A good friend asked if I could recommend a few good films that were available through the Amazon Prime Video program, so I started digging. Now they specifically asked about whether the movies are available for downloading, a cool feature of the Prime program that’s available for some, though not all, movies you can watch through Prime Video. Unfortunately, there’s no list of movies that meet this criterion