Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai) movie review
White noise is the soundtrack for this grimly elegant urban fairy tale, as if soft grumbling complaints were all the attention the world could spare its four child heroes, lost in the big city.
reviews by genre
The Young Visiters, or, Mr. Salteena’s Plan (review)
Fans of offbeat British humor will gobble up this BBC production, with all its elegantly silly and piquantly observant social satire, and they’ll be tickled all the more by how it comes by its stunning insight into the romantic games men and women play and the snobbery of late-Victorian England: It was written, with clueless … more…
The Twilight Zone: Season 1 (review)
No, the other one: This is the mid-1980s do-over, not the classic of early television, and yet even though you kinda remember it being pretty cheesy, it’s still compulsively watchable. The very first story of the very first episode hints at why: It stars Bruce Willis, it’s based on a story by Harlan Ellison story, … more…
MacGyver: The Complete First Season (review)
If you never go anywhere without your trusty pocketknife and can’t look at a paper clip without grinning, then you’re probably a MacGyver fan. It’s nothing to be ashamed of — the show was a worldwide phenomenon, and how many TV characters have seen their names turned into verbs? Hundreds of years from now, when … more…
Bertie & Elizabeth: The Story of King George VI & Queen Elizabeth (review)
Two genres of film collide in this workmanlike Masterpiece Theater entry: the Stolid, Plodding Historical Drama 7th Graders Will Be Forced To Watch In Social Studies Class, and Simplistic Valentines To Complicated Real-Life People For Those Who Want Their Sappy Melodramas Drained Of Any Disruptive Emotion. Actually, that may be giving this stodgy movie too … more…
Spartacus (review)
Disappointingly, this made-for-cable sword-and-sandal action soap opera ain’t half as goofy as you’d expect it to be. It’s actually gripping and suspenseful in some places, tenderly romantic in others — it’s 90 minutes of great movie. Alas, its running time is more like three hours, so without a lot of silliness to distract the viewer … more…
God, The Devil and Bob (review)
The creators of this extremely short-lived animated NBC series would love to think that it was simply too controversial for network TV audiences and so was inevitably doomed to ignominious cancellation after only three episodes had aired. Would that it were so. The unlikely cartoon troika of God (the voice of James Garner: Divine Secrets … more…
Cold Feet: Pilot and Complete 1st Series (review)
Somebody save us, please, from “hip,” “sophisticated” dramas about overprivileged, self-absorbed yuppies whining about how miserable their lives are. Here, it’s whiny Brits whining about how they’re not having sex, or if they are having sex how they can’t get pregnant, or if they do have babies how they can’t find a nanny, and would … more…
The Corporation (review)
Corporations on the Couch Did you know there were water riots in Bolivia in early 2000? Poor urban Bolivians actually took to the streets over water… not because there wasn’t enough to go around but because the American construction and engineering firm Bechtel had taken over the country’s privatized water infrastructure, including — and here’s … more…
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, The Year Without a Santa Claus, Rudolph’s Shiny New Year (review)
Are they puppets? Are they some sort of clay-animated figures? Or are they some kind of beasts hitherto unknown and the likes of which the world has not seen again since? It doesn’t matter. The creatures Rankin & Bass brought to life in their animated holiday specials are so much a part of my psyche that I no more think about their nature than I pause to consider what constitutes the air I breathe.
