Letterboxd — Your life in film

In "The Caine Mutiny," Humphrey Bogart delivers one of his most astounding performances - and in an entire career of astounding performances, that's incredible. Bogart lives and breathes the role of Lieutenant Commander Queeg, a commanding officer who initially appears to be a hard-nosed disciplinarian, but is later revealed to be a paranoid coward. The subtle tics of Bogart's performance - the anger, fear, and betrayal - are unforgettable.

The rest of film is rather lackluster in many ways. The…

Where have we met before?
-Lancaster Dodd

I knew going into the film that it's received mixed reactions and was determined not to give Paul Thomas Anderson a free pass. I was going to recognize the film's faults and call them out damn it! Yeah well... it didn't really work out that way. The closest thing I see as a fault is that the surface narrative is misleadingly simplistic to the point where some might be fooled into thinking that…

...Or what happens when the Sundance golden child and Indie-high praise gets the better of you. American independent cinema use to be a gold mine of great films. But when the producers and filmmakers of festival favorites started contending legitimately at the film awards, then artistic integrity dropped out of the main focus and award baiting took its place. Examples of the past have shown this as a progressive and successful boutiquing method when you look at films such as…

That's a very grudging three stars, because — like Flight — there's more to chew on than I initially realized, but I still think it's kind of a crappy movie. Let me count the ways:

1) The first third in particular wore me down. I exceedingly dislike the way Bigelow transforms 7/7, the 2008 Islamabad Marriott bombing and the bombing of Camp Chapman into standard suspense setpieces (when will that explosive go off?). The latter particularly rubbed the wrong way:…

Part of Dastardly Difficult December: film nr.99

So this is a film about (WE'RE IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS!!) a couple of low life criminals that (WE'RE IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS!!) rob a poker game and get their come uppance. It´s also about (WE'RE IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS!!) the guy going after the two low life (WE'RE IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS!!) criminals that robbed the poker game. It's also about a guy with glasses (WE'RE IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS!!) who screws…

I feel like one of those old kooks, a man of the times from the old era of doing things in wanting to use the cliched phrase to begin this review:

"They don't make em' like they use to!"

Not because I am a man, but I have never been a big fan of the Romantic-Comedy sub genre or Rom-com's as they are now popular abbreviated into. The reason for this is about 90% of the ones you see today…

Wow what a revelation. Apparently black people can be racist of white people, white people can be racist of black people, black people can be racist of black people, black people can be racist of hispanic people, white people can be racist of middle-eastern people, middle eastern people can be racist of hispanic people, hispanic people are nice, white people can't be racist of white people.

BUT.

Those same black people can be nice to white people, those white people…

I’m rather amazed that there is no comparative analysis of The Leopard and Dr. Zhivago that I could easily find. Within the first 20 minutes what struck me was that this was the Italian Dr. Zhivago. Both are stories of the aristocracy facing revolutionary change in their beloved countries. Another similarity is the sumptuous cinematography, the directors un-afraid to dote on pictorial landscapes to set the mood. Both films clock in at almost the same length .. 195 minutes for…