Been pretty slow around here lately so only 4 total movies to talk about this week. First is The Taste of Things. This is one of those movies for me where there is absolutely nothing wrong with the film, but it’s something I will completely forget about. It stars Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel as chefs who are sort of together, but not really. They get together from time to time and he wants to marry her, but their relationship isn’t serious at first. There’s a young girl they want to train and a bunch of other people who enjoy eating their food. Binoche gets sick over the course of the movie and lots of time is spent watching all the characters prepare food, cook food and eat food. It’s all very beautiful, but is it a movie that I cared about by its end? Nope. It’s well made and well acted and the food scenes look delicious, but ultimately it feels like a drama we’ve seen plenty of times before.
Speaking of dramas we’ve seen plenty of times before, second we have The Fragile King. Stop me if this sounds familiar, a teen boy loses his mother in a car accident and has to live with his grandfather he never knew. The grandfather wants nothing to do with the boy so he tries to track down the long lost father. They go on a road trip that the boy thinks is just that, but the grandfather takes him to meet his biological father. It’s not the film I was expecting especially because the opening is about the mother having all kinds of financial issues and them being evicted despite her getting money sexually. I don’t know if I loved the ending either. It feels like so many other movies besides the confusing ending. The lead teen and grandfather actors are good, but ultimately it’s another movie I will forget about.
Last we have a Sydney Pollack double feature from Mill Creek Entertainment. Their latest Director Spotlight Double Feature is Pollack’s Castle Keep and Bobby Deerfield. I have to admit I had never seen either film. Castle Keep is a World War II film starring Burt Lancaster, Bruce Dern, Peter Falk and more. Lancaster leads a squadron of Americans to a castle where they are taken in by its count who hopes the Americans will defend it and its contents from the Nazis. The countess falls for Lancaster immediately, Falk becomes a baker and the movie is sort of a mess. I did like the war scenes and the storming of the castle in the third act is fantastic, but getting there took forever. Even with its stellar cast I can see why I wasn’t familiar with it. Bobby Deerfield stars Al Pacino as a Formula-1 racer who falls for a dying woman he met in a hospital after a racing accident injured a teammate. I’m sure others know this one, but I had never seen it. Pacino is fine, but does go over the top at times. The backdrops are beautiful, but I wish it was more about racing and not the love triangle that ensues after he falls for the woman when he’s already involved with a different woman. It’s more a romance movie than something that would be confused with Rush or Ford v Ferrari. Pacino fans will eat it up though.
The Nerds Templar 