The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

Full disclosure: I haven’t read “My Wicked Wicked Ways,” so I’m taking Errol Flynn at face value in this movie. What he did behind those fake castle walls I don’t know and I don’t want to know. I faced certain hurdles in reviewing the movie: 1. Erroll Flynn looks like my shrink in his younger [...]

Üç maymun (Three Monkeys) (2008)

My postman stuck the Turkish movie Three Monkeys into my mailbox just as I was leaving for the unemployment office. While down there looking for work, I asked some of the others in my line why a country on the other side of the world would be named after a big ugly edible bird like [...]

Drifters (Er Di) (2003)

***SPOILERS*** …but if you’re planning to watch this film for its narrative arc or for the final resolution of its principal plot points, I wouldn’t recommend it to you in the first place. In the backstory, a young man (“Er Di” or “Little Brother”) tries to immigrate illegally to the U.S., fails twice, finally succeeds [...]

Men at Work (2006)

Four men in their fifties, driving back from a ski trip in the mountains. Late morning. They banter as they head for the city in a shiny new black Peugeot SUV, anxious to get home in time to watch a big game on TV. They’re all dressed for the slopes, in good humor, gabbing in [...]

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (2004)

*** This is mostly not about the heart, but that other place *** Directed by and starring Asia Argento. A mother (prostitute, substance-abuser, stripper, so forth) regains custody of her 7-year-old son, wrenching him from the arms of his loving foster parents. (If I were Knoxville, Tenn., I’d protest the representation of Child Protective Services [...]

O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias (The Year My Parents Went On Vacation) (2006)

***** SPOILERS ***** The Year My Parents Went On Vaction tells the story of a pre-teen boy in São Paulo, Brazil, separated from his parents during a military coup in 1970. As the army takes over, the country is distracted in part by Brazil’s successes in the World Cup of that year (sort of like [...]

The Worst Movie I’ve Ever Seen: Citizen Kane

I was reading the comments for a movie review the other day and one poster identified the film under discussion as “The worst movie I’ve ever seen.” I googled the sentence because it seems to me that I’ve been seeing it a lot lately. 19,700 hits. Some of the movies deemed “the worst ever”: 10,000 [...]

Ten Canoes (2007)

[Ten Canoes takes place long ago. The contents of this review pertain to Aboriginal life as it was then, before any contact with non-Aboriginal peoples. I'm not an anthropologist, so the information presented here as fact may be wrong or vastly oversimplified. Take it all with a grain of salt and feel free to correct [...]