Watched this movie a long time ago--I showed it in my film class!--and didn't think much of it. So much so that I didn't review it. The plot covers Burt Lancaster trying to stop a train filled with modernist paintings the Nazis are whisking back to Berlin during their chaotic retreat before an Allied invasion.
I love Lancaster as much as any red-blooded American and love to see him machine gun a Nazi at close range. But the film felt…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
My brother and his wife were good enough to invite me to go catch the new Robert Eggers'. I was the one who got my brother into Eggers when I raved to him about The Witch so many years ago.
I should start out this review by saying more movies should be panned. This movie meets all the demands of its curious genre. And it's infinitely pannable.
I'll admit I walked into the movie with prejudices, but also the movie…
After watching the frou-frou of Witness for the Prosecution the cold cynical hardness of Michigan jurisprudence was a welcome relief.
Often a movie will introduce a villain with unctuous charm having just committed a crime off-screen, which is reported to us. It is only reported (in legal terms, it is heresy) so that it opens up a doubt in our mind to the veracity of the report. And then the film spends 2 hours trying to convince us somehow that…
Was reading the inimitable Pauline Kael on this and reminded about just how much she hated student filmmakers. (And also POC.)
I believe all borders and those men with guns who guard them should be relegated to the trash heap of history, so I was afraid this movie would preach to the choir (i.e. me.) But I found it less saccharine and more rip-roaring than most people I know do, filled with acts of heroism and faith and broad comedy.
I don't care how much they "earn" it, the final sequence/image the replays the image of the evil overseer from the Guatemalan foothills is great.
