sjanders-86430 Reviews

California Suite (1978)

Love Jane Fonda and Maggie Smith

[6/10 · 1 July 2023]

Michael Caine is also great. Alan Alda looks terrific. Walter Matthieu is good also. Neil Simon is so predictable and now he seems so dated. His work seems like fluff. The characters are all light weight. Why did he make buffoons out of the Black group?? He is dated. But still worth revisiting to see how things way back when. Today he would a Jewish writer, because his comedy involves intellectual sparring. Witty is great but slower more meaningful dialogue is better. Jane Fonda with her Ex Alan Alda has no depth just verbal run ons. Yes, it may be clever reparte but that's all. The real authentic mistakes they endured in each others' company is missing.

The Sinner: Part III (2020) Season 3, Episode 3

Best of The Sinner

[10/10 · 15 April 2023]

The death scene with Matt Bomer and Bill Pullman is as a good a death scene that you will ever see. The tenderness and heartbreaking connection is tear jerking. The fact that this is too men makes it more powerful. Men loving each other is the subject of Season three. It is deliberate that Bomer's face is more beautiful than all the women characters. Closer has two men connecting sexually; Jude Law and Clive Owen on a computer exchange, but here deep emotions are evident. The crying later by Bill Pullman takes this viewer into a man's emotions as never before. Nick the character who comes to see his intimate college friend was summoned by Bomer. Why did he start the downward spiral? His wife was about to have their baby and this birth drew him back to the death obsessed times with Nick. After Bomer pulls the emergency brake Nick tells Bomer not to call 911.

Why didn't Bomer say this to Pullman?

Bomer loses his friend and does not recover. His wife couldn't save him. Why did Pullman shoot. He didn't have to. He had no right to shoot.

Fatal Attraction (1987)

What about the baby?

[6/10 · 9 April 2023]

If Glenn Close had not become pregnant by Michael Douglas, her behavior would be very odd and possibly psychotic. Since Douglas did impregnate Close during the weekend his wife and daughter were in the country, then he must take responsibility. He must support the mother and the child for 18 years. Douglas's attempt to ignore the problem accelerates the plot to a violent ending. This is a cautionary tale for both men and women single and married. The explosive connection Douglas and Close had is also not the usual one night stand. They had the greatest sex. They went dancing. They listened to opera and ate Italian. They played in the park with his dog. The connection was cataclysmic. Like Play Misty For Me Close cuts her wrists to keep the affair going. This character has fallen hard for Douglas who in real life broke many women's hearts. The plot makes sense until the bunny boiling and his child's abduction. Anne Archer the wife finally is told and still the subject of the pregnancy is never dealt with. Close wanted the original ending where she kills herself with the knife with Douglass' fingerprints on it. He is arrested for her murder. The test audiences demanded a different ending. The existing ending is a tour de force and caps all previous action but feels too pat.

Red Dragon (2002)

MICHAEL MANN'S is superior

[10/10 · 3 April 2023]

Manhunter by Michael Mann is a masterpiece. Dino di laurentis produced it but didn't want Red Dragon to be the title. Then years later he produces the same Red Dragon with a totally different take. He thought he could make more money. This take has the preppy two Norton and Fiennes heading up the cast. These two are not cop and killer types. Tom Noonan as Dolarhyde is superb. He shoots others and the shooting is at cops not himself. Even the ram's tatoo on Dolarhyde is wrong. The blind Emily Watson stroking the tiger is not Joan Allen. The cat makes a sound! Overall the scenes are unpleasant to view. Never remake a Mann film.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Non-Stop Thriller

[10/10 · 18 March 2023]

You will love this film! I was amazed by the stunts that were real. Tom Cruise Mapother IV is another great Kentuckian like Johhlnny Depp and George Clooney!

The film is worth your time to view something of genius. Of course it should have won. Life is strange when a film like this doesn't win. We must put it to an outdated award system that has no box office clout anymore. The box office has come in at 1.2 billion so the people know a top film. I have viewed Tom Cruise for years and there will never be another actor like him. He is fearless. He does his own stunts!! He is 60 and so alive and active that one must admit he has taken good care of himself and that is everything. He is a true American hero of unparalleled excellence.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Subversive

[2/10 · 17 March 2023]

If you don't have anxiety about the IRS, you will after watching this. If your teen child is uncooperative, you will start to worry big time after the watching this. If you always wanted a butt plug, watch this. If you wanted to listen to hours of unpleasant speech, watch this. If you want to be bombarded with lightening images amidst chaos, watch this. Whatever you do, say you love it. And agree with Oscar morons who must own Asian stock. This film is unpleasant to watch.

