‘Reel Reviews’ Archives
SAFE HOUSE IN SOUTH AFRICA
REEL REVIEWS By Monte Lazarus Bengoshi@comcast.net Denzel Washington is, well, Denzel Washington. He’s one of those rare actors who never seem to give a bad performance no matter the plot or script. In “Safe House” he’s Tobin Frost, a cool, cynical ex-CIA agent who is viewed by the Agency as having gone rogue. There’s no [...]
THE ARTIST
REEL REVIEWS By Monte Lazarus Bengoshi@comcast.net Run; don’t walk, to see this movie. It’s advertised as a “silent”, but it’s not quite. There are a few sounds, and a continuous musical background. Other than that there’s no real dialog. On its surface the film appears simply to be a tribute to the silent movie era. However, [...]
TATTOOED — ZOO STORY
By Monte Lazarus Bengoshi@comcast.net The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Rooney Mara is mesmerizing as Lisbeth Salander, the tiny birdlike product of the Digital Age. She’s tattooed, pierced in all the wrong places, fierce, anti-social, abused, and sheathed in black leather and even wearing “Oliver Twist” gloves with the fingers cut [...]
UN-SHERLOCK
REEL REVIEWS By Monte Lazarus Bengoshi@comcast.net The latest movie version of “Sherlock Holmes” (“A Game of Shadows”) is decidedly not the Holmes we know and love from the much beloved A. Conan Doyle stories, or even the old Basil Rathbone films. The new Holmes is a macho gunslinger and hand-to-hand fighter. He’s just not very [...]
Hugo: a blend of fact and fiction
By Monte Lazarus Bengoshi@comcast.net “Hugo” is a charming mixture of the real Georges Melies, a French film pioneer, and Hugo Cabret, a 12 year old boy who lives in the Gare Montparnesse in Paris, and is a combination orphan, station clock minder, and part-time petty thief. The film is based on Brian Selznick’s 526 page book “The [...]
TROUBLE IN HAWAII
By Monte Lazarus Bengoshi@comcast.net At the very beginning of this engrossing film, “The Descendants” Matt King (George Clooney) cautions us that Hawaii is not the total paradise we mainliners think it is. Matt is neither poor nor deprived. On the contrary, he is a hugely successful real estate lawyer, a descendant of generations of [...]
LOOKING INSIDE HOOVER
By Monte Lazarus From the opening bars of music this film is stamped “Director Clint Eastwood”. Mr. Eastwood serves us an inner look at the man who elevated the F.B.I. from a second-rate, narrowly limited police department to an all powerful force in the federal government. Interestingly, the movie is not about the intricacies of the [...]
A SMALL BIG YEAR
By Monte Lazarus David Frankel, who directed the hit “The Devil Wears Prada”, tries again with “The Big Year”, loosely based on a non-fiction book. By intertwining the lives and problems of three “birders” the plot uses the otherwise benign hobby of bird-watching to explore, superficially, their human problems. Champion Kenny [...]
Do not beware “The Ides of March”
By Monte Lazarus If you are not already cynical about the state of politics you may be after watching “The Ides of March”. This film is not about ideology; it keeps its focus on the human beings who tangle themselves in the political process. The story could easily focus on a Republican primary campaign by changing just a very few words [...]
MONEYBALL
By Monte Lazarus Don’t expect “Moneyball” to be an old, hackneyed, romanticized Hollywood film such as “Pride of the Yankees” in which Gary Cooper couldn’t even pretend to be Lou Gehrig (they had to reverse the batting scenes because Cooper couldn’t even pretend to bat left-handed), or the monumental flop in which William Bendix [...]
