Movies, Drama
A few months ago I read a story about the director Wes Anderson in the New Yorker. Anderson was hailed as an innovative filmmaker with a peculiar style. I had seen his The Royal Tenenbaums when it came out and found the film different but not particularly compelling. It struck me as trying to take a different perspective for the sake of taking a different perspective, rather than trying to take a novel perspective to shed light the centrality and challenges of family in our lives. The portrait of Anderson in the New Yorker, however, made it apparent that there was more to this filmmaker that met the eye in the The Royal Tenenbaums. I just watched his first film ever, Bottle Rocket. It was a complete commercial failure, but boy is this film a charmer. I can fully understand why Martin Scorsese named Bottle Rocket one of his top-ten favorite movies of the 1990s. Bottle Rocket follows three losers in a rich Texas neighborhood who come to the conclusion that “crime does pay.”Bottle Rocket
Movies, Drama
If we don’t meet or if we lose the one person we are meant to be with, then our life is not worth living. Everything becomes meaningless. This is the key premise of the film. It is wrong. But if you suspend your critical faculties and assume this idea is correct for the duration of the film, A Single Man is a beautiful exploration of the premise. Fashion designer Tom Ford brings his aesthetic sensibilities and his 23-year experience of living with one and the same gay partner to direct a film that is nothing like what the enticing trailer made you believe. I want to live in the house of lead character, an Englishman (Colin Firth) who has taken up the teaching of literature in some LA college, calls his own. (I now wish more directors had studied interior design like Tom Ford!) Colin Firth delivers a spectacular performance. Aesthetically the film appealed to me more than its 1998 cousin, Gods and Monsters.A Single Man
Movies, Drama
When you visit Tombstone, Arizona, you will be struck by how small the town is yet how big a role it plays in the mythical version of American history. My Darling Clementine is the third movie I have seen about Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the gunfight at the OK Corral (Tombstone, 1993, & Wyatt Earp, 1994, are the others). John Ford (director) gave this 1946 version a different look and sensiblity. Shooting landscapes for along time, he is trying to give you a sense what it felt like to live in the West in the 1880s. David Brooks identified correctly that the challenge in the Wild West was to build communities in the absence of a strong local governments (see his editorial). Wyatt Earp is even shyer with ladies (Clementine) than in the other films. There is a funny line when Wyatt has fallen in love with Clementine who by anyone’s standards is a stunning lady. Wyatt to the Bartender: “Have you never been in love.” Bartender: “No, I have been a bartender my entire life.”My Darling Clementine
Movies, Drama
Vincent suffers from Tourette’s syndrome, “an inherited neuropsychiatric disorder with onset in childhood, characterized by multiple physical (motor) tics and at least one vocal (phonic) tic” (Wikipedia). When his mother dies, his father, a politician in Bavaria, sticks him into an institution of people with mental problems so that his tic gets cured. Now we are in location explored by earlier films such as Rain Main and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The film at times is funny and has a few deep moments, but it also deteriorates into cheesy kitsch. It is also too close the earlier German film The Princess and the Warrior (Der Krieger und die Kaiserin), which was a lot better and I recommend you see instead.Vicent wants the Sea (Vicent will Meer)
Movies, Drama
Four films: two good, two bad. Family Wedding, which chronicles the challenges of marrying across cultural and racial boundaries, had great comic potential but delivered a lame treatment of the subject. Youth in Revolt is the opposite: a film about love that is poetic and deep. Two thumbs up. Arthur, mixing animation with human being acting, turned out better than anticipated. It celebrates the power of the human imagination. I will see the next installment. Brooklyn’s Finest was a waste of time because this film was already made many times.Family Wedding, Youth in Revolt, Arthur, and Brooklyn’s Finest
Movies, Drama
We all roughly know what happened in the case of United 93. It was the fourth plane that was hijacked on September 11, 2001, to hit a high profile target. In this case, it was not the World Trade Center or the Pentagon but possibly the White House or the Capitol Building. If the Presidential mansion had been destroyed, September 11 would have been an even more shocking event. The plane never hit its target because some passengers found out via phone during the flight that two planes had struck the world trade center and they realized that their hijackers in all likelihood would fly the plane into another high profile target. To prevent this larger catastrophe, they banded together, stormed the cockpit, and overpowered the hijacker flying the plane, leading it to crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I have seen my share of films in the airplane hijacking/catastrophe genre, but this one is different because we know it is based on a real eventUnited 93
Movies, Drama
I will always remember Easter 2010 as the Crazy Heart weekend. Aside from Avatar a few weeks ago, this is my favorite film in a long time. I knew before walking into the cinema that the film followed at country singer who had seen better days. Critics also raved about Jeff Bridges performance. Yes, his performance deserved an Oscar. But the most amazing person connected with the film is the first-time director Scott Cooper. Cooper was trained as an actor but never became a superstar. We are all better off for it because the man as a poetic sensibility that is put to better used as a writer and director. Every detail about the film is right. Cooper refused to shoot in Canada to save costs because he knew that original scenes in the Southwest would please our eyes and fit much better to country music. When I reviewed Walk the Line, I confessed that I could not relate to the music because country was foreign to my ears.Crazy Heart
© 2026 Peter Murmann. Powered by ExpressionEngine.
