Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Based the novel by E. M. Forster, Maurice is a groundbreaking room with a different view, projecting as much romance, passion, and class consciousness as producer Ismael Merchant and screenwriter-director James Ivory brought to their earlier hit adaptation of another Forster novel. In 1909, a student at Cambridge, Clive, urges college colleague Maurice to embrace the love of male physical beauty as described in classical literature and accept their mutual platonic love.

When I first saw Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, as a college student, I was bored and, beyond that, puzzled: such a static set piece from the maker of Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and A Clockwork Orange. I wasn’t alone: Box office was middlin’, critics were mixed. The film now strikes me as a masterpiece, although a demanding one, as many masterpieces are. Based on Thackeray’s mid-19th-century novel about the rise and fall of an Irish upstart seeking to connive his way into British high society, it’s a string of gorgeous pictures, as gorgeous as many paintings in a museum, and Kubrick modeled many shots on paintings by Hogarth, Gainsborough, and other artists of the era.

Seventeenth-century feudal Japan wasn’t exactly fertile ground for sowing the seeds of Christianity. For the Jesuit priests who went there to bring the word of God and their faithful converts, they were met with hostility, unspeakable cruelty, and death. Christ was the ultimate living example of persecution and sufferance, and the Jesuits could find strength and perseverance in that. But even Christ had his moment of doubt, and every person has his breaking point. And the Japanese were ruthlessly methodical in their efforts.

I have a great respect and admiration for auteur filmmakers—guys like Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantino who write their own screenplays and direct them into cinematic classics. Oftentimes the temptation of appearing in their own movies proves too great for some of these filmmakers… like Woody Allen or Quentin Tarantino. Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, and George Clooney have also directed themselves into great acclaim and Oscar glory, and even Alfred Hitchcock, Oliver Stone, and Martin Scorsese have managed to sneak themselves into their films here and there.

Writer/director Alex Cox wrote a script for a fictional rockumentary about highly original and articulate Johnny Rotten, writer/lead singer of The Sex Pistols. It might have been an extremely rewarding movie. Instead, he made Sid & Nancy, which focuses on two talentless, star-crossed, star-struck dope heads. Yet the film manages to capture the era’s excitement, disrespectful mockery, and aggressive antisocial attacks on mainstream consumer beliefs.

Ronin is director John Frankenheimer’s 1998 crime thriller, with a script co-written by David Mamet (under a pen name) and featuring an all-star cast headlined by Robert De Niro and Jean Reno. This gritty film borrows heavily from classic genre predecessors such as The French Connection, Le Cercle Rouge, and Bullitt. It follows a former U.S. intelligence agent (De Niro) working with a group of mercenaries trying to track down a package being pursued by both Irish and Russian interests.