Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Movie Review: Dreamgirls (2006)

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A composite retrospective on the music of Soul and Motown___ 8/10
Reviewed by Brian R. Wright

Directed by Bill Condon

Jamie Foxx …. Curtis Taylor Jr.
Beyoncé Knowles …. Deena Jones
Eddie Murphy …. James ‘Thunder’ Early
Danny Glover …. Marty Madison
Anika Noni Rose …. Lorrell Robinson
Jennifer Hudson …. Effie Melody White
Keith Robinson ….  ‘C.C.’ White

This is a large, beautiful movie that stays true to its roots.  Based on the book and lyrics written by Tom Eyen, the movie is an adaptation of the musical play of the same name that debuted in 1981.

Condon dedicates the movie to the director-choreographer of the play, Michael Bennett, who died in 1987 of AIDS complications.  He keeps the spirit of Bennet’s creation intact with a bold, insightful, entertaining gem of a movie with dynamite acting and musical performances.

The story is about three young women, a composite of the Supremes and Aretha Franklin—Beyonce (~Diana), Anika, and the American Idol finalist, Jennifer Hudson (~Aretha)— who as the Dreamettes meet up with a young promoter, Curtis—a Barry Gordy Jr. surrogate played by Jamie Foxx—at a Detroit theater in the early 1960s.

Initially performing backup with James Early (a combo of Jackie Wilson and James Brown, and others, played by Eddie Murphy), Curtis turns the Dreamettes into the Dreamgirls and promotes their considerable talents all the way to the top of the musical world.  The sets of Detroit and environs, LA, and other entertainment venues are uncannily realistic. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Vice (2018)

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Well-done multimedia distractoid from what’s daily eating out our substance
By Brian R. Wright

A number of deep ironies this afternoon on the penultimate day of 2018. For one thing, the person inviting me to join him and his son at the Waterford MJR Metroplex is none other than  Peter Eric Hendrickson, author of Cracking the Code, THE people’s liberator from misunderstanding and mispayment of the federal income tax—so long as we have the individual courage to stand up for the knowledge.

It’s probably been five years since I’ve taken in an actual film at a modern public cinema. The previous time was still LOUD. Today they’ve toned it down some, and added the plush, wide-butt recliner seats with at least a meter of aisle space at your feet for others to pass in front of you. These gentle envelopes remind me of the do-everything-for-you hover chairs for the uselessly fat passengers on the giant space-escape-cruiser in the movie WALL-E. [Escaping from the waste-world Earth in its death throes that the single, stranded WALL-E (Waste Allocation Lift Loader—Earth Class) robot still tried to clean up.]

Load up on the excitotoxin-dripping snacks and beverages—my small popcorn and carbonated beverage a steal at $8.25—then head back to your cocoon, fix your eyes and ears on the big screen, and assume the receive-program position. Despite its slyly powerful political content Vice is still a modern American movie—disconnect your critical faculties to absorb the full perceptual-emotional impact of the audio-visuals laden with unquestioned premises brushed in with the subtlety of a Mack Truck.

El Supremo False Premise: The Official Story of 9/11[1]

When Pete offered to meet me there with tickets, I gathered from cursory reviews that the Vice of Vice referred to none other than VP Dick Cheney during the Dubya years… and, silly me, I actually expected that Hollywood would be spilling some of the major beans behind Cheney’s planning and operational role in the Crime of the Century and the multitrillion-dollar, multimillion-killing-spree War of (Western Cabal) Terror that it launched.

NOT. I’m 69 years old, how could I have been so naïve? Continue reading →

Movie Review: Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life

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Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life
Story of a once-in-a-millennium spirit __ 10/10

Written by Michael Paxton
Directed by Michael Paxton

Sharon Gless … Narrator
Michael S. Berliner … Himself
Harry Binswanger … Himself
Sylvia Bokor … Herself (artist)
Daniel E. Greene … Himself (artist)
Cynthia Peikoff … Herself
Leonard Peikoff … Himself

Ayn Rand: If a life could have a theme song, and I believe every worthwhile one has, mine is a religion, an obsession, or mania, or all of these expressed in one word: individualism. I was born with that obsession and have never seen and do not know now a cause more worthy, more misunderstood, more seemingly hopeless, and more tragically needed.

… as the camera approaches the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor at night with crisp, pensive piano chords accentuated with a couple of low drum rolls penetrating the quiet space. Then Sharon Gless‘s soft, pleasantly firm voice narration continues to identify the source of that quotation: Ayn Rand. Calling it fate or irony that she was born in a country least suited to a fanatic of individualism, Ayn Rand (born Alice Rosenbaum) herself provides most of eloquent verbiage that Gless and others use to document her exceptional life.

Michael Paxton’s Sense of Life, a splendid achievement in its own right, is as thorough and objective a treatment of novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand— from her coming to America from the bowels of collectivism, to her perseverance and accomplishments as a writer, to the succinct description of her writing artistry and her philosophy of Objectivism, to the chronicling of Ayn Rand’s “presence” as a public figure—as one will probably ever see. His film is also dramatically compelling… at least for those of us who care about the progress of individualism. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

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Geez, you gotta draw the line somewhere _____ 2/10
Reviewed by Brian R. Wright

Screenplay by Kelly Masterson
Directed by Sidney Lumet

Philip Seymour Hoffman … Andy Hanson
Ethan Hawke … Henry ‘Hank’ Hanson
Albert Finney … Charles Hanson
Marisa Tomei … Gina Hanson

“Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”

What do you say about a movie everyone loves—Rotten Tomatoes gives it 88% critics, 74% community—but everything that makes any sense to you at all says this emperor wears absolutely no clothes? That’s how I feel about Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. From the graphic opening scene (“Awe, man, we shouldn’t have to see this.”)—which supporters can properly argue goes to the essence of the principal character Andy Hanson (Philip Seymour Hoffman)—to the final credits, this superbly acted, gold-plated turkey is an unrelenting descent into depravity.  [If I were still a judgmental Randian, I’d have said “descent into moral depravity.”  But this depravity jettisons morality entirely.]

Let me give you the synopsis without giving anything away: Andy Hanson, who is married to Gina Hanson (Marisa Tomei) has a crummy job and issues with his father (Albert Finney).  He basically rationalizes these unhappy circumstances to commit petty larceny from his company, abuse cocaine and crack on a regular basis, and plan a serious jewelry heist.  Hank Hanson (Ethan Hawke), Andy’s screwup brother, is a well-meaning, good-looking young divorced alcoholic with money problems.  For mostly unfathomable reasons Andy decides to cut Hank in on the operations side of the robbery. The movie is all about the deterioration of the characters as a consequence of the (unlikely) plot.

I guess I can tell you the prospects for a happy ending for are slim. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Children of Men (2006)

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Children of Men (2006)___8/10
Tyranny and terror in a world of the “death of birth”

Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón
Based on the novel by P.D. James

Clive Owen …. Theo Faron
Julianne Moore …. Julian Taylor
Michael Caine …. Jasper Palmer
Chiwetel Ejiofor …. Luke
Charlie Hunnam …. Patric
Claire-Hope Ashitey …. Kee

Children of Men is an escape thriller set in a dystopian England 20 years into the future, where for reasons that are never made explicit women of the world stopped having children (ca. 2009).  While the continents crumble into chaos, England holds on through an extreme xenophobic (foreigner-bashing) police state.

Sounds depressing, right?  Well, sure.  But the plot is tight and interesting, and high hopes counter the dangerous bleakness.

Londoner Theo Faron (Owen), a former peace activist with a reasonably comfortable position in the government, has a run-in with his still-revolutionary (kind of a pro-immigrant movement known as Fish) ex-wife, Julian (Moore).  She wants him to use his connections to help smuggle an illegal immigrant Kee (Ashitey) out of the country.

Kee has miraculously conceived and is close to bearing her child.  The Fishes are loosely associated with a sea-faring group called The Human Project, which has arranged to accept Kee with the goal of restarting the species.  In addition to providing the transit papers, Theo winds up as Kee’s escort.

The everpresent state cameras and police are always on their tails, then an internal Fish power struggle threatens to upend the mission.  Their route to the sea is full of obstacles.  Theo and Kee, with a woman serving as Kee’s birth coach, make their way into the woods where Theo’s longtime friend, Jasper (Caine) sets them up for the final leg. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Out of the Past (1947)

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Post war (ww2), intricately plotted film noir __ 8/10

Jeff Bailey: I sell gasoline, I make a small profit. With that I buy groceries. The grocer makes a profit. We call it earning a living. You may have heard of it somewhere.

Through the 1940s, before the Hollywood studio system folded itself into the social conformity of the 1950s, several well-written and superbly plotted stories made it to the silver screen. In the category of film noir, Out of the Past, starring Robert Mitchum—one of the more individualistic, risk-taking actors (even into the 1950s)—is one such gem.

Novel by Daniel Mainwaring
Screenplay by Daniel Mainwaring
Directed by Jacques Tourneur

Robert Mitchum … Jeff Bailey
Jane Greer … Kathie Moffat
Kirk Douglas … Whit Sterling
Rhonda Fleming … Meta Carson
Richard Webb … Jim
Steve Brodie … Jack Fisher
Virginia Huston … Ann Miller

The above statement from Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) occurs early in the movie as we find him in a small California town trying to lead a normal life. We even see him out fishing (!), with his local honey Ann (Virginia Huston), and looking every bit like the guy who wants to settle down, buy a house, raise a passel of kids in the country. Not! Bailey’s contemplation of the idyllic life is interrupted when another big man—menacing, obviously from a past Bailey wants to leave that way—finds Bailey, and gives him an appointment he cannot refuse. Continue reading →

Movie (Pre)Review: Anatomy of a Great Deception 2 (AGD2)…

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… via AGD1 review and comments on the AGD2 Project du Century
By Brian R. Wright

First let’s go back a few years to the original movie conceived, launched, and premiered by one David Hooper, a Detroit-area entrepreneur and can-do guru extraordinaire. The first film has a high-end documentary quality and consists mainly of Mr. Hooper recounting how he came to ask questions about the Official Story of 9/11, particularly on the engineering and architectural weaknesses/contradictions of that feeble yet massive coverup. Then on what he learned  from those questions

Note: you may click on the figure and be taken to the location on Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (ae911truth.org), where you can purchase the DVD. It is a beautifully rendered package. Or candidly you may view the film for free here on a preferred channel… or on any of a number of YouTube outlets, where the cumulative views have exceeded 30 million and counting.

By the way, here’s my commentary and review on the exciting opening night at the Detroit Fillmore Theater, September 5th, 2014, as well as the lovely weekend celebration at the Hoopers’ classic home on Grosse Ile.

My Review of AGD1

Top_View_Gage_InterviewLike David, I came to question the official story of the 9/11/2001 attacks several years after they took place. But unlike David, my frustration in not being able to get friends, family, and huckleberries to so much as look at the evidence did not lead to creation of a deeply personal movie as a way around these obstacles.

[Opinion polls corroborate that most people do not believe the official story of 9/11. Most of Europe thinks Americans are trapped in a 9/11 ‘Truman Show,’ they keep waiting for us to see it’s not real.] Continue reading →