Thumbnails Apr 19

by Tony Medley

Loving Vincent: The Impossible Dream (10/10): runtime 60 minutes, NR. As I said in my review of the film Loving Vincent about the painter Vincent van Gogh animated by oil painters painting in the style of van Gogh, in 2017, had I known it was animated I never would have attended the screening. That would have been a huge mistake because right now I am of the opinion that it is the best film I have seen this century. It’s a visual knockout. But I don’t think that I’m alone when I came out of the film and asked, “How in the world did they do that?” This documentary answers that question and it’s fascinating, a monument to making a seemingly impossible dream a reality.

Hotel Mumbai (10/10): Runtime 123 minutes. R. Now THIS is a movie! The true story of the siege of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, India by Muslim terrorists, there is not a second that passes that isn’t fraught with tension. The brutal Muslin fanatics kill with shocking cold-blooded brutality. The automatic weapons they use to spray bullets at the guests might have been on half or quarter loads, but the noise of their shooting is frightening even if you are just sitting in a theater watching it.

The Aftermath (8/10): Runtime 93 minutes. R. When you sit through as many deficient movies as I do, it’s a refreshing treat to see one that is well-written, well-directed, well-acted and well-photographed. This film with outstanding, sensitive performances by Keira Knightley, Jason Clarke and Alexander Skarsgård about the British occupation of Hamburg after WWII has all four.

Captain Marvel (3/10): Runtime 124 minutes.PG-13. This thing is hardly distinguishable from the other superhero films, except that the superhero is a woman and I guess that makes all the difference. It’s full of CGI and idiotic fights and funny looking aliens fighting other funny looking aliens. Because we all know that Captain Marvel won’t lose any of them, there’s absolutely no tension, and there never is in any of these films. It’s just two hours of the exact same stuff we see in every superhero film extant, except that in this one it’s a beautiful woman who is beating the bejesus out of a phalanx of creatures. This is a “statement” movie, folks. Women are no different from men. As P.T. Barnum didn’t say (although he is always given credit), there’s a sucker born every minute. And these suckers flock to the movie theaters to keep seeing the same story told to them over and over and over, and it never gets any better or worse. Apparently these films are enough to satisfy the 21^st Century mind.

Stockholm (3/10): Runtime 91 minutes. R. Sooo slow and full of talk for something that’s supposed to be a heist movie, and so unfunny for something that’s apparently meant to be comedic.

The Mustang (3/10): Runtime 93 minutes. R. Not a western but a prison movie about convicts who participate in a government-sponsored program to train wild horses for resale. The movie is tense because Matthias Schoenaerts has such a violent temper that one never knows what he’s going to do next. Schoenaerts does a fine job of acting as he goes about trying to train a horse as temperamental as he. It’s dark and depressing and doesn’t really have even one character the audience could give two hoots about.

The Highwaymen (3/10): Runtime 132 minutes. R. Do we really need another movie about Bonnie & Clyde, this one told from the pursuing lawmen’s side? If this sorry film is any evidence, the answer is a crushing “no.” Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson talk their way through the south before they trap the two on a lonesome highway and dispatch them in a hail of bullets. It must have been a long and tedious search but probably not as long and tedious as this film seems when you sit through it.

The Dick Cavett Show (10/10): Smore Entertainment has released new DVDs from the show that was on between 1968 and 1996 on various stations in various forms. Cavett’s interviews (they were really conversations more than interviews, which is what makes them so fine) were far more in depth than the lightweight anti-intellectual fluff you see on TV today like ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel and CBS’s Stephen Colbert. It’s reported Cavett interviewed over 10,000 people. I have two of the DVDs, “Inside the Minds of…” including Robin Williams and Richard Lewis, among others, and “And That’s The Way It is…” including Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and others of their ilk. These are far more entertaining and rewarding than 90% of the movies Hollywood churns out.