »Moneyball (2011) ✰ ✰ ✰
Bennett Miller’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’ best-selling book Moneyball stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics in 2001 and 2002. Beane’s team loses in the playoffs to the New York Yankees and he is […]
Continue reading »The Grey (2012) ✰ ✰ ✰
I’m not sure I would ever want to see it again, or at least any time soon, but I think Joe Carnahan’s outdoor survival saga, The Grey, is pretty good. It is appropriately rugged, and bloody, and downbeat. It is […]
Continue reading »Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011) ✰ ✰ ½
When I wrote my book about Korean War movies, I grew to accept the dictum that Hollywood, generally, is about five years behind the times, that it takes about five years to gain the proper perspective to make movies about […]
Continue reading »One for the Money (2012) ✰ ✰ ½
I enjoyed the book more, yet the film version of the initial Stephanie Plum adventure is not bad. Katherine Heigl quickly becomes comfortable in the role and isn’t hesitant to allow Plum to act foolishly or talk too much. Plum […]
Continue reading »Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) ✰ ✰ ½
I have liked many of John le Carré’s espionage novels, which chronicle in exhaustive detail the intricacies of how international spycraft is truly manifested. Le Carré’s books are long, and somewhat difficult to initially penetrate, because they are so filled […]
Continue reading »The Iron Lady (2011) ✰ ✰
Other than the performance of Meryl Streep as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” of the title, and a superb makeup job in getting Streep to look gentrified, this apologetic look at Thatcher’s rise to power in […]
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