I’ve been waiting for Robert De Niro and Al Pacino to do a movie together forever. Now I’m waiting for them to do a good one. I know, that sounds kind of harsh, but after plunking down the bucks and spends months in happy expectation, I’m owed a sour grape or two on this review. [...]
UNTRACEABLE
I watched the trailers for Untraceable with great interest and figured I’d go see it at the theater. I’m a sucker for the techno thriller involving computers and hacking. Instead, life got in the way, then it was gone faster than I thought it would be. But the images of the action remained in my [...]
GET SMART
I wasn’t a big fan of Get Smart when Don Adams starred as Maxwell Smart in the television series. I enjoyed it a lot, but I was more into serious spying, as with James Bond and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. Mel Brooks and Buck Henry enjoyed their take on spydom and the recent big-screen treatment [...]
INTELLIGENCE
With the writers’ strike going on in the United States, viewers started looking for other shows to replace the plethora of reruns that plagued the evening/weekend viewing landscape. BBC shows got picked up for early American runs as well as being brought over for the first time. I ended up watching a lot of new [...]
RADIOLAND MURDERS
Radioland Murders is one of my favorite movies to put in when I’ve had a hard week and want to go brain-dead with something familiar. My love of Old Time Radio probably spurs this on because the movie is set there with love by George Lucas and his people. I’m too young to have been [...]
NIGHT MOVES
I’m a big fan of private eye movies and television series. I’m glad The Rockford Files is finally coming out on DVD, but I’m still waiting for Marlowe, starring James Garner and Bruce Lee. However, I don’t have an excuse for not having already seen Night Moves. It’s been out for over thirty years, and [...]
NANCY DREW
Nancy Drew is one of those iconic heroes kids who read tend to grow up with. I know I shared several of her adventures (read on the sly because I’m a guy) when I was younger. I read the Hardy Boys out in the public eye, along with the adventures of Tom Swift, Jr., Ken [...]
GONE, BABY, GONE
I’ve been a fan of Dennis Lehane’s private eye novels about Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro for years. I keep wishing Lehane would write another book about them. Instead, he’s written a couple of stand-alone books that have become a movie (Mystic River) and one that will become a movie (Shutter Island). Gone, Baby, Gone [...]
IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH
Tommy Lee Jones delivers an outstanding performance as a father searching for his missing son in the movie In the Valley of Elah. I was pulled into the mystery of what happened to Hank Deerfield’s son from that first phone call at the beginning of the movie. As a father myself, I’ve occasionally wondered how [...]
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Spanish actor, Javier Bardem, plays one of the most cold-blooded, unstoppable killers to ever grace the big screen. From the very first instant he steps into view in No Country For Old Men as Anton Chigurh, Bardem radiates menace. The captive bolt pistol he carries as a killing device and a one-size-fits-all door opener is [...]
