It may be strange to watch a movie based on murder and tweaker culture on one’s honeymoon, but that’s what we did. This movie has a fairly run-of-the-mill revenge plotline, but the offbeat character portrayals bring it back to life. Pooh Bear, the methamphetamine dealer who lost his nose through overuse of his own product,…

The murder of Matthew Shepard in my hometown in 1998, even though I was in Chicago at the time, is a bleak spot in my memory. Even if it makes me bristle a bit to see good actors poorly portraying Laramie citizens, the movie brings back some of the beauty along with the ugly sude…

This movie has great cinematography, and that keeps it going for a while. But the slow pace, combined with some poor acting, storylines that don’t go anywhere, and a lack of much historical feel (of 1951 and 1961 Saigon) eventually flatten it.

The ankle injury is finally paying off with some movie reviews. This is a baseball movie that features Kevin Costner. Despite those two strikes against it, it recovers marvelously. Tim Robbins wears garters and breathes through his eyelids while he pitches, sings of wooly women, and survives nights tied up in Susan Sarandon’s bed while…

Probably the best portrait-film I’ve seen. It deftly catches so many facets of the character’s personality, many completely contradictory, that I soon gave in to a sort of overwhelmed oscillation between awe and revulsion. There are great quotes throughout the dialog, lots of maps, convincing battle scenes, poetry, and historical soliloquoies. Definitely a perspective on…

Well done, but came across to me as a dramatization of stereotypes of depression-era Catholic schools and fascist movements. To this Yankee, the setting in 1930’s Liverpool was totally convincing, more interesting to me than the contrived plot. amazon.com entry

This movie from Greenland is packed full of absolutely magical snowscapes, which alone are mesmerizing enough to win me over. In that setting the movie tells a mythic tale of the impact of modern Danish culture on native Greenlanders. Another salient reminder of the rewards of having good filmmakers in distant parts of the world.

I rent movies through the mail, and now and then one shows up that I can’t imagine why I rented. In this case it turned out to be a great movie to watch on the boulder pad with my fiancee after three days of hauling heavy loads together over rock and snow fields. A lot…

Cambodia was a spot on the map to me, involved with Viet Nam in some foggy way, and accompanied by some dim recollections of headlines from my childhood. This movie brings it into sharp, painfully understandable focus. Movies that portray the consequences of our actions in distant places are needed here, regardless of the political…

I had a salad bar at the Sizzler last night. It’s like a regular salad bar, plus all the TV dinners you can eat.