Review Rick on 10 Oct 2008
As Appaloosa opens, Marshall Jack Bell (Bobby Jauregui) and two deputies confront rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons) about a couple of his hands. Seems they’ve killed a man and raped and killed his wife. Bragg refuses to hand them over — he says he can’t spare them — and when Bell insists, the rancher kills [...]
Review Rick on 29 Sep 2008
For better or worse, Jacques Tati’s cinematic fate was tied to his beloved character Mr. Hulot, a floppy everyman in a raincoat and high-water pants played by Tati himself. Hulot appeared in four of the six features he directed, beginning with M. Hulot’s Holiday in 1953 and continuing with Mon Oncle (1958), Playtime (1967) and [...]
Short Take Rick on 25 Sep 2008
In Jules Dassin’s The Naked City, Barry Fitzgerald is so over-the-top, cloyingly Irish I want to hit him. He stops just short of drinking green beer and saying “faith and begorrah.” I am surprised that the Irish Anti-defamation league (is there really such a thing?) doesn’t have a big black mark next to the movie.
There, [...]
Ingmar Bergman and Review Rick on 15 Sep 2008
Riddle me this: What do you do if you’re Joel and Ethan Coen, and you’ve just made the most critically acclaimed film of 2007, that most everyone believes is practically perfect in every way, and that garnered four Academy awards, including Best Picture and Best Director? The answer, apparently, is you make Burn After Reading, [...]
Short Take Rick on 06 Sep 2008
Does anybody film raw nature with more fluidity and grace than Werner Herzog? I don’t think so . . . in Aguirre, the Wrath of God, his first collaboration with Klaus Kinski, the river becomes a character, a nemesis, a foe. If it looks real, it’s probably because it is: filmed on location in the [...]
Review Rick on 05 Sep 2008
Tropic Thunder put a little late-summer pizzaz into a fading season, and brought along a bit of baggage to boot. Of course, everybody knows about the “retard” controversy that likely — as these things often do — increased rather than decreased ticket sales. Myself, I can see both sides of the issue: I know [...]
Short Take Rick on 02 Sep 2008
In honor of the successful conclusion of noir month over at MovieZeal, I watched Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil when it was on Turner Classic Movies the other night. I’d never seen it before, and here are a few observations (be sure to read Phillip Johnston’s fine review here).
It may be most famous for that [...]
Review Rick on 31 Aug 2008
Here’s a riddle: how many characters does it take to make a Woody Allen? Judging from Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the answer is two: one blond and one brunette. The blonde (Scarlett Johannson) is Cristina and the brunette (Rebecca Hall) is Vicky, two Americans spending the summer in Barcelona. While there, they are hustled by Juan [...]
DVDs and Francois Truffaut and Review Rick on 25 Aug 2008
François Truffaut’s Day for Night opens on a small, grassy plaza. Immediately, a bus roars by in the foreground; the sound of its engine drowns all others out. The camera picks up a woman and her dog and tracks along with her, pausing at a subway entrance long enough for a man to [...]
Review Rick on 22 Aug 2008
30 Days of Night has an ingenious premise: vampires attack Barrow, Alaska during its annual period of darkness, when the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon for thirty days. That’s convenient, because in addition to being immortal, sunlight kills them as well. In fact, they’re pretty-much old school vampires, except for the fact that they [...]
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