I got around to watching the new BBC series Sherlock, showing in the US as part of PBS’s Masterpiece Theater.

There have been many reconceptualizations of the iconic character of Sherlock Holmes, not all of them successful. The recent film version with Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude was a buddy action movie and I found the hyperactivity just barely tolerable. The 1980s and 90s BBC series with Jeremy Brett as Holmes and two different actors as Watson were perhaps the best of the lot so far, with Brett in particular capturing the edginess and nervous energy of Holmes.
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I was familiar with the popular line “Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!” long before I had seen the film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre that it purportedly came from. But when I got around to actually seeing the film, I was surprised to find that the words were not quite the same. [Read more…]

I saw the Ben Stiller film Greenberg (2010) recently. It is not your typical Stiller comedy. In fact, it is not a comedy at all, more a drama as he plays a neurotic and self-centered person recovering from a nervous breakdown returning from New York to his roots in California and trying to connect with his old friends and society and having a rough time doing so. [Read more…]

In his latest film The Descendants, George Clooney plays the father of two daughters, one of whom is grown, coping with the consequences of his wife being in a coma as a result of an accident. He is suddenly thrust into a parenting role that he had abdicated up to that point and for which he is not prepared. The film begins with a familiar trope that I detest but one that American filmmakers seem to be enamored by, that of rude and obnoxious children who mouth off to their parents. But fortunately that phase passes fairly soon and the rest of the film deals with the three of them coming to terms with each other and their situation. [Read more…]

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a Woody Allen film. I grew up enjoying his early silly comedies and while Allen grew as a filmmaker and went on to make films aimed at a more sophisticated palate, I remained in my juvenile state of mind for some time and so we went our separate ways, so to speak. [Read more…]

This is the name of a new documentary by Debbie Lum who wanted to examine the phenomenon of “yellow fever”, the extreme attraction some American men have for Asian women that sometimes borders on fetishism. While starting out with every intention of being just a dispassionate observer of one man’s search for an Asian bride, she ended up as an awkward participant. [Read more…]

This film did not receive much publicity when it was released although it came out recently (2011), has a stellar cast (Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, and John C. Reilly, the first three being Oscar winners and the last a nominee), and was directed by Roman Polanski. It is set in New York City but was actually filmed in Europe, since Polanksi is a fugitive from the law in the US due to charges of rape of a minor. [Read more…]