Tag: Lily James

This gorgeous ‘Rebecca’ reincarnation would work better as a series

Jeff Mitchell

“Rebecca” – Ever been to Monte Carlo? Yea, me neither, and the beyond-picturesque, seaside playground for the megarich – that sits in the French Riviera – is a bucket list trip, for sure.  To boot, the Cannes Film Festival is just 55 kilometers southwest along the A-8, so let’s make a second stop during a future holiday in May. For the moment, this critic will have to look back at memories of an NCAA Basketball Tournament weekend at Las Vegas’ Monte Carlo Hotel about 20 years ago, but I bet…

Oldman’s performance brings light to ‘Darkest Hour’

Jeff Mitchell

“Darkest Hour” – “I am unwanted.” – Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) Untested, unappreciated and soon-to-be unwanted within Parliament, Winston Churchill became the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister in May 1940, because Neville Chamberlain resigned during Germany’s rapid advance through Western Europe during World War II.  Inheriting a country teetering between appeasement and conflict, Churchill sided with the latter.  Rather than negotiate peace, his instinct was to fight Hitler and his fearsome military, but with 300,000 British soldiers trapped on the French beaches of Dunkirk, treaties between Germany and/or Italy became much…

Welcome to ‘Baby Driver’, the most entertaining movie of the year…by a mile

Jeff Mitchell

“Baby Driver” – During the 1970s and 1980s, millions of boys grew up watching hundreds and hundreds of staged car chases on television shows like “Starsky & Hutch” and “The Dukes of Hazzard”, and include me in this motley group.  Pristine minds – void of any personal experiences of burning rubber and squealing tires – can certainly become mesmerized, when two Southern California police detectives and two Georgia locals man their four-wheeled chariots on tracks of asphalt and dirt, respectively and in the process, outwit their adversaries. Over time, however,…