It is excruciating to listen to. I have seen other majestic Asian films. Why would anyone think this has humor? The receipts spread out for an audit is a nightmere. The IRS is never something to joke about. The multi universe is just more unpleasantness. I bought the dvd hoping for greatness. I discovered subversion.

The Insider (1999)

Christpher Plummer and Lynsay Crouse

[10/10 · 11 March 2023]

Christopher Plummer was the star of The Sound of Music and Lyndsay Crouse's father wrote the screenplay with his collaborator Lyndsay, both a famous team. Here Plummer is majestic as Mike Wallace the CBS investigative reporter. Crouse plays Al Pacino's wife.

Pacino is the lead as a CBS producer of news, 60 Minutes. Jeffrey Wigand is played superbly by Russell Crowe. These are top performances all around.

Michael Mann's script captures the story from the article Man Who knew Too Much in Vanity Fair. The main thing is Brown and Williamson in Louisville, Kentucky were adding amonia to the tobacco to make it more addictive. Wigand worked for B&W in research and knew this. He told Bergman, Pacino, and how Bergman got the story told is the film. Mann writes with a multi layered approach. I enjoy that in his films and liken it to a symphony. He gets results from everyone. Russell Crowe delivers such a tour de force as Wigand. I think working with top people raises everyone's game.

Heat (1995)

Michael Mann has symphonic rhythms

[10/10 · 1 March 2023]

Heat is complex film worthy of multiple viewings. I want to see all Mann's films over and over. Mann creates symphonies where others create songs. He puts a team together and his collaborations sizzle with movement, sounds, and insights. His camera eyes the arm or leg with angles of an architect. Al Pacino is a favorite who can do no wrong. DeNero gives a brilliant performance. The two talk over coffee connecting as hunter and hunted. The character McCauley who DeNero plays is a thief and so is different from Francis Dolarhyde from Mann's Manhunter. The two are both criminals, but McCauley doesn't murder families like Dolarhyde. After viewing Manhunter Heat could never be as exciting psychologically.

Manhunter (1986)

Incredibly Complex

[10/10 · 19 February 2023]

William Petersen plays Red Dragon's Will Graham attempting to capture The Tooth Fairy after a recuperation period when he was sickened by his capture of Hannibal Leckter. This time he has two weeks before the next full moon when the family killer will kill again. Tom Noonan plays the killer Dillerhide who is very interesting in that he thoughtfully chooses his families. He is shy Leckter tells Graham who asks for his opinion. Here are two killers; one in an institution for the criminally insane and one who should be. Michael Mann wrote the screenplay from Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. The work captures the complexity of both killers. Both are intelligent. Joan Allen plays the blind woman who gets close to the killer. We see his tenderness and his wish to be close to her until he turns killer when her co worker takes a speck out of her eye. Noonan is astounding in his portrayal that easily switches gears from loving suitor to brutal mirror stabber. William Petersen is the perfect cop who is also brutal but very sensitive. That duality connects the killers with Petersen/Graham. Red Dragon was written before Silence of the Lambs which is odd because Leckter is caught and behind bars in Red Dragon. That is why Harris wrote a prequel to Red Dragon after Silence of the Lambs. The most fascinating question is: How did Thomas Harris know this criminal mind so well? He was a crime reporter but that doesn't explain the depth of his understanding. The main thing is he portrays killers who live in middle to upper class families. They are educated and operate under the radar with no criminal records. These smart killers are the hardest to catch and make wonderful characters. Still Harris is the mystery.

Closer (I) (2004)

The guys are Better

[10/10 · 28 January 2023]

The problem with the foursome of Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Jude Law , and Clive Owen is the two guys have more chemistry than the guys and women. This comes alive in the hilarious computer exchange between Law and Owen. The kiss that Law has with Roberts doesn't come close. The scene between Owen and Portman in the strip club room is not intimate. Physically Owen is the most attractive and authentic. Robert's cannot match his juice. Portman is a little girl. The anonymity Portman seeks makes playing that character impossible. Roberts' character is too ambivalent to make a dent. That leaves Law and he has to know the truth but cannot handle it. Owen's character has the ability to forgive and go on. The force of Owen's performance originates in the script by Marbler from his play. Owen shows both tenderness and force. His performance rises above everything and is a must see; a tour de force.

