yorimevets-130-485246 Reviews

The Big Short (2015)

An idiot could see it coming. The authorities chose to be blind.

[8/10 · 5 February 2016]

Categorize this as "docutainment." It explains the housing market collapse of 2008 with dry humor and aplomb. It was not difficult for a man with an expired bachelor's degree in statistics. I knew there was trouble when the radio public service announcements began back in 2003. "Home ownership in the US is at an all time high, but Hispanics and African-Americans are under- represented." Whoa! I talked to some of my banker friends, and they explained to me that a congress which grills ball players about alleged steroid abuse would not overlook an opportunity to investigate banks on charges of racism.

Banks began rolling credit card debt into mortgages in order to get the uncreditworthy into homes of their own, all the while warning the borrowers not to rack up too much consumer debt in the future. Naturally, once into the new home in a middle-class neighborhood, they'd buy Escalades, Bimmers, Volvos, and then buy fancy rims for the Slade, and sure enough when the ARM rate went up, out went the For Sale signs. It became clear that too many new homes had been built, too many mortgages had been sold, and a bubble formed.

The Big Short explains the gambling aspect of the bailout with a degree of humor that ought to scare the viewer. Ultimately, the taxpayers were put on the hook for a mere 5 trillion dollars. John Bird and John Fortune put a video on YouTube about the sub-prime crisis.

Spotlight (I) (2015)

Goodbye Good Men

[7/10 · 30 November 2015]

Having recently read Goodbye Good Men by Michael S. Rose -- which goes into excruciating detail about homosexuality in the Roman Catholic seminaries during the Sexual Revolution of the 60s and 70s, which inevitably led to the ordination of sexual deviants -- 6% according to the film, the pedophile priest scandal was a dreadful accident waiting to happen. Church authorities were indeed negligent and chose to engage in the massive cover-up, and the Globe's expose did some good. Catholic-bashers (both Christian and otherwise) gloated with glee when the story hit (and kept on hitting).

However, there were numerous other reports of pervert rabbis preying on school children which also were swept under the rug with the complicit assistance of newspapers. And also buried deep in the Metro section on page E-7 was the massive abuse committed nationwide by secular teachers both male and female.

I'm sure the advocates of the "do your own thing," and "if it feels good" movements who preach tolerance of wickedness and evil, and those who define deviancy down won't like this comment, but that's the breaks. Deal with it!

Random Hearts (1999)

Better than 5

[9/10 · 3 October 2015]

It's worth more than a 5! Random Hearts is one of very few films shot entirely in the Washington DC area, and I like to revisit for historic reasons.

The film unfolds slowly and runs for more than 2 hours – a tough sell in an age of 10-second attention spans. But the plot is more complex than it seems. There is a large cast of sleazy, disgusting people. I got much more from a third viewing; significantly turning up the volume during the first 5 minutes – especially the haranguing, racist lawyer in the court scene. The dialog often seems to be almost mundane filler, but no phrase or word is wasted because everything comes back to haunt later as the lies and deceit crash back down the mountain of infidelity. Meanwhile their workday routines are what anchor the sad survivors.

Ford is an IAD detective investigating a crime lord who's brazen enough to attempt murder in broad daylight. Kristin Scott Thomas works very well as the icy preppie congress-critter kicking off a campaign and determined to keep any whiff of negativity at bay. Her strategy is to move on immediately since there's nothing she can do to bring back either her cheating husband or his lover. But Ford is a cop and has to know; not so much out of spite, but because his training taught him to spot liars – and he couldn't believe that his wife had duped him. Naturally they realize their spouses were leading double lives while their friends and co- workers covered for them.

The couple finally realize as the gossip reaches her daughter that they both need closure. Both stars played the best, most convincing roles of their careers. Harrison Ford in particular reached his John Wayne moment.

The love scene in her car at National Airport is so packed with intense emotion that words escape me.

If you hated it the first time around, try it again, and repeat, "this is not a chick flick."

Tape (2001)

No no a thousand times no!

[1/10 · 26 August 2015]

Tape begins with a seedy motel room. It ends in a seedy motel room -- in Lansing Michigan no less; home of the World's Largest Lugnut. It goes nowhere in between. To be more brutally honest I must say this abomination, this pile of steaming excrement, just sat on my wall screen and stunk up the room. It is so awful that words can barely describe its true awfulness.

