Movie Reviews

The Train - I stumbled on this 1964 action film from John Frankenheimer starring Burt Lancaster. I hadn't heard of it before and it's great. Apparently the last big action film made in black and white but it's great because it's real. The plot is about Germans in WWII trying to plunder French art. A German colonel (Paul Schofield) has arrange a train to bring it to Germany and the resistance (led by Lancaster) is trying to stop the train. While it's based on some reality, the resistance just used red tape and there was no train in real life. But for the film, Frankenheimer used real trains, crashed real trains and even arranged to blow up a real train depot. And Lancaster did his own stunts, sliding down ladders and running onto moving trains and falling down hills. Great stuff and some interesting overtones (how many lives is art worth?). Really liked this film.

Haywire - Steven Soderbergh saw real life MMA start Gina Carano and made an action film around her, and it's a good one. She's an agent on the run with various stars (Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas) trying to kill her. The plot is a big convoluted but it works and given the way it's told you have to concentrate a bit. But the action sequences are down to earth and very good and since she's doing her own stunts, instead of hundreds of shaky cam quick cuts, there are long steady takes. Very nice.

A Better Life - Demián Bichir got a surprise Best Actor nomination for this film I'd never heard of. It's available on DVD from Netflix and is kind of a reimagining of The Bicycle Thief. Bichir is an illegal immigrant gardener in LA with a teenage son that's being tempted by gang life. It's very well done and while Fassbender and Shannon were more deserving of the nomination, Bichir was very good.

Albert Nobbs - Glenn Close is a woman in 19th century Ireland working as a male waiter in a small hotel. She dreams of opening a shop and her fear of being found out has left her very very repressed. Close was good but she's well known enough I still always thought I was watching Glenn Close and not the character. Fortunately the other characters are strong enough and enough happens to keep it interesting. It's not a feel good movie and it didn't quite come together for me. Maybe because the situation felt contrived enough that I found it less relatable than Shame or Take Shelter.

The Iron Lady - Here's a great idea, let's make a bio pic about Britain's first female and one of the longest serving and most controversial prime ministers. And lets get Meryl Streep to play her! Oh and here's a great idea, lets spend 80% of the film on her Alzheimer stage. And the other 20%, lets do montages of political events and make as many of them dream sequences as possible! Let's refer to every other character by their first name only, if even that much! Let's even throw in an ironic line of her complaining about how people today care only about feelings and not actual thoughts. This film could have been about any senile woman who merely thought she was prime minister. I thought about walking out and figured it had to get better and it didn't. Streep was good, she always is, even given the material, but it's not worth it.

Arthur - I caught this Russell Brand remake on cable. Helen Mirren is good but Brand is just ok. He ends up not being likable enough, so it's just kind of annoying.