Thumbnails Oct 19

by Tony Medley

Untouchable (9/10): Runtime 98 minutes. NR. This is a portrait of evil, a fat slob who made lots of award-winning films but who abused his power by molesting and exploiting women. It’s told mostly by his victims, and their stories are hair-raising. While it starts with Harvey Weinstein and his brother, Bob, in Buffalo as concert promoters, it quickly segues into their success in the movie business. In no time at all Harvey is on top of the world and every woman of whom he can take advantage. The Casting Couch has been alive and well in Hollywood since the dawn of motion pictures in the 1910s. I don’t know how Harry Cohn and others used it, but these stories aren’t of women exchanging sex for roles; rather they are blatant rapes that are described in detail. It is an emotional movie to sit through, but well worth the sit. On Hulu.

Downton Abbey (8/10): Runtime 122 minutes. PG. I might be the only person who never watched one second of the PBS series, so I went into it knowing nothing. Movies should stand on their own but when producers make a TV series that lasts, what, five years? And then choose to end it by making a feature film that wraps everything up, one might think that without exposure to what came before, sitting through this would be a drag. And, to be truthful, the first half hour did crawl by. But then it picked up and I enjoyed it. The acting is superb and the production values second to none. And after the story picks up, it definitely holds interest. If you are a fan of the series it is undoubtedly 10/10.

The Goldfinch (8/10): Runtime 149 minutes. R. While there doesn’t seem to be much story here, there is a constant feeling that there’s more there that we don’t know. Director John Crowley does an outstanding job of keeping up the pace, aided by exceptional music by Trevor Gureckis that keeps tension in the movie when you aren’t sure exactly why. All the performances are very good, which is one of the reasons the movie holds interest. If you read the book, though (I didn’t), and know the ending it might not be as palatable.

Raise Hell: The Life And Times Of Molly Ivins (7/10): Runtime 91 minutes. NR. Molly Ivins was a vitriolic political columnist as far to the left as she could get. She was a good writer and had a sense of humor. In addition to calling out the truth about the second George Bush (which was generally discounted due to her known prejudice), she admirably and bravely faced her death with equanimity and humor. It gets 7/10 because it is entertaining, in spite of its fawning partiality.

Vita and Virginia (5/10): Runtime 110 minutes. R: The ambience of the period is outstanding. But not only is the film slow and tedious, they cast two beautiful actresses to play two of the least attractive women of the 1920s; so much for verisimilitude.

Ad Astra (5/10): Runtime 122 minutes. PG-13: This Brad Pitt vehicle is as absurd as the archaic early ‘50s TV series Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. But Tom was before landing on the moon when space travel was truly a figment of the imagination. What’s Ad Astra’s excuse?

Hustlers (3/10): Runtime 110 minutes. R: This tepid, watered down, sanitized chick flick of strip club ladies getting some kind of twisted revenge on the men they entertain misses the mark entirely. Excruciating to watch, it has the typically hard to swallow slice of life dialogue endemic to all these films. Not even Sarah Bernhardt or Bette Davis could make this dialogue digestible.

Where’s my Roy Cohn? (1/10): Runtime 97 minutes. PG-13: While this is interesting, it is so terribly biased and clumsy it should be taught in film school as an epitome of artless advocacy which has no place in a proper documentary. Just one example of its callousness, it makes the gratuitously cruel claim that Cohn’s mother was the ugliest woman in New York. Cohn was a difficult guy with a lot to criticize (that’s an understatement), but he deserves a more even-handed treatment than this one that obviously went into the project with its mind made up and its eye on the target of Donald Trump, who apparently made the titular statement.