Ocean's Week: Screw Sinatra's hand

OCEAN'S THIRTEEN

2007

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien

Spoilers: moderate

Ocean's Week: It's not in my nature to be mysterious, but I can't talk about it, and I can't talk about why

OCEAN'S TWELVE

2004

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Written by George Nolfi

Spoilers: high

Ocean's Week: I have a question. Say we get into the cage, through the security doors there, and down the elevator we can't move, and past the guards with the guns, and into the vault we can't open...

OCEAN'S ELEVEN

2001

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Written by Ted Griffin

Spoilers: moderate

Census Bloodbath: A true crime

RETURN TO HORROR HIGH

And once again we welcome you, to our October Switcheroo

Where Brennan Klein deigns to review nice old sci-fi, like I would do.

But pretending to alliance, Brennan sends me 80s violence!

Cardboard Bloodbath, Census Science, demands psychic realignment.

Oh we have fun—requisite links.  Here's hoping that not too much stinks.

Poetry blows, J. Slasherfan thinks. Give me TITS and DEATH, that's my kink!

1987

Directed by Bill Froelich

Written by Bill Froelich, Dana Escalante, Mark Lisson, and Greg H. Sims

I drink your milkshake

SYRIANA

If it is not the best film about America in the Mideast, then maybe it's just because I haven't seen enough of that sourpussed breed to make the claim.  However, I will say this with unalloyed confidence: it's got the best poster, by far.

2005

Written and directed by Stephen Gaghan (based on the book See No Evil by Robert Baer)

With George Clooney (Bob Barnes), Alexander Siddig (Prince Nasir Al-Subaai), Matt Damon (Bryan Woodman), Amanda Peet (Julie Woodman), William Hurt (Stan), Mark Strong (Mussawi), Akbar Kusha (Prince Meshal Al-Subaai), Jeffrey Wright (Bennett Holiday), Tim Blake Nelson (Danny Dalton), Chris Cooper (Jimmy Pope), and Christopher Plummer (Dean Whiting)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Class war weekend, part I

MONEY MONSTER

Jodie Foster rocks her Sidney Lumet impression in what amounts to the best film of the year so far.

2016

Directed by Jodie Foster

Written by Jamie Linden, Alan DiFiore, and Jim Kouf

George Clooney (Lee Gates), Julia Roberts (Patty Fenn), Jack O'Connell (Kyle Budwell), Christopher Denham (Ron Spencer), Lenny Venito (Lenny the Cameraman), Giancarlo Esposito (Capt. Powell), Caitriona Balfe (Diane Lester), and Dominic West (Walt Camby)

Spoiler alert: mild

I met a traveler from an antique land

HAIL, CAESAR!

A half-assed tribute hung upon an even more half-assed plot, Hail, Caesar! is still one hell of a fun jaunt through Old Hollywood, and who can argue with fun?  Me, obviously, but I recommend it strongly anyway.

2016
Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

With Josh Brolin (Eddie Mannix), George Clooney (Baird Whitlock), Alden Ehrenreich (Hobie Doyle), Ralph Fiennes (Laurence Laurentz), Scarlett Johansson (DeeAnna Moran), Tilda Swinton (Thora Thackeray/Thessaly Thackeray), Frances McDormand (C.C. Calhoun), Veronica Osorio (Carlotta Valdez), Jonah Hill (Joseph Silverman), and Channing Tatum (Burt Gurney)

Spoiler alert: mild

Reviews from gulag: First, the news in brief

While I was away, I had the opportunity to watch what I suppose one might as well call a "few" movies.  Here's some of them, in bite-sized form.  Or maybe two or three bites, because if there's one thing even moving to Pittsburgh can't beat out of me, it's my awful long-windedness.  Today's subjects: Citizen Kane, His Girl Friday, Network, and Good Night, and Good Luck.

CITIZEN KANE (1941)
Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) dies, and a newshound (William Alland) seeks the story of his final words.  He never solves the mystery of Kane for himself—although we are privy to more than he—but he learns through conversations with the great man's friends that he was human like the rest of us, even if he didn't know it.

Orson Welles' Citizen Kane is very likely the single most overrated film made in the sound era.  But that says more about the overreaching critical reevaluation of it—the reevaluation that eventually snowballed into its acclamation as the long-running Best Film Ever on just about any critics' poll you'd care to look at—than it could ever possibly say about the quality of the actual film itself... which is, of course, simply deliriously high.  Yes, fewer pictures have been more talked-about than this one, and Kane has been just about talked to death: its spectacularly well-appointed deep focus compositions; its beautiful lighting schemes; its monumental art direction; its bitterly humorous satire, so viciously on point it might have been slanderous were everything bad not based at least in part on something true; and, of course, its extraordinary lead performance by Welles, taking William Randolf Hearst only as the starting point for his creation of the saddest man in the world—the man who thought he could buy happiness.  So, no, maybe it wasn't particularly close to the best movie ever made, not even back in 1941.  But Goddamned if it isn't still absolutely Great—even after all those decades it spent, condemned to be The Greatest.  Maybe now that Vertigo is the Best Film Ever (an even worse choice, but never mind), we can enjoy Kane for what it is and always was: entertaining, moving, human, and expertly-crafted, too.

Score:  9/10

Things that came, then went

TOMORROWLAND

Tomorrowland is a pretty decent kids' adventure that serves, in grand old Brad Bird tradition, as some halfway-effective propaganda for his idiosyncratic politics as well.

2015
Directed by Brad Bird
Written by Damon Lindelof, Jeff Jensen, and Brad Bird
With Britt Robertson (Casey Newton), Raffey Cassidy (Athena), George Clooney (Frank Walker), and Hugh Laurie (David Nix)

Spoiler alert: I say moderate, but it might be high if you're a little slow on the uptake