Whatever its originality in conception and execution, “Broken City” demonstrates, in its own unusual way, the durability of film genre conventions. The movie’s mixture of fictional and historical elements and its location in New York City provide a kind of verifiable background for a story of complicated schemes of manipulation and deceit, but its greatest […]
George Grella
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MOVIE REVIEW: “Zero Dark Thirty”
Despite all the praise heaped upon “Zero Dark Thirty” by the usual heapers, the movie should really awaken audiences to the moral failure of an American foreign policy created by the administration of George W. Bush. We all grew up in a nation that did not torture prisoners, kidnap people off the streets, send prisoners […]
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MOVIE REVIEW: “Hyde Park on Hudson”
Hard on the heels of the Civil War epic “Lincoln,” a very different picture shows a very different president in a very different era. A sort of limited biopic, “Hyde Park on Hudson” concentrates on a few years in the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, focusing mostly on domestic events and the people surrounding him […]
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MOVIE REVIEW: “Django Unchained”
For reasons I have never fully comprehended, most of the critics, at least judging by the exclamation points in the advertisements, treat Quentin Tarantino like the second coming of Orson Welles, showering him with praise and adorning his films with all the usual awards. Although I have seen just about all of his movies, none […]
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The better (not necessarily best) movies of 2012
Gertrude Stein once said, “Remarks are not literature,” and I would add, opinion is not criticism. The best movies of 2012, those I believe possess genuine merit for a number of reasons, not coincidentally, are also the ones I personally liked — a fusion, I hope, of personal judgment and objective analysis. The brevity of […]
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MOVIE REVIEW: “Hitchcock”
Long after his death, Alfred Hitchcock remains a surprisingly powerful presence in the cinema. Reruns of his extremely successful 1950’s television series turn up regularly on one of the cable film channels; a recent made-for-TV movie, “The Girl,” about his relationship with Tippi Hedren, who starred in “The Birds” and “Marnie,” now plays on HBO; […]
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MOVIE REVIEW: “Anna Karenina”
The latest adaptation of Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” is a highly stylized production – sometimes too stylized – that nonetheless evocatively captures one of literature’s great tragic romances.
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MOVIE REVIEW: “Red Dawn”
The original “Red Dawn” appeared in 1984, and like many works of popular art provides a useful glimpse of the temper of its time. During the Reagan administration’s orchestration of a systematic slaughter of leftists, liberals, and other supporters of land reform and democracy all over Central America, the movie posited an invasion of the […]
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MOVIE REVIEW: “Lincoln”
Of all our presidents, Abraham Lincoln dominates motion pictures; simply as a character in film, in fact, he ranks in number of appearances up there with such luminaries as Sherlock Holmes and Dracula. (Honest Abe actually encountered some of Dracula’s relatives in the ridiculous “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” of a few months back, and of […]
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MOVIE REVIEW: “Skyfall”
Apparently smashing all box office records for a James Bond flick, “Skyfall,” the latest addition to what essentially has become its own genre, follows most of the conventions the series has established while adding a few new devices and concepts. After 50 years of Bondage, audiences know pretty well just what to expect — fisticuffs […]
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MOVIE REVIEW: “Flight”
In most of his movies Robert Zemeckis displays both a penchant for unusual special effects and an instinct for an easy emotional appeal. In “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” for example, he combined live action with animation; in “Forrest Gump” he integrated archival newsreel footage with his fiction; and in “Polar Express” he employed that trendy […]
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MOVIE REVIEW: “Cloud Atlas”
Whatever the success of their various ventures, the Wachowski brothers seldom settle for the tried and the true in their approach to cinema. “The Matrix,” probably still their best known work, demonstrates some genuine originality and, rarely, some real meaning in contemporary science fiction’s familiar bag of stunts and special effects. If the two sequels […]
