Brian's Thoughts on Movies

“Life gets harder as you near the summit” (fortune cookie opened by me immediately after watching Life Itself). The above statement certainly may apply to Roger Ebert, who was the most prominent voice of American film criticism for many years.   Any film fan born before 2000 should know Ebert’s name and though he may at some point be forgotten every podcast and/or show that uses a two reviewer format can trace its origins to him.   Ebert, for those not in the know, was half of a two man team who from 1975 to 1999 had a show called Siskel and Ebert At The Movies, along with a few other titles.   The half hour show aired in syndication weekly and always had the two undistinguished looking men who were newspaper critics briefly debating five films or so that had come out that week.   Each critic would rate the film thumbs up or down.   Since both men had very different tastes two thumbs up generally meant the film was a can’t miss for audiences (although they did give two thumb

                                                             Prior to discussing Unforgiven , allow me to explain my (lack of) credentials of my familiarity with some of Eastwood’s work. Unforgiven came out when I was about 20, and I watched it on video and thought it was a very good morality tale with incredible performances   but there were some factors that affected my enjoyment of it. For starters I was largely unfamiliar with Eastwood’s work as a director or actor, having only seen The Rookie, (his largely forgettable attempt at a Lethal Weapon type buddy film) and a few scenes that my dad (who was a big Eastwood fan) had shown to me when they popped up on TV (“Make my day” from Sudden Impact and the climactic bare knuckle fight from Any Which Way You Can) so the aspect of the film which relies on audience familiarity with the Eastwood cowboy myth was a little lost on me.    Additionally, at that age I could not relate to William Munny’s demons at all though I thoug

On November 3, 2011, the announcement for the title of the 23 rd Eon Bond film awoke my curiosity.   Skyfall would obviously not be a villain’s name such as Dr No or Goldfinger, so would it be the name of a mission (though, that seemed a little obvious)?   Skyfall turned out to be the name of the hunting lodge Bond had lived in as a boy, a perfect title for a film in which by looking into Bond’s past, he comes full circle in the relationship with his mother figure, M. Please note that, as always, I will be discussing the film’s plot in details so if you do not want to know what happens, particularly in the third act of Skyfall, please revisit this post after you have seen it. In Casino Royale by starting with Bond at the beginning of his career, series writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade have tracked Bond’s development as a secret service agent and how he grows into the role physically (in Casino Royale he is almost too strong and eager for danger, by Skyfall Bond faces s