This is the first post in The Cinematic Mr. Ripley, a series for the MovieThoughts category of my blog that considers moral themes in Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley novels and the film adaptations of those books. This post looks at Purple Noon, the 1960 French adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Alain Delon. It…
Gliding almost without speech down the dawn streets of a wet Paris winter, these men in trench coats and fedoras perform a ballet of crime, hoping to win and fearing to die. Some are cops and some are robbers. To smoke for them is as natural as breathing. They use guns, lies, clout, greed and nerve with the skill of a magician who no longer even thinks about the cards. They share a code of honor which is not about what side of the law they are on, but about how a man must behave to win the respect of those few others who understand the code.
Woody Allen’s 50th film, “Coup de Chance” made a pretty good impression after premiering at last year’s Venice International Film Festival and then in France a short time later. Since then it has been finding its way to screens including here in the States courtesy of MPI Media Group. It’s Allen’s first French-language feature. And…
I feel like I should start out this review by saying I was a big fan of the 2 previous A Quiet Place movies. You can read my reviews here and here. They did a great job establishing atmosphere and creating compelling characters I could breathe with for the moment. However, they are not movies…
The bluntly titled “Something in the Water” hearkens back to those good old days of perusing the horror section of my local mom-and-pop video store, carefully examining the VHS boxes of movies I’d never heard of, in search of some fun late-night entertainment. For better or worse, “Something in the Water” plays a lot like…
The Last Exorcism (2010) IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT! I COMPEL YOU BACK TO THE BOTTOMLESS PIT OF HELL WHE – Oh hello, didn’t see you there! You’ve caught me right in the middle of exorcising my fellow reviewer Ryan Fleming. He suggested this week we watch something…
Kevin says Twisters kinda rocks!
Another reboot is roaring into theaters this weekend.
Style is half the picture. Story is the other half. William Shakespeare’s 17th-century play, The Tragedie of Macbeth, might be one of the greatest stories ever penned. If not, it’s at least one of the most durable. The desire for power, the ruthlessness of rule, and the all-consuming descent into madness that comes with conspiracy and […]
A swing and a miss this boring noir drama is brimming with quality visuals and A list talent. Bradley Cooper, Rooney Mara, and Cate Blanchett put the story through its paces and make it watchable to a point, but it is a hard watch.
There’s few things more annoying than the cinematic bait and switch; setting up the idea of one movie in the minds of an audience, then delivering something else. Sometimes it’s because film-makers or studios change their minds, or sometimes the product doesn’t fit the marketplace; delivering a trailer for Sweeney Todd that provided no hint…
Nightmare Alley is Guillermo del Toro’s followup to his surprise Oscar winner The Shape of Water. It serves as both a remake of the 1947 film noir of the same name and a new adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham’s novel from a year earlier, with the beloved filmmaker delivering […]
Continue reading “Review: Nightmare Alley”
Antoine Fuqua’s Infinite is a sci-fi action flick that imagines a world of reincarnated souls where a group of people called Infinites have the ability to remember their past lives. Within this group, there are two subgroups; the “believers,” who view their ability as a gift, and “nihilists” […]
Pig tells a compelling story in a unique way, focusing more on the quiet moments to explore tragedy and grief without hitting us over the head with what it wants to say. Is it worthy of your next watch? Let’s find out…
Spoiler-Free Review of “Pig” on Hulu: Unique and Effective Storytelling
Well to say this film went into the unexpected might not quite sum up completely as writers Joe Barton and Michael Pearce, whom directs as well, take us on a road trip journey of science fiction – adding in a very personal side to the lead character, that at first is just thought of as […]
REVIEW: “ENCOUNTER” (2021) Amazon Films
What in the world is House of Gucci about? On the surface House of Gucci is inspired by the true story of the Gucci family, a one-time dynasty that fell once family members started backstabbing each other with backroom dealings and buyouts. But what is the movie up to? What does it hope to gain by telling this story […]
I have always been a huge fan of The Coen Brothers and a lot of that is due to my Dad who introduced Fargo, Oh Brother Where Art Thou and The Big Lebowski into our household. I always got excited when a new film of theirs was announced. Ethan Coen appears to have retired from […]
Can’t Stop What’s Comin: The Nature of Violence & Fate in No Country for Old Men
There doesn’t seem to be much love in the world for killer doll movie Dead Silence. The film-makers (Leigh Whannell, James Wan) went on to bigger and better things, and disowned this early effort as mangled by studio interference, but while the creative forces may not have been satisfied with the end product, Dead Silence […]
The presence of 2021 Oscar-winner Yuh-Jung Youn, now forever to be knows as the ‘granny from Minari’, is the obvious selling point for Kim Yong-hoon’s assured debut feature. But there’s a lot more going on here, and the long-time Brad Pitt fan only features in a few scenes, although her character is certainly memorable and […]
It took a bit of cajoling to get me to review this South Korean political thriller because…well, because it’s a South Korean political thriller. This is a hard sell, because while most of the world is hard-wired into US politics, the development of the Korean CIA and the abuse of presidential power is a rather […]
In an executive housing complex near a Druidic stone, two middle-class couples meet for a dinner party to eat, drink wine and – hopefully – sign papers which will secure one of the pairs owning their new home. But as the evening draws on, with New Age drumming nearby, relationships unfurl to […]
