Tag: movies
Decrying/Praising ‘The Book of Life’ and ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’
What do you get when you add unbridled creativity to a project with limited substance? Well, it’s possible something good may come out of it. In the case of The Book of Life (2014) and Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), however, you get cinematic dreck. I know—that’s rather harsh. But these two films may…
The Blue and The Grey: The American Civil War on film
So many films have been made about this long and tragic civil war that I would not attempt to examine them all in one post. However, it is interesting to see how film-makers have dealt with the subject over the more than one hundred year history of cinema. As long ago as 1915, D.W. Griffith…
There Can Be Only One: 30 Years of Highlander
“From the dawn of time we came, moving silently down through the centuries. Living many secret lives, struggling to reach the time of the Gathering, when the few who remain will battle to the last. No one has ever known we were among you… until now.” This prologue, superimposed in bright red against black, begins…
Documentaries in focus: ‘Cameraperson’ and ‘Marathon’
The documentary landscape recently grew a little bit brighter with the release of two first-rate works, very different from each other, but both doing what film has always done best: eliciting powerful emotional responses by showing us things we have not seen before. At least not like this. The first movie is Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson.…
In Clint Eastwood’s engrossing “Sully,” earnest heroism hits turbulence
Seven years removed from the “Miracle on the Hudson,” it’s a bit silly to think of Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger as anything else but a hero. The longtime pilot used his expertise, gumption and level head to land a major aircraft with failing engines onto the Hudson River and managed to keep everyone on-board alive…