The Reader (review)
People sitting around looking at books? How does that become cinematic? But this is tougher: a movie about secrets.
historical
‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “The Next Doctor”
“Boy, boy! What day is it?” “Why, it’s new Doctor Who day, sir!” “I say, lad, run down to the Internet for me and pick up the fattest AVI upload of the new episode you can find! There’s an extra half crown in it for you if you can get it for me before Boxing Day!”
Valkyrie (review)
Now, don’t get me wrong: it’s not exactly a Hogan’s Heroes level of diminution, but there’s something honestly comic-book-esque about Valkyrie. I mean that in a good way…
Doubt (review)
Passionate performances aside, there’s an odd dispassion to this stage-to-screen adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name.
Milk (review)
It opens with archival footage of police raids on gay bars, grainy black-and-white stuff that’s like a grim glimpse into a distant dreadful past, like the 1950s and 60s were another planet, and you think, Geez, people really worried *that much* about who was sleeping with whom?
Sally Lockhart Mysteries: The Shadow in the North (review)
It’s a few years after the events of *Ruby in the Smoke,* the first of novelist Philip Pullman’s stories of the spunky Victorian girl detective, and star Billie Piper is even more spectacularly confident in her second outing as the young woman now daring enough to set herself up in the City, London’s financial center, as a consultant…
Wagon Train: The Complete Color Season (review)
The only bell *Wagon Train* rings for me is its role in the story of how Gene Roddenberry first pitched *Star Trek* to NBC — he now famously said that it would be “*Wagon Train* to the stars.” Which I never quite understood.
Australia (review)
If director Baz Luhrmann had decided to shoot in black-and-white, you’d hardly be able to tell this wasn’t made around 1939 or so. Sure, all those gorgeous helicopter shots of the wild and dangerous and beautiful Outback would be a dead giveaway, so they’d have to go. But otherwise…
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (review)
How’s this for a rude childhood awakening? You discover that your father, whom you adore and worship, is actually an evil Nazi stooge.
Changeling (review)
This I will concede: I finally get what the big deal is about Angelina Jolie.
