Simon's Movie Reviews

Lawrence of Arabia (1962), directed by the much-lauded David Lean, is an old-school cinema epic in every sense of the word. It features magnificent wide shots of the sprawling desert, thousands of extras simulating the carnage of war, and a cast of stellar actors all at the top of their games. This is also the first big-screen role for the legendary Peter O’Toole, who commands the screen throughout and got his first of eight Academy Award nominations for the role. Not bad for a young man who, so I’ve read, drank a bottle of champagne every night during the shoot. To everyone who was worried about sitting through Avengers: Endgame earlier this year because it has a running time of 181 minutes, I challenge you to watch the restored version of Lawrence of Arabia currently available on Netflix. Running time: 220 minutes. To be fair, part of that running time includes an overture and an intermission, but we are still talking about over three hours of story here. Both Avengers and...

Brad Bird’s “Ratatouille” (2007) shouldn’t work. Rats can’t cook and they certainly do not belong in the kitchen of a Paris restaurant. Yet because this is a film made by Pixar, the studio with a nearly impeccable track record, that rat is not only depicted as a great cook but as also looks kind of cute, or as cute as an animated rat can be. Imagine the challenge if this had been a live-action film. As for the food, the dishes devised by the rat look a lot healthier than the frozen food the movie’s antagonist wants to peddle to his customers. This was yet another occasion when I wanted to wait until the movie came out on DVD so I could watch the original English version and not the French dubbed version. It would actually have made more sense to see it in French since it is set in Paris, but it is funnier to hear Americans speak English with a phony French accent. Besides, the DVD had plenty of funny extras, such as short film about the misconceptions of rats towards hu...