Month: February 2014

Movie Reviews: 1/27/2014 to 2/2/2014

February 2, 2014

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Movies reviewed this week: Jenny Lamour, Two Men in Manhattan, Rififi, Singapore, Macao, and The Shanghai Gesture.

Planet of the Vampires, 1965 - ★★★½
January 1, 2025
Notable for legacy and for the moody pop art pulp aesthetic. As a movie, it drags occasionally and the acting is fairly wooden. But it’s pretty enough — and enough of a lesson in practical effects — that I loved it.No actual vampires here so it doesn’t qualify for my vampire movie rankings.
Dheepan, 2015 - ★★★½
December 31, 2024
Fascinating. As a signpost to the world’s likely direction, it’s a perfect 2025 movie. Strong acting, too. Tonally it takes a risk that mostly pays off; I didn’t read the third act as any kind of wish fulfillment. More of a wish denied, and in the end Sivadhasan is still a flawed tired sad human […]
Coens Ranked
December 30, 2024
What a terrible idea for a list. These rankings are monumentally fluid and in some cases rely on memories of movies I saw decades ago. But I saw the last one the other night (A Serious Man) and the list maker in me will not be otherwise appeased.Currently not including solo movies from either brother.I […]
The Red Shoes, 1948 - ★★★★★
December 29, 2024
Artistic partnerships, at their best, allow each member to reach beyond what they could accomplish separately. Powell and Pressburger dared. Blatantly fantastic staging of a 20 minute ballet centerpiece? Sure; and it’s our job to remember that Julian Craster (Marius Goring) told Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) that his music would make people see whatever the […]
A Serious Man, 2009 - ★★★★½
December 29, 2024
It is a very slow motion apocalypse. This is a community that’s lost cohesion a while ago, right? The kids don’t respect their parents, the students universally disrespect their teachers, and the adults don’t respect each other. Sy makes a pretense of respect which is false on the face of it and false underneath as […]