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Napoleon (2023)
A remarkable achievement!
Don't believe the mediocre reviews of this film. It's a notable achievement of illumination on several fronts: Napoleon's obsession for a woman like Josephine; the charism of his leadership, and the manical self-belief in his destiny. Very few liberties are taken in regard to the historical record. Remarkable for a three-hour film of a life like Emperor Napoleon of France. I particular like the counterpoint between Napoleon's hyper-manly military leadership and his teen-agey adoration of Josephine. The great men, as I have read, often have such dependent relationships with wives or mistresses -- think of Churchill and Clementine, Pug and Cat.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
Wanted to walk out.
Too many extended chase scenes. Vapid dialogue. No character depth. Cartoonish. No chemistry between actor. Total waste of a great actor -- Mads Mikkelsen. Only John Williams score provides any real energy. This is so poor it casts a shadow over the previous achievement of the franchise. Finally, there's no was an 80 year-old actor could throw those knock-out punches and judo movies. The film exhausts the 'willing suspension of disbelief,' as Coleridge termed it. This would have been released in this form by people who cared for more than receiving a paycheck. Today's moguls are making the trip to the movie theater less and less attractive.
The Party's Just Beginning (2018)
Compassionate with total honesty
This film does something that's quite rare: It portrays and reveals a kind despair common to many of us along with its various paths of attempted escape and healing. Sex and drugs are used, but they're the most impersonal, empty, and isolating. Liusaidh, played brilliantly by the writer/director Karen Gillan, yearns for genuine love and the fruit of that love, a child. Everything around her denies her deepest desire: her own dysfunctional family, men wanting only brief, nameless, physical pleasure, people who never listen, and vacuous religion. Gillan is a prodigious talent rightly supported by Exec Prod, Sloan Martin and others. May there be more of both to come!
The Green Knight (2021)
Unbelievably bad!
This film is a joke. So dark you can't see it. Most of the dialogue is inaudible. The high rating of this film suggests there's an alternate universe.
The Sandlot (1993)
The Stepfather
This is a delightful movie, but it contains a large hole in its center, the role of the stepather played by Denis Leary. Practically nothing is made of the tension between the son and his stepfather. The scene where they first throw the ball stretches credulity to the breaking point: why would the stepfather keep throw overhand to his son who obviously knows neither how to throw or catch? The second scene, after the return of the baseball, a better one, is perfunctory. For a film with so much authentic childhood feeling, the stepfather, and even the mother, are made of cardboard. James Earl Jones functions as a wise and amiable deus ex machina.
Jingle All the Way (1996)
The low rating mystifies me!
This is one of the most consistently funny and entertaining films I know. And the hilarity is non-stop. Arnold and Sinbad have the kind of on-screen chemistry that make a comedy work -- think Hepburn and Grant in 'Bringing Up Baby.' 'Jingle All the Way' will be movie we are watching years from now when some higher-rated holiday films are forgotten.
Mine (2016)
Really worth seeing
I'm very glad I looked past the low rating of this film. The setup may seem a bit too neat, but what happens in the rest of the film is completely unpredictable. Armie Hammer pulls off a bravura performance is what could have been a drab role. There is something about this film that reminds me of great short stories which take a simple plot device and turn it into a reflection on the most important things in life. Bravo!
$5 a Day (2008)
Not-to-be-missed comedy/drama -- wise and wonderful!
I'm surprised at the relatively low rating of this outstanding comic drama. Very few films nowadays make me laugh out loud as this one did, in more than one place. I laughed not as you might expect at the antics of the great Christopher Walken but at the deft plots turns which make this film stand among others of its type, that being, a decadent father being reconciled with an angry son. This film, in my opinion, deserves to be listed among the most successful comedies of the past decade, and of course I say "comedy" in the original sense of a serious story -- that could have been a tragedy -- with a redemptive ending. Alessandro Nivola, whose face I have seen often but whose name I had not remembered, is a wonderful actor who I now will follow more closely. He has a broad range and moves naturally across the spectrum of emotions appropriate to this narrative. He's handsome, of course, but both director and actor made sure his good looks don't appear out of place in a "road movie" about two "failed" men.