Straw Dogs (1971)

Straw violence

[8/10 · 12 January 2023]

Dustin Hoffman is a little smart moneyed man who married the small town beauty. He brings her back to live in her father's house in England. Susan George the wife has old boyfriends with great looks. Hoffman is not threatened by them until their cat is killed and something has upset his wife; he doesn't know she has been raped by two of her boyfriends. The rape scene shows ambivalence in her when she begins to look very satisfied. This could happen in a forced sexual act with people who like violence. Peckinpah shows that a little smart man can kill big dumb men. He is also showing that big dumb rapists can give pleasure which may be true and probably is. The ambivalence is in Hoffman's marriage. She wants more attention because she has no work of her own. I think she could have been happy with the big handsome boyfriend. When she holds the shotgun pointed at Hoffman and the boyfriend, she could have shot Hoffman.

Don't Look Now (1973)

Baxter's Preference

[10/10 · 31 December 2022]

Donald Sutherland is the father of an eleven year old blonde girl with a beautiful face. She is wearing red tights and a shiney red raincoat. Her ball lands in the shallow pond in the back of their home. Her brother is close fixing his bike. A white horse gallops by.

Sutherland and Christie work inside by the fire. Glass breaks. Shouts. Sutherland runs out and into the pond which is walkable. He reaches under the water and raises up his drowning daughter. His scream is unforgettable.

The dead daughter is the core of the film. Christie and Sutherland go to Venice where he is commissioned to refurbish a church. The blind psychic sees the daughter and tells Christie who recovers from her grief. But Sutherland doesn't recover. He chases a small figure in a red coat. He locks himself in with her and his grief which kills him. He will never recover from the death of his daughter.

This film captures what loss does to some. The wife recovers because she can believe in the afterlife. The husband can't believe in the spirit world and therefore dies of grief.

There is also the sex scene where we see Southerland having intercourse and cunilingus with his wife whose size is that of a child. Her bony underdeveloped body is tiny compared to Southerland. Visually it could be a man and a child; that is the really shocking visual. It implies Southerland likes children. Why else would they cast a tall man with a tiny underveloped woman. Why else would the sex scene be in this movie.

Also Brief Encounter is given more than a nod; the passing train, the speck in the eye, the connection, and the son having an accident. Of course there was no sex in Brief Encounter.

This film stands out from others because of the juxtaposing of disparate elements. I love the scaffolding fall where the little mosaics are above the great height. The board breaks the pane of glass and knocks Sutherland off hanging from a dangling rope. He is majestic in this scene where he clings and swings about holding on for his life 75 feet up from stone floors. Wonderful.

This film has unforgettable scenes.

The Debt (I) (2010)

Pelvic exam!!!

[2/10 · 29 October 2022]

This is just weird! Why would I like a film showing a Nazi war criminal giving s pelvic exam. The production is low budget. The photography is in outdated tones of blue and grey. The dual time line is a waste. Tell a story or don't. The older generation actors are so superior to the young actors that it is frustrating to wait to get back to good acting. Basically the dark lighting is its worst defect. The sound is also grating. Another review stated this is historically incorrect. Again why would anyone watch an historically incorrect film? Jessica Chastain got good reviews for her part. I think the poor girl had to do that awful pelvic exam scene which was long to watch but imagine yourself in her position. Would you ever do that scene?? No. She must have been desperate.

Anna (II) (2019)

Top Thriller

[10/10 · 28 October 2022]

Sasha Luss is somewhat fragile playing an assassin for both sides. She has a scene in the beginning where she is hurt by bashing objects. Even choreographed the scene is brutal. Sasha was born in Magadan, Russia. This is a remote Siberian town. Yes Sasha is beautiful but I wish she had not been exposed to Besson who abused women. Luss is very intelligent and should return to Oxford and her studies. Luc Besson should be avoided. Helen Mirren plays the KGB hit manager and gives the film its humor. Even the sex scenes are unattractive and violent. The film locations are in Russia and Paris and I loved that. The costumes are top fashion statements that Luss knows how to pick and wear. I loved her beanies and jackets. Her white hair is so perfect. It is so unbelieveable that Luss was born in Magadan. Look it up. I mean it is in the farthest regions of the world. Nothing grows there. The mines have much to offer but no one can survive working them it is so cold. I just want women to pursue knowledge when they are intelligent. Models are mere marketing tools.

The Special Relationship (2010 TV Movie)

Celebrity Politicians

[10/10 · 15 October 2022]

Dennis Quaid is President Clunton. Hope Davis is Hillary Clinton. The Clintons were celebrities so it is an easy thing to play them. Tony Blair was also more a celebrity than a politician. Michael Sheen captures the goony boy. Both actors Quaid and Sheen have cartoon like smiles. Their smiles are fake for camera moments. Davis is a too attractive Hillary who never shows the swearing banji she can be. She forgives Bill for Monica Lewinsky. These two liars don't care who cheats. Blair broke the special friendship off over Kosovo differences. He wanted ground troops as well as air. Milosevic caved and Blair was a hero. But what did he achieve on the home front without Gordon Btown as Chancellor? Nothing was mentioned about the World Trade Center bombings! And Blair and Bush went on into the Iraq War. We now know there were no weapons of mass destruction.

That's the big question: Why was there an Iraq War, and why did Blair back Bush? I think the answer lies in the sudden death of John Smith on May 12, 1994. Did someone make that happen for Blair's ascendency to Prime Minister in 1997? Blair and Clinton were friends since 1992. The voters in England have it right about Blair: He was a lightweight opportunist who never showed up to march for any causes that counted. And Clinton goes down as an evil scoundrel capable of the most inconceiveable crimes. Hillary will go down as an ambitious liar.

The Deal (2003 TV Movie)

Peter Morgan and Stephen Frears

[10/10 · 14 October 2022]

Morgan's writing with Fresrs' direction create a mesmerizing film.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown both want to be the Labour Party Prime Minister. John Smith , the Labour party leader, dies suddenly opening up a duel between Brown and Blair.

Blair played by Michael Sheen is great on TV. Brown is not as likeable. David Morrissey is the moody Brown. Blair had verbally said to Brown six years before Smith dies that he would be the next Labour leader. Brown didn't go against Smith and lost his chance. Paul Rhys is my favorite as the person who tells Brown he is no longer front runner "You are moody. Intolerant. You didn't do the ugly work of making and keeping friends." This film is part of a trilogy. The Queen is next. The Deal is as good or better than The Queen. The third one I will certainly see for these two are tops.

Sleuth (2007)

Jude Law is Brilliant

[10/10 · 9 October 2022]

I've seen both versions. This one is not the original so forget that one and enjoy this exchange between two masters: Law and Caine. Pinter's words are the film. In the beginning was the word.. Once you hear the words between these two, you will be mesmerized. The words need no fancy set. The empty house accentuates the words. The cheating wife is absent which amps up the dialogue.

Two men being quite clear is the main point. The seduction by either again captures the two men: It doesn't matter, they are men. The "C" word is the worse thing you can call a man. These two love the game as all men. Two sparring men ambiguous as to who won. It's a manly feast.

Network (1976)

Paddy Chayevsky wrote screenplay

[10/10 · 18 November 2021]

Sydney Lumet directed. William Holden and Peter Finch star in this story of live TV. Faye Dunaway takes over the news and when the ratings fall Robert Duvall meets with Ned Beatty to fire Finch. Beatty want Finch to stay. When they cannot fire Finch they decide assassination would work. Reality TV begins.

Although a plot synopsis sounds absurd, it is not. TV is about ratings. America is not about Democracy but all about money and corporations. Ratings need viewers and viewers are vultures for blood. So Finch says he is going to kill himself and the ratings go up. News is entertainment not serious news.

Holden moves in with Dunaway. His wife wins an award for her reaction to his affair.

Peter Finch died before he could accept his Oscar.

Dunaway won an Oscar.

The Verdict (1982)

Stdney Lumet directed

[10/10 · 17 November 2021]

Paul Newman and Jack Warden star in this medical malpractice case about an anesthesiologist who is on trial with his partner. A pregnant women is in a coma for years after something happening during delivery. Her sister and brother in law want justice. Newman has been down since some awful scandal with his ex wife Charlotte Rampling meets Newman in a bar. Is she a mole? Is her father James Mason the lawyer for the anesthesiologists and the Church. A woman who filled out the admitting form, Lyndsey Crouse, has to be found.

Newman socks Rampling knocking her down. The judge is corrupt. The jury must find justice in their hearts.

Spotlight (I) (2015)

Tom McCarthy directed

[9/10 · 16 November 2021]

Josh Singer wrote this account of the Boston Globe cracking of the Catholic Church shuffling of pedophile priests around greater Boston. At full count there were 240 priests guilty of molesting boys and girls. The truth should always be found said Marty Baron who spearhead the investigation from his seat as editor in chief of the Boston Globe. Priests targeted vulnerable families. Cardinal Law knew and had to resign. The top people in the Catholic Church knew. The scope of the cover up reached far and wide. One lawyer who had 84 cases of abuse had his life threatened.

Mark Ruffalo won an Oscar for his performance.

Up the Down Staircase (1967)

Robert Mulligan directed 1967

[10/10 · 15 November 2021]

Calvin Coolidge High is the setting for Sandy Dennis first year teaching. The kids are racially mixed. One girl Ellen O'Mara falls for her English teacher. Another Jeff Howard has a high IQ but can't focus. Harry A. Kagan the class president wears a suit every day.

Jean Stapleton smothers the school in paper work. Patrick Badford corrects grammar instead of talking to the amorous student. Eileen Heckart the guidance counselor has a tricky system that categorizes the students. Up the down staircase means Dennis is new to teaching and uses the wrong staircase.

Tale of Two Cities is her breakthrough moment with her class who suddenly realize their lives can be both awful and wonderful simultaneously.

After a close call with Jeff Howard she thinks of resigning.

Then a mock trial changes her mind.

Sandy Dennis is like Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter; so natural one forgets she is acting.

The Odessa File (1974)

Ronald Neame directed 1974

[9/10 · 15 November 2021]

Frederick Forsyth wrote the book about 1963 Germany when a group called Odessa was operating in an attempt to work with Egypt to destroy Israel. A diary written by a Riga survivor leads Jon Voight to discover that his German father was shot dead by a German called Roshman, the Butcher. After a daring fight with an Odessa assassin Voight gets the book with all the Odessa names. He goes out to get Roshman, Maxmilian Schell. Schell is not afraid until he finds he has murdered his father. There is a shoot out.

The locations are in Munich with interior shots of architecture that is very beautiful. The singing at an Odessa meeting is fun. Interior shots of the apartment of Mary Tamm and Voight are interesting. The film captures November 22, 1963 when Kennedy was shot, through the radio broadcast from the car of Voight.

Ronald Neame collaborated with David Lean, and they are both considered top directors.

I can see their old touch with the praying mother up in bed from the Odessa Files and her fake passport printing son praying for his safety all the while thinking Voight is a priest. She is the ringer of the bell on a string

The forger has so much concern for his mother but sends Voight to the slaughter.

The flaw in the plot is the phone call to his wife right after he leaves passing a brutal test by a high Odessa figure. Of course it had to be. But that is the fiction.

Little Women (1933)

George Cukor directed

[10/10 · 14 November 2021]

Katharine Hepburn plays Jo the family writer. She loves Laurie, the boy next door. When he proposes, she tells him she doesn't feel the same. She then leaves Concord for New York. Her sister Amy ends up marrying Laurie. Joan Bennett is Amy the sister who marries Laurie. Jo falls for the professor, Paul Lukas. Meg, Frances Dee, marries tutoof Laurie. Jean Parker as Beth does not marry. Aunt March is played by Edna May Oliver. The father March left to fight in the Civil War. Marmee, Spring Byington works at a store. They have a cook although poor. This 1933 production excels above the 1949, 1994, and 2019 versions. Joan Bennett was pregnant. Douglas Montgomery plays Laurie.

The play performed by the March sisters with the neighborhood children is a favorite sequence. Hepburn running through the woods and jumping over fences are marvelous moments. Laurie and Hepburn dancing with Amy and Beth on the stairs watching is memorable.

The main flaw with the novel by Louisa May Alcott is the unbridgeable gap in the March family caused by one sister marrying the boy the other sister loved and would have married. All versions skirt this major no no. No one marries the boyfriend of a sister. No one. Unless the sister has died as in Tess of the Durbervilles. Amy did destroy a book written by Jo. But to marry her boyfriend is unforgivable.

Presumed Innocent (1990)

Alan J Pakula directed

[10/10 · 13 November 2021]

Scott Turow wrote the book on which the screenplay is based. This is a near perfect courtroom thriller. A married lawyer Harrison Ford has an affair with lawyer Greta Scacchi. Scacchi is raped and murdered. Ford goes to trial defended by Raul Julia. Bonnie Bedalia is Ford's wife. John Spencer is Ford chief detective. The medical examiner is blamed for sending the wrong sperm to be analyzed. Brian Dennehy thinks Ford did it. "We always thought you were wound too tight. And when you blew, you blew." The only negative is their house is poorly decorated with cheap furniture. Also the wife Bedalia is portrayed as a masturbating lonely housewife. She is indecisive. "All I make are beds." Then she rediscovers herself and gets accepted into a doctorate math program. She somehow transforms herself through the act of murder. "The destroyer is destroyed." I conclude that murder here is redemptive.

Lincoln (2012)

Historical bore

[3/10 · 12 November 2021]

Liam Neesom read the script and bowed out. The screenplay covers 100 days when President Lincoln was tired out. The Civil War was ending. He wanted Congress to pass the 13th Amendment which abolishes slavery in all the United States. He wanted the war to end. Although this film might be historically correct, it is a major yawn. If Spielberg wanted a documentary of those days, that is what he should have made. As drama it falls flat. Day Lewis is way over rated. Sally Field has done great work but here she looks done in. Americans should reevaluate Spielberg.