Saturday, January 5, 2019
First Lines: Donna Tartt - The Secret History
The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.
Nanga Parbat (2010)
Drama about the tragic Nanga Parbat expedition by the two Messner brothers in 1970, on which Reinhold Messners younger brother Günther died.
Despite some great mountaineering cinematography, the actual tragedy gets a more cursory than emotional treatment.
Friday, January 4, 2019
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)
An Edinburgh professor and assorted colleagues follow an explorer's trail down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the earth's center.
Silly, but effective Jules Verne adaptation is indeed an otherwordly adventure, but some of the special effects are quite risible.
Halliwell***: "Enjoyable hokum which gets more and more fantastic but only occasionally misses its footing; it ends splendidly with the team being catapulted out of Stromboli on a tide of lava."
Maltin***: "Entertaining, old-fashioned fantasy-adventure...long in telling, with silly digressions, but generally fun."
First Lines: Peter Høeg - Smilla’s Sense of Snow
It's freezing - an extraordinary 0° Fahrenheit - and it's snowing, and in the language that is no longer mine, the snow is qanik - big, almost weightless crystals falling in clumps and covering the ground with a layer of pulverized white frost.
Thursday, January 3, 2019
Bird Box (2018)
Five years after an ominous unseen presence drives most of society to suicide, a mother and her two children make a desperate bid to reach safety.
Enthralling doomsday drama works - despite utilizing an irritating premise - due mainly on a good sense for atmosphere and charcter development and an excellent performance by Sandra Bullock.
My Old Lady (2014)
An American inherits an apartment in Paris that comes with an unexpected resident.
Fairly entertaining, slightly amusing drama lives mainly on the godd performers and its Paris setting.
