Short takes: ‘Michael Clayton’ and ‘Silence’

By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Feb. 29, 2023 One of the best movies that I’ve watched recently was Michael Clayton, the 2007 drama starring George Clooney that straddles the territory of corporate thriller, legal drama and character study. Clooney is the title character, an attorney at a prominent New York law firm who specializes in […]

Short takes: ‘Unknown,’ ‘The Last Days on Mars’ and ‘Sucker Punch’

By Matthew E. MillikenMEMwrites.wordpress.comApril 12, 2020 Author’s note: By necessity, my review of Sucker Punch deals with sex and sexuality and therefore may not be appropriate for all readers. MEM Dr. Martin Harris, a mild-mannered, well-to-do university professor from New Hampshire, flies into Berlin with Liz, his beautiful wife; in a few days, he’s going […]

Enter Jar Jar, Anakin and stereotypes: Revisiting ‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’

By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Sept. 26, 2016 In January, I excoriated the The Star Wars Holiday Special, the worst feature-length production in that fantastically popular science-fiction franchise. Today, I come to examine what is widely agreed to be the property’s second-worst movie. I write, of course, about the much-loathed 1999 release that kicked off the prequel trilogy: Star Wars: […]

Nobody knows his face, but everybody knows his name (and story): Revisiting Christopher Nolan’s ‘Batman Begins’

By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Dec. 6, 2014 Everyone knows the basic setup of the world of Batman, one of the great comic-book heroes. Heck, millions of people could recite it in their sleep. It goes like this: Bruce Wayne, the only son of billionaires, was orphaned by a gunman at an early age and raised by Alfred […]

A flashy but deeply flawed hero saves lives with ‘Schindler’s List’

At the start of World War II, a flashy businessman named Oskar Schindler detected the scent of something precious: opportunity. In the fall of 1939, Schindler, a German living in occupied Krakow, Poland, was wining and dining Nazi officials and looking for a way to make money. After learning of a recently bankrupted factory, he tracked […]

In which I try to write something original and insightful about ‘Husbands and Wives’ 20 years after its release

The 1992 comic drama Husbands and Wives opens in the Manhattan apartment of Gabe and Judy Roth (writer-director Woody Allen and Mia Farrow) shortly before they have dinner with another married couple, longtime friends Jack and Sally (Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis). Things go off the rails almost immediately when Jack and Sally make an announcement. […]