Movie Review: The Da Vinci Code (2006)

Posted on December 28, 2016 by Brian Wright

Good ideas that read better than they film

This isn’t to put down the fine cast and expression of sublime ideas that cause everyone to catch their breath the first time they hear them. It’s just the nature of the ideas.

For those of you who were not swept up in The Da Vinci Code book, it was quite the page turner: An author and scholar specializing in cultural symbols, Dr. Langdon, visits Paris, France, to deliver a series of lectures. As he is finishing one of them, a police inspector (Fache) approaches him and insists Langdon accompany him to the Louvre.

There the curator (Saunière) has seemingly been killed or committed suicide in a bizarre fashion, leaving clues in his blood stains and body position specifically for Dr. Langdon to decipher. This seems evidence to Fache that Langdon has something to do with the curator’s death, enough to charge and imprison Langdon. Yet Sophie Neveu, a policewoman, intervenes and secrets Langdon away.

The chase is on. Continue reading →

Frost/Nixon (2008)

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Brian Wright

David goes after the disgraced political Goliath (8 stars out of 10)

James Reston, Jr.: You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, trenches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. At first I couldn’t understand why Bob Zelnick was quite as euphoric as he was after the interviews, or why John Birt felt moved to strip naked and rush into the ocean to celebrate. But that was before I really understood the reductive power of the close-up, because David had succeeded on that final day, in getting for a fleeting moment what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get; Richard Nixon’s face swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Parenthood (1989)

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Brian Wright

The red pill (harsh reality) version __ 7.5/10
Review by Brian Wright

Grandma: You know, when I was nineteen,
Grandpa took me on a roller coaster.
Gil: Oh?
Grandma: Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride!
Gil: What a great story.
Grandma: I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it. Continue reading →