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Category: Movie Reviews

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Movie reviews from Titanquisitor. Classic films, new releases, and everything in between — reviewed without a political agenda and without telling you how to feel about them. Every review closes with Theia’s Decree, our five star rating scale for film.

No Country for Old Men
Entertainment

No Country For Old Men Review

William McPherson3 Comments

I was a little younger when I first saw this movie, and I did not fully appreciate it to the extent I do now. I was watching it expecting a satisfying formulaic action movie, and of course, if you watch No Country For Old Men expecting that, you are going to walk out pissed. In a way though I am glad I had the original experience with the film because now I can look back on how my emotions were so expertly towed with without my being as aware of the manipulation as I would be now. This is far…

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The Achievers
Entertainment

The Achievers Review

William McPherson

This was an interesting movie to watch for me, but I warn you going in, it may not be for the “uninitiated” any more than your typical screening of the Rocky Horror Picture show would be enjoyable for someone who either hadn’t seen, or worse, didn’t like that particular movie. The Big Lebowski was the first cult film of the “Internet era”, and I recall being right there in the early 2000s as the movement was gathering steam. I was immediately drawn to it myself because I had already liked the…

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Color of Money
Entertainment

The Color of Money Review

William McPherson

The worst thing about The Color of Money is that it is a sequel to The Hustler (for trivia buffs, also the first movie I ever reviewed on this site) and of course, it does not live up the heights set by that level of a classic. Almost no film could. That said, if one can view this movie without thinking of the former, which I admit is difficult, there is a very good film here. Martin Scorsese is at the height of his stylistic powers here in this period between Raging Bull and Goodfellas. Paul…

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Barton Fink
Entertainment

Barton Fink Review

William McPherson

Barton Fink is one of my favorite lesser known Coen brothers movie. In it John Turturro plays a brilliant stage writer for Broadway (from whom the movie gets its name) who gets lured to Hollywood in the 1940s to write screenplays for big studios. Turturro is perfectly at home as the naïve, paranoid stereotypical writer caricature who would prefer to write reality based social commentary rather than standard genre movies such as Lassie or whathaveyou. Of course he winds up hating Hollywood and…

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Django
Entertainment

Django Review

William McPherson

Spaghetti westerns might have just as easily been called Sergio westerns---as the three greatest directors of the genre all shared that same first name. Everyone knows Leone was the first, but probably at this point only real history/movie nerds know the other two--Sollima and Corbucci. Sergio Corbucci directed this classic Pasta Western back in 1966. The story is yet another play on Yojimbo, with a silent but deadly hero wandering through the desert who finds himself caught in the middle of two…

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Spy
Entertainment

Spy Review

William McPherson

Mellisa McCarthy is my wife’s favorite current actress. Her movies are a guilty pleasure for her as much as old Adam Sandler movies were for me back in the day. It’s the cinematic equivalent of comfort food, maybe not good for you, but good nonetheless. I am hit and miss with her movies. I find her shtick to be about as one note as your typical Tyler Perry “Madea” movie, but with added profanity and female bravado. This movie works though, not because of the quality of the story or writing, but…

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Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
Entertainment

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot Review

William McPherson

I literally cannot fathom how it took me so long to finally getting around to seeing this. Clint Eastwood has been on my Mt. Rushmore of actors since I was a fetus, and Jeff Bridges is also on that list. This movie sees them in different points of their career, Bridges is a young cocky little hippy named Lightfoot who opens the movie by stealing a car, and Eastwood is an old bank robber in hiding who opens the movie as the pastor of a church, before literally being run out of the congregation by…

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The Untouchables
Entertainment

The Untouchables Review

William McPherson

The Untouchables is a near perfect mix of cinematic ingredients. Even though it was filmed in the late 80s this is not a modern gangster movie like Goodfellas, or even the Godfather. This is basically a “Hayes Code” era film that somehow escaped in a time machine and wound up where it did. That said it is beautiful movie, wonderfully shot by Brian De Palma, with a classic score by Ennio Morricone (and with period music by Duke Ellington); and then you add in the dialogue from David “F*** You”…

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Entertainment

Revolver Review

William McPherson

Jason Statham is just getting out of prison and is bound for vengeance against Ray Liotta, who plays the big bad mob guy who screwed him over back in the day. While in prison Statham’s character befriends two geniuses who teach him how to win at virtually any kind of confidence game in existence. While in pursuit of said vengeance though, Statham’s character winds up at the mercy of two mysterious strangers (yeah, you probably figured who they were too by now) who hold the key to helping him get…

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Donnie Brasco
Entertainment

Donnie Brasco Review

William McPherson

Johnny Depp will star as Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger in the upcoming movie “Black Mass” this month. I am quite anxious to see it. So with that in mind I went back and watched Johnny Depp’s other famous gangster movie in which he played real life undercover agent “Donnie Brasco” who infiltrated a crew in one of the five families during the 1970s. This is one of my favorite “gangster” movies, for one because it seems to be a little more self aware (without going over the top) than your…

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Casino
Entertainment

Casino Review

William McPherson

This movie is to Goodfellas kind of what El Dorado was to Rio Bravo or Rio Lobo (Rio Lobo would be more the Departed in this comparison though I guess). An indirect remake with many of the same actors in a different setting. When the premise is as good as Goodfellas, who’s gonna complain? Joe Pesci gets to play perhaps his most memorable and most stereotypical Joe Pesci character ever, crushing skulls in vice grips and stabbing folks who smartoff in the neck with their own ink pens and whatnot…

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Road to Perdition
Entertainment

Road to Perdition Review

William McPherson

On the list of adjectives one might use to describe Tom Hanks, “badass” is probably way down on the list. However, Hanks manages to portray one quite convincingly here in mob enforcer Tom Sullivan. This was Sam Mendes’ first movie after his critical darling American Beauty. It is a visually captivating film, both in the set stylings as well as the way Mendes captures movement. I totally forgot that Daniel Craig was in this film as the bad guy who sets the events of this movie together. Mendes…

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Entertainment

Foxcatcher Review

William McPherson

Foxcatcher is a meticulously crafted, well researched, and fantastically acted film. That said, I found it to be kind of a dull and ponderous movie, although this is the kind of thing you don’t watch for entertainment as much as for the experience. Steve Carrel plays John DuPont, a spoiled billionaire by birth opens up the wrestling program that gives this movie its’ name. When Dupont invites noted Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) to move up to his sprawling private kingdom and…

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Slow West
Entertainment

Slow West Review

William McPherson

If the real west were half as violent as depicted in this movie, we would have let the Indians keep it. A bounty hunter with a touch of conscience played with equal parts bravado and grit by Michael Fassbender keeps his true motives a secret from the naïve and gawky Scottish teenager (Kodi Smit-McPhee) for whom he's offered to serve as bodyguard and guide while the awkward young squirt searches for his “one true love” from back home in the wild terrain of 19th century Colorado. First time…

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'71
Entertainment

’71 Review

William McPherson

Two years before the events in this movie Van Morrison recorded one of my favorite albums of all time, Astral Weeks, as a homesick tribute to his home of Belfast. The mystical place he was singing about though was already nothing but a memory by the time he made that very ahead of its’ time album, and by the time the events in this movie transpire, that memory was being torn to shreds. The year, as one could hopefully guess, is 1971, and young British soldier Gary has gotten himself into a very…

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Dumb and Dumber To
Entertainment

Dumb and Dumber To Review

William McPherson

Watching this film is like going to a high school reunion and getting cornered by that guy who was the class clown twenty years ago, and discovering he has not changed his clothes, or bothered to learn any new material in the intervening decades. You find you are amused just by their appearance and the nostalgia factor for a bit, but you quickly make an excuse to split the scene as soon as you are able. Carrey and Daniels are both fine actors who have done great work and I hope will continue to…

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The Interview
Entertainment

The Interview Review

William McPherson2 Comments

Hey, North Korea, you really could have saved yourself a lot of time and trouble and just let this one pass. It likely would have fizzled out based on its’ own merit rather than having the help of an entire news cycle controversy to drive up sales. James Franco and Seth Rogen belong in better movies than the likes of this. They’re both fine actors, capable of fine performances, but with stuff like this they are powerless to overcome the material. This movie is basically Pineapple Express: North…

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Hot Tub Time Machine 2
Entertainment

Hot Tub Time Machine 2 Review

William McPherson

Let’s be honest here. You weren’t expecting this movie to be good, and neither was I. At best we were all hoping perhaps it would be passably entertaining in that way that certain movies that you watch on basic cable at two in the morning can sometimes tend to be. But alas, no. Hot Tub Time Machine 2 could be used by John Cusack’s agent as a great “before and after” illustration of what his presence or lack thereof can mean to a film. HTTM2 is really no more insipid or lame brained than its…

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Ex Machina
Entertainment

Ex Machina Review

William McPherson

The Arrow on JoBlo.com had perhaps the best quote on Ex Machina I could find anywhere when he wrote about this movie “Ex Machina was Frankenstein meets The Island of Dr. Moreau by way of Basic Instinct.” which just about sums this flick up for me. Quirky introspective Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson) is a twenty something intellectual who works as a coder for a big corporation that runs this universe’s version of Google, ran by a guy (Oscar Isaac) who is basically the serious dramatic version of Lou…

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Skyfall
Entertainment

Skyfall Review

William McPherson

Putting Bond in jeopardy right at the beginning of a movie is a device that has been used in a handful of Bond films such as You Only Live Twice, and Die Another Day. It is an interesting way to get the story going full speed ahead, and so it does here as this movie opens up a great chase scene on top of a moving train which ends with James Bond presumed dead, and the person he was chasing making off with very sensitive data which puts secret assets the world over in perilous danger. Now can a…

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