I’ve decided that instead of unloading day after day of movie reviews on you, I’ll just lump them all into one day every week to make it easier on you. Monday is now Movie Review Day. This leaves the rest of the week free for other boring details from my life!

——Nixon——

(A-)

I was quite surprised to see that Oliver Stone didn’t paint Nixon as some evil villain of America, but instead portrayed him as almost a Shakespearean tragic figure, a lot like MacBeth. Here is a man who grew up with strong values and yet life kept kicking him down, so he had to take certain liberties to attain that which he really wanted. He was the football teams’ tackling dummy, and later became a dummy when facing JFK in the televised debate. Nixon is an everyman who wants to be someone special, but no matter what he does he can’t catch a break like the more “privileged” Kennedy clan can. Like MacBeth he becomes a victim of his own ambition, caught finally in a web of his own lies. As he repeatedly says throughout the film, the American public can forgive you for just about anything, but if you lie to them it is all over.

At times I did find the movie a little heavy handed though. A little too over dramatic. A little too over the top. But otherwise I thought it was a very enjoyable film, and I feel that finally I can admit to myself that Oliver Stone is actually a really great director when he tries.

——The Last Temptation of Christ——

(A)

I’m not sure I’m judging this film on its artistic methods. If I were to do that then it probably might be more in the A-, B+ range. Instead I reacted solely to what was on screen, and how for once in my life I saw a telling of the New Testament story that actually made sense to me. Here I saw all of the things that were glossed over in Church, and all of the things I questioned, answered. I think in the matter of the duality of Jesus the Church leans far too heavily on the God side, and only barely touches upon the fact that he was also Man. Also, in hearing the stories you do get the sense that Jesus isn’t always in the same mindset. How else do you explain the difference between the Beatitudes Jesus with the Jesus that kicked the moneylenders out of Temple? To say that the movie is sacrilege is frankly an uneducated way of looking at the Bible, I think. To me the book is mostly metaphor. Its words cannot portray the true meaning of Jesus because of the fact that words are subjective at best, vague at worst, and that the book was not written by Jesus himself, but by his disciples, each writing long after he was dead, and each bringing his own baggage to his writing. I like better the idea that Jesus himself is a parable of the human condition. His suffering mirrors our own, and his example is to be an example for our own. I really liked the movie. It confirmed really everything I’ve had going on in my head for some time.

——The Manchurian Candidate——

(B-)

The broad strokes of this movie are actually quite good, but it is in the details that this movie starts to fall apart. The dialog can be quite bad at parts. Characters are overly one dimensional in design, and other characters (like Vivian Leigh, who just happens to dump her fiancee for an emotionally unstable ghost of a man Frank Sinatra, who she instantly falls in love with. Right…) appear for no real reason. The elementary knowledge of brainwashing, the Cold War, and MacCarthy-ism is also quite amusing. The subtext for this film is quite good, the direction isn’t stellar, but very good, and the final act is also quite compelling, but the rest of the movie is so hot and cold that I can’t really recommend this movie to anyone other than as a guilty pleasure cult movie.

——To Catch a Thief——

(B)

The actual catching of the thief in this movie is kind of lame. The whole plot of ex-cat burglar Cary Grant trying to track down the cat burglar using his methods, and thus making the police and everyone else think that he has gone back to his old ways, is pretty lame. The ending isn’t that exciting. The buildup isn’t that great. All and all the pursuit is pretty dull.

What is great though is the verbal sparing that goes on between Grant and Grace Kelly. This is really where the movie should have focused more of its attention. I loved whenever the two of them were on screen together. Great stuff. If ever there were a more perfect woman than Grace Kelly, I have yet to see her.

——The Color of Money——

(B-)

You know, for a movie that has the word “color” in its title this film has a pretty gray, washed-out feeling to it. Everything is so depressing, so broken down and used up. You’d figure there would be a little more energy and fun in this movie, but alas that is missing from it. Tom Cruise hits some new heights of annoying in this movie. He also looked like quite the punk when he was younger. Scorcese again has another miss with me. I just couldn’t get into this. This seems like a film that should have been a lot more fun than it was. The one saving grace of it is Paul Newman’s fantastic performance. There is just something about him that whenever he is on screen you come to attention. If only there were a little more to work with, this might have been a lot better film.

——The Players Club——

(F)

What happens when rapper/come actor Ice Cube decides to not only write, but also to direct his first feature film about a strip club? Very, very bad things happen. This feels like a middle school film class of kids who take the short bus to school made it.