Two beta males, no, make that epsilon minus males -- have a completely boring conversation in which the more effeminate (therefore successful) asks prying questions about his pal's sex life. It's something that has bugged me since high school leading to questions like, "are you tapping that?" This pathetic bitchiness gets worse until Uma Thurman brightens the scenery. Then the dialogue gets much more abominable. She manipulates these pathetic excuses for men mervilessly.

Quite frankly, I came away from this whole ordeal hoping the worst for all three of these jerks. The four minutes it took for the cops to show up lasted for an eternity, but disappointed nevertheless. I hate this film.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

I miss the 60s

[9/10 · 26 August 2015]

Why do I miss the 60s? Because I was 10 years old when the Berlin Wall went up, but I was living in Osnabruck listening to the Beatles singing Love Me Do on the radio. People dressed well before going out, I wore a tie to school, and children weren't cruel to one another. In short I lived in a better world.

Man From UNCLE fleshes out the characters better than the TV show (which aired on BBC to counter ITV's Avengers), The new Napoleon Solo far exceeds Robert Vaughn's portrayal. Think a new, improved Piers Brosnan. The new Ilya is amazing -- I never thought the original David McCallum was up to the task.

The ChrisCraft boats, the mod fashions, the Italian backdrop! I can't get enough of it! There were plenty of laughs, plenty of excitement, sexy villains, and snappy James Bond type quips. This is being set up (along with Kingsman) to outdo the James Bond franchise which is going to suck for reasons which are patently obvious.

Quartet (2012)

2 stars for Weinstein

[2/10 · 5 May 2015]

Samuel Goldwyn said "if you want to send a message, call Western Union." The Weinsteins never fail to forget this piece of advice because they are vile propagandists who want to keep all the bad and destroy all the good.

The acting is OK, Maggie Smith makes all her usual head tilts, and Tom Courtney is barely recognizable from his days as Billy Liar or The Long Distance Runner. Never mind all that. The dialog is mundane stuff; a one hour TV show padded out for an extra hour. Nice interior shots and some beautiful landscaping at an English stately home for retired orchestra and opera performers whose world has sadly been run into the ground by vermin like TV and movie producers.

The movie was a nice little story about old people until they dragged in guttersnipes who lectured the audience about the virtues of rap and hiphop at which point I turned off the goggle box, ejected the disc and took it back to RedBox. Call me a bigot, but I hate, no, detest and abhor being lectured by the people who wreck traditions.

The Ray Bradbury Theater: To the Chicago Abyss (1989) Season 3, Episode 9

great quote

[9/10 · 14 April 2015]

"I don't remember poetry. I only remember the flotsam and jetsam of the last civilization to run over the cliff, and which still has not hit bottom."

Ray Bradbury at his finest.

Prior to his death Bradbury was walking past his local library, and saw bound volumes of the Complete Works of Cicero stacked up on the sidewalk to be picked up and hauled away by the garbage truck. He went in and asked the librarian why, and she told him it was to make more room for books on the occult and VHS tapes. With today's librarians who needs firemen.

Still falling. Not hit bottom yet.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

Are we going to stand here talking, or are we going to fight?

[10/10 · 25 February 2015]

The recipe for movie success; Take 1 part Ipcress File, 1 part Austin Powers, a dollop of Bond -- the Pierce Brosnan Bond, and a smidgeon of Charade; then blend, fold, and spindle in equal parts of The Manchurian Candidate and Arabesque. Cook over high heat for 2 1/2 hours, and watch your audiences come back for a second viewing. Make the villain a science fiction, black computer nerd billionaire -- a grown-up Urkel/Blankman if you will -- for the icing on the cake. Kingsman pushes all the right buttons for aficionados of 60s action/spy thrillers with all the up- to-date hilarity of Austin Powers. There's never a dull moment here.

This amazing film moves with the pacing of a Bond flick, and not without good reason. Political correctness spells doom for the Bond franchise as we know it, so this will be a series that can be milked for at least 20 sequels, and I will be sure to watch all of them. Even the product placements were funny. It's OK to laugh out loud at Kingsman.

It Happened Here (1964)

If the Nazis had come

[8/10 · 29 January 2015]

There was a paperback titled If The Nazis Had Come on bookstore shelves around the time It Happened Here was released. I didn't read it, but I did rent the VHS from Video Vault before it closed its doors forever. I found the film to be plausible because there was a great deal of sympathy for both Mussolini and Hitler particularly among the upper middle class. Think Miss Jeanne Brodie and Unity Mitford. Chamberlain was weak and despised, and many Britons would have welcomed Hitler with open arms.

In this film German troops are seen milling about Trafalgar Square, but the film subtly reminds that they are Englishmen who joined the Wehrmacht -- just as you can find them in the French Foreign Legion. The Germans had left the British Isles to fight the Russians. Some viewers will be offended by the newsreel footage that explains the Jewish problem. And some viewers will find it hilarious. Despite its low budget, the producers did a good job with the backdrops and posters.

Definitely worth watching.

Quadrophenia (1979)

Deuteronomy chapter 28 meets post-Christian anomie

[2/10 · 17 January 2015]

Some films need to be watched to witness subtleties in the actors' faces, and other films need to be listened to as the plot unfolds; even now with all the technological wizardry, the dialogue is what carries the motion picture. Sadly Quadrophenia lacks both of these necessities. It gets 2 stars for the soundtrack by The Who. That, and the line about comparing Brixton to Calcutta. The 1960s should have been a good time, because WW2 was over, Europe was at peace, we landed on the Moon, and made huge gains in medicine and science. What we got instead was Kennedy's assassination, the Vietnam War, drug abuse, hippies, mods and rockers, and the sexual revolution. The upshot is Jimmy -- a loser at best, and a lost soul at worst -- seeks to find himself by imitating all the losers around him. He has a job, but doesn't do it, he has a girlfriend for whom he feels nothing, and parents who somehow neglected to raise him properly. It's just awful. Simply awful with no redeeming value. Toxic.

Chuquiago (1977)

same old

[4/10 · 9 December 2014]

This flick was shown at a filmfest at George Mason University back in 1983. There was an intro by an agitating professor who was hell-bent on making sure we did not reach our own conclusions. But, I had a Bolivian neighbor (who was studying economics) who told me with a shrug that he'd seen it, and once you've seen Chuquiago you've seen every other Bolivian movie.

Essentially it's a propaganda piece along the lines of Sergei Eisenstein's silent Russian works, and was meant to incite the Indios into revolution against their Spanish/Jewish bosses. Such a policy might be short-sighted considering the background of the producers.

The four characters are a fellow who makes an investment and gets cheated, and Indian kid who's resigned to working until the day he dies, and two other forgettable people. Cut me some slack here! It's been 30 years and I need to get to 10 lines. On the plus side the background music and cinematography are both worth it and have no desire to travel to Bolivia. I thought about this while watching an episode of South Park where the pan flute players are keeping the killer guinea pigs at bay.

Dumb and Dumber To (2014)

Squirm factor

[6/10 · 28 November 2014]

The original is now ancient history. It was not a very good movie in fact it was a film to waste a couple of hours on a bad commuter day. It was Cheech and Chong without the weed, therefore it was about two dopes -- The Two Stooges. In a sense you knew what you were going to get -- cheap laughs.

Two decades later and the only thing that's changed is that Jim Carrey has proved himself as a fair-to-middling science fiction actor; The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. The laughs here are as cheap as ever, but there are a lot of them, which more than compensates for their lowbrow standard. To the people who hated Dumb and Dumber To, I have to ask; what did you expect? Movies are $13 a ticket, if you didn't want to see what 40 year-old virgins are really like, then why did you go? Get a life the lot of you!

A Most Wanted Man (2014)

Phil Hoffman

[6/10 · 12 October 2014]

Every time the camera cuts to Hoffman he lights up a cigarette, I had to wonder if RJ Reynolds put up a portion of the production money. He drinks a lot, too. I'd probably do the same if my job revolved around busting Mohammedan scum in Germany. I began to wonder if the character ever slept since he seems to be on the job 24/7. This feature almost made the viewer tired of watching. It's a low-grade pressure that brings on heart attacks after about 20 years or so.

The way he uses psychological torture to break the left-wing lawyer is worth a look later on YT, and the good cop-bad cop interrogation are straight out of Le Carre, but the upshot is typical workplace envy. Most co-workers and competitors watch the guy who's getting results and then swoop down like vultures when the pickings are good for them, and damn the consequences. You will end up hating the CIA.

I really liked the ending.

The Public Enemy (1931)

B movie

[6/10 · 12 October 2014]

I'm going to guess talkies were still something of a novelty in 1931 because the dialogue seems to be pure radio, and stilted at that. Black and white still fascinates me, however, the shapes and patterns filling the screen, the way rich homes are bright and airy while poor folks live in dour and dingy walk-ups.

Public Enemy remains a well of stolen scenes. For instance stealing a gun from a hock shop, dropping a corpse at mom's house, the girl calling the gunsel Powers' boyfriend. That's not too shabby for a budget movie. Cagney pretty much invented himself here, was better in White Heat, and best as a comedian in One Two Three.

While on the Gordon Liddy show a few years back, he talked about growing up poor. He wanted to be a dancer and his brother a doctor. Both worked to achieve their goals. He then said, "that's what's bad about welfare, with one hand they give you a check and with the other they take your dream."

We'll regrettably never see the likes of you again James. Memory eternal.

This Is Where I Leave You (2014)

Unclean Unclean!

[11 October 2014]

I'll quote this and I'll be brief.

"Like biblical lepers, the people responsible for an atrocity called "Hammersmith Is Out" should be forced by law to carry a warning bell and cry, "Unclean, unclean!"

Same for this unmanly tale about suburbian New Yawkers. In fact, Hammersmith Is Out had Richard Burton. Michael Bluth is in this. Can the star ever be anybody else? Jane Fonda is in it, and maybe some Ted Turner money, fake boobs and neuroses and therapists and self- deprecating so-called humor. I only laughed when the Frito Pendejo's E Type got flipped.

Hammersmith Is Out (1972)

What would Lloyd say

[11 October 2014]

I just watched 8/8 episodes on YT. I can't say for sure if the latest digital release. Looks about the same -- even though I had to learn more about Faust later, I can't say for sure about what Lloyd thinks about his sons' weird choice of scripts. But he was in Airplane! I liked both films for different reasons. Burton is at his creepy best and Liz faked Texan as good as anybody. And I'm also a sucker for any Texas movie. Watch Roadie.

I Think Rex Reed wrote this review: Like biblical lepers, the people responsible for an atrocity called "Hammersmith Is Out" should be forced by law to carry a warning bell and cry, "Unclean, unclean!" I used to think Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor had no taste. Now I'm convinced they'll do anything for money. I shudder to think what they were paid for this insult to the intelligence of sane moviegoers everywhere, or that they were indeed paid at all to turn out such trash, but "Hammersmith Is Out" is one more nail in their coffin. In this feeble and demented attempt to retell the Faust legend, the devil (Burton) is locked in an insane asylum disguised as a maniac called Hammersmith. With the aid of a retarded orderly (Beau Bridge«) and an illiterate waitress (Taylor), he escapes, breeds crime and pestilence, corrupts the world, launches wars, and litters the scenery with discarded corpses along the way. It must have seemed like a fine idea in the humorous head of Peter Ustinov, who directed it, but did anybody ever bother to read the script? On film, it looks like the hysterical ravings of undisciplined, self-indulgent narcissists who babble incoherently in a d i r e c t descent toward self destruction. They should have taken one hard look at the end result and set t^e negative on "Self-Destruct." Beau Bridges rises up in bed, picks his nose and mumbles about venereal disease. Elizabeth Taylor, as a platinum blonde hash slinger called Jimmie Jean Jackson, rises up behind her greasy counter covered with ketchup (or is it real bloodstains? This is the kind of home movie where it wouldn't seem to matter since they leave all the mistakes in as "camp") and drawls "What'll ya have?" in an Ozark accent that sounds like Judy Canova on a binge. People are always rising up into the frame and leaning on things with no movie to support them. A short cut later, they are both rutting like hogs on top of a garbage sack while a Coca- Cola sign flashes on and off with mutton-headed symbolism. After selling their souls to the devil, he tells them "One of the first things I remember is a lady with a snake," as he munches a shiny apple. The jokes are about that obvious, the desperate attempts at wit are vulgar and cheap. The dialogue is downright filthy, and the performances are obnoxious. Richard Burton walks through the movie in a curious trance, as though in some advanced state of self-hypnosis. Elizabeth Taylor clumps through each scene in a screeching display of self parody, allowing everyone around her to massacre her talent and accent her numerous physical and intellectual handicaps. I didn't think she could sink any lower after X, Y and Zee, but an all- time bottom is reached (even for her) as she ; writhes on a valentine-shaped^ bed with a pig person like two hippos in heat, spouting obscene toilet talk in some kind of orgasmic stupor. Waddling her enormous derriere across the screen in a manner so offensive it would bring litigation from any dignified, self- respecting performer, and saying lines like "I'm the biggest mother of them all," she inspires pity instead of laughs.