Confess, Fletch (2022)

Padre For some reason, the noir detective — and the companion trope of sky — is easy to turn comedic. One of the tried and true techniques is the Nick Charles model of coolness, plus joke lines intended directly for the viewer not the on-screen companion. I cannot recall the earlier versions with Chase, and… Continue reading Confess, Fletch (2022)

Storm Boy (1976)

Internal Weather I’ve had the advantage of being old, and living in both the US and Australia and raising kids in each. That gives me a perspective on the book before seeing the film. Every so often, a young adult book hits a sweet spot in the national heart. I believe it is because we… Continue reading Storm Boy (1976)

Enola Holmes 2 (2022)

Confidence Games Three things to like in this. The first is the obvious breaking of the fourth wall. Rather than be sly like Bruce Willis often was, this is in your face old school in-action narration. It is refreshing. Not so sure it will still work in a third film, though. The second is simply… Continue reading Enola Holmes 2 (2022)

See How They Run (2022)

More Layers The film itself is lovely, after the style of Anderson but with softer edges and more welcome split screens. The use of the splits is cinematically reflective of the story. That’s the real star here, though most folks focus on the comedic cops. So, what we have is a movie about a movie… Continue reading See How They Run (2022)

The Great Wall (2016)

Jump! I am an admirer of this filmmaker, and he does better when he gets closer to a single soul or small collection of them. But for large projects he seems to be able to understand how to group extras and their CG equivalent for visual music. But here it seems that he got into… Continue reading The Great Wall (2016)

The Outfit (2022)

Patterned Don’t read until after seeing this. Very likely, the effectiveness of this comes from a few key people with deep experience in the stage, plus possibly one person with a sensitive philosophy of blocking. So if you talked to them, you’d get a bunch of very interesting, even fascinating tradecraft. But for me, that… Continue reading The Outfit (2022)

Bilitis (1977)

Wonder In collecting my old IMDB comments for moving to this site, I find a few hundred missing — possibly a thousand. There was an era in IMDB history — before Facebook and Twitter — where IMDB was a social media hub. My comments were an attractor for the worst sort, and they ended up… Continue reading Bilitis (1977)