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Brooklyn
A remarkably faithful adaptation of Colm Toibin’s excellent novel. It has most of the strengths of the book (courtesy of a fine and well-cast group of actors) and also its biggest weakness. Because what Eilis does when she returns to Ireland didn’t feel either right or true when I read the book and still feels…
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Metropolitan
Why has Whit Stillman made so few movies? His filmography is great. Sure, it’s tailor made for someone like me, but I note that most of his (very modestly budgeted movies) seem to have done okay at the box office. His U.H.B (Urban Haute Bourgeoisie) trilogy (which Metropolitan kicks off) is unique. Each movie is…
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Heat
In some alternate, happier Michael Mann universe, Robert De Niro just keeps driving to LAX and Pacino has the shootout with Kevin Gage’s Waingro. Justice wouldn’t be served, but I’d like that ending very much – and not just because it would be so unexpected. But even if we all know that De Niro and…
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Escape from New York
Bear with me here. I’m not saying Escape from New York is a good movie. It most definitely is not. But it is a fun movie. Like Highlander, it would benefit hugely from a remake. Many of the special effects are risible. Some of the casting decisions are worse than that. Donald Pleasance (surely one…
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Asteroid City
Wes Anderson movies are an acquired taste and, unfortunately, I seem to have acquired the taste. It was Grand Budapest Hotel that really did me in. I love it. And while no other Wes Anderson movie is in the same ballpark (I merely survived The French Dispatch), I enjoyed his Roald Dahl shorts and –…
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Matchstick Men
Another gem of misdirection in Criterion’s ‘Con Collection’ with the inimitable Nic Cage taking the lead. Cage’s performance is…Cage…alternating between charm, pathos, manic intensity, and an over-the-top set of tics. Matchstick Men conforms to the genre’s demand for a giant flip at the end as the con is revealed. In a lot of con movies,…
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After Hours
Not as famous as the movies that surrounded it, but After Hours is very much Scorsese at his peak. Griffin Dunne finds himself in a late night fever dream, swallowed up by the craziness of SoHo when it was still SoHo. And no matter how hard he tries, he cannot get home. Each time he…
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The Sting
Criterion’s newest collection is movies all about con-games. I love this sub-genre and while some great ones are missing, you can choose from The Grifters, The Lady Eve, Trouble in Paradise, Matchstick Men and, of course, the platonic form of con movies, The Sting. Few movies have such balanced leading-man roles and both Redford and…
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The Day of the Jackal
As the elaborate cat-and-mouse game unfolds, it’s never quite clear who is the hunted and who the hunter. The Jackal (a brilliant Edward Fox as a professional assassin) is stalking de Gaulle. And the entire French government is stalking the Jackal. I suppose one knows that de Gaulle isn’t going to die, but what makes…
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Midnight Run
Charles Grodin displays immense actorly patience, letting you warm to his character oh so slowly. His blank, backward-staring gaze – not De Niro’s fire, humor and despair – dominate Midnight Run. Then come the moments when he confiscates “counterfeit” bills, slams the train door on De Niro, and turns out, gloriously, to be a pilot.…
We are not rational animals, we are animals that must work to be rational
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