Brian's Thoughts on Movies

          Tom Cruise, while at the peak of his popularity in the mid-1990s, started producing movies for himself to star in with the Mission Impossible franchise.   Many other actors take on a franchise role early in their career that they may return to when they need a lift at the box office (ie Stallone in the Rocky and Rambo series) or they may try a character that may have ongoing appeal later on their careers (ie 2014’s The November Man was clearly such an attempt by Pierce Brosnan, a more successful example is Johnny Depp in the Pirates series or Liam Neeson in the Taken, though originally the first installments of those two series were much more successful than expected).  Cruise effectively purchased an insurance policy for himself since inevitably his star began to wane a little (in the U.S. anyway) after many years of gigantic hits but every time he makes a Mission Impossible movie he gets a boost. The films are all pop spy thri...

In my discussion of Open Your Eyes/Vanilla Sky I spoke a little about remakes.  To reiterate slightly, I think if there is a new take on existing material if it seems like a good idea I would generally support it.  All too often though remakes are a studio’s easy to way to try to make money off a familiar name (ie the 2011 Footloose adaptation which was very faithful to the original film-even much of the dialogue was the same- but cast a far less skilled actor for the lead leading to an uncomfortable comparison).   In 1998 two remakes of Alfred Hitchcock films were released.  The first was A Perfect Murder, which was a remake of Dial M for Murder, which was originally released in 1954.  Both films are about a man trying to murder his wealthy and unfaithful wife.  The second was Psycho, which was a shot-for-shot remake. Since this discussion is focused on Dial M for Murder I will only briefly address Psycho and its remake.  While Psycho is Hitchc...

“Mr. Bond is a very rare breed, soon to be made extinct” Louis Jourdan in Octopussy                                                                                                                                       The best word to describe Roger Moore’s sixth Bond installment is entertaining.   A major element of the plot is the pres...

                                                                    “On my good days I can almost pass for a normal person but on my bad days I feel like I can’t find myself”   --Julianne Moore in Still Alice Julianne Moore is with very few exceptions, consistently the most interesting person in any film that she appears in.   I remember first noticing her as Annabella Sciorra’s best friend in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.   Her character, Marlene, a hard driving realtor, is introduced by her husband saying “She’s on the phone”, when he arrives for a dinner party and Marlene is in the car on a car phone, which made a pretty funny ...