Shameless Self Expression

Fact-based epic drama set in late 1300s France, with Matt Damon playing experienced knight and vassal Sir Jean de Carrouges, whose friendship with libertine vassal Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), slowly starts to fray. It doesn’t help that Sir Jean feels that Jacques is favoured by their liege, the egotistical Pierre d’Alençon (Ben Affleck), but things completely fall apart when Sir Jean’s lovely wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer) accuses Jacques of raping her. Jacques denies it of course, and since Jacques is backed by Pierre d’Alençon, Sir Jean has to take things as high as the King of France. Eventually the matter is to be decided by a legally (and supposedly God-ly) sanctioned duel between the two men…deciding the truthfulness of a woman’s testimony.   This 2021 historically-based Medieval “Rashomon” from director Ridley Scott ( “Alien” , “Black Rain” , “Gladiator” ) is a near-miss. For the record Mr. Scott, I’m not a Millennial, and I don’t believe the box-office failure of you...

Vain, histrionic and aging theatre star Margo Channing (Bette Davis, in a case of art perhaps imitating life) is somewhat humbled by adoring fan Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), who has seen every show. However, Margo begins to regret taking Eve under her wing when the sweet, innocent (and much younger- a crucial point) woman starts to get a little too involved in her life and the lives of those closest to her. Celeste Holm is Margo’s loyal friend Karen, who treats Eve with kindness. Gary Merrill and Hugh Marlowe play Margo’s director fiancé and Karen’s playwright husband respectively, whilst sitting on the sidelines are insinuating, manipulative critic Addison De Witt, played by George Sanders in his signature role, and giving a bemused, cynical narration. Thelma Ritter is plain-speaking Birdie, Margo’s wise-acre confidante and costumer who has Eve pegged as trouble from the get-go. Marilyn Monroe has a bit part as an up-and-coming bimbo whom De Witt is attempting to mould.   195...

Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams are a husband-and-wife team of super-competitive board game players who host a ‘game night’ at their house regularly with friends. The usual players are husband-and-wife Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury, as well as single Billy Magnussen who brings a different hot-but-dumb date with him (not that Magnussen is Einstein himself). On this particular occasion he has brought someone a bit smarter in Irish-born Sharon Horgan, who spends much of the film entirely unimpressed with the himbo. A surprise turn-up comes in the form of Bateman’s more financially successful but jerk-y brother Kyle Chandler, who quickly proceeds to usurp the evening by organising a different kind of ‘game night’. It’s basically a form of ‘murder-mystery’ party game, involving someone getting kidnapped and the teams having to follow the clues to rescue them. On cue, some goons come along to whisk Chandler away, and the game is on. Only, when Bateman gets shot in the foot, he and McAdam...

Set in Louisiana in the early 80s, the film depicts molestation in the local Catholic church, as devout Catholic parents Keith Carradine and Blythe Danner find that their son (Michael Faustino, excellent under difficult circumstances) has been molested by a priest (David Strathairn). And it appears he’s not the only victim, though the church’s reaction to the allegations is pathetic at best. So the couple investigate legal avenues instead, eventually hiring swaggering Southern lawyer Claude Fautier (Jack Warden), who prepares the boy for what will likely be a gruelling experience on the stand. Bob Gunton plays the buck-passing local monsignor, Dylan Baker (several years before “Happiness” ) is a priest colleague of Strathairn’s who has mixed emotions and a dodgy past of his own, Robert Joy is perfect casting as the soulless head of the firm representing the Catholic church, and Mitchell Ryan plays the first lawyer the parents hire, with somewhat moderate returns at best.   I do...

Schizophrenic teenager Madison Iseman comes home from a psychiatric facility to her loving and supporting (but exhausted) parents Katherine Heigl and Harry Connick Jr. The problem is that Iseman’s schizophrenic episodes may have also come home as she starts to have hostile feelings and criminal suspicion towards her teacher (Eugenie Bondurant). Or does the teacher really have a missing kid imprisoned in her house? Israel Broussard (Who is visibly 27 years-old to Ms. Iseman’s young-looking 24) plays a nice kid at school who Iseman really likes.   What starts out as clichéd but fairly grounded, horribly goes off the rails quite quickly in this 2021 dud from writer-director Castille Landon (Any relation to director Christopher Landon? He made the “Happy Death Day” films co-starring Broussard). Exploring mental illness in a genre work is always a bit of a tightrope, and Landon trips and falls multiple times in this schizophrenia version of “Disturbia” (or “Rear Window” for us ol...

An apparent PR exercise has a group of German Jews expelled in 1939 sent off on a ship headed for Havana, with the Nazis knowing very well that they are unlikely to be allowed safe haven there. Max von Sydow is the dutiful, non-political captain who is simply doing his job. Helmut Griem is the most vocally Anti-Semitic crew member, a member of the Nazi party who constantly berates and mocks the passengers, inciting violence. He frequently butts heads with more sympathetic, young crew member Malcolm McDowell (one of his rare nice guy roles). James Mason, Fernando Rey, Denholm Elliott, and Jose Ferrer solidly play Cuban dignitaries of varying degrees of morality as the ship looks for a safe port to dock. Mason plays the most compassionate of the lot, with Rey and Ferrer by far the least sympathetic. Ben Gazzara plays humanitarian Morris Troper, trying his best on the ground to get the passengers safely docked somewhere. Children of the late 80s and early 1990s will want to take note of a...

Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) is thawed and revived, and now working on an idea to trap the soul of a recently deceased person, with his assistants Hans (Robert Morris) and Dr. Hertz (Thorley Walters). The idea being that he may be able to take that soul and put it into another dead body in order to revive it. Susan Denberg plays Christina, Hans’ lady love, who is paralysed and disfigured on her left side. Peter Blythe plays one of a trio of dapper but rotten young fops who cause a fracas one night at the in run by Christina’s father (Alan McNaughten), which starts a whole chain of events that eventually supply the single-minded Frankenstein with two freshly deceased bodies for his experiment.   After the disappointment of the previous “The Evil of Frankenstein” , I was sceptical going into this 1967 sequel from director Terence Fisher ( “The Curse of Frankenstein” , “The Revenge of Frankenstein” ) and screenwriter Anthony Hinds ( “The Curse of Frankenstein” , “The ...

Dennis Quaid is Bowen, a once valiant knight ‘of the old code’ now an embittered rogue. Why embittered? Some time ago, he took a wounded Prince Einon to a dragon who saved the boy’s life. However, he became a thoroughly rotten, evil king (now played by David Thewlis), and Bowen blames the dragon. We the audience know that Bowen’s young pupil was an evil little shit all along. Years later the angry and disillusioned Bowen is now a mercenary who slays every dragon he comes across and is paid handsomely for it. That is until he meets a dragon who has a counter plan for profit: The dragon, whom Bowen names ‘Draco’ (voiced by Sean Connery) suggests a deal whereby he starts terrorising local villages only for Bowen to come along and agree to ‘save’ the town for some gold. They then engage in pretend battle, Draco (now supposedly the only living dragon) takes a mock fall, Bowen collects. Eventually the plot dictates that Bowen and Draco will need to team up to end Einon’s reign of terror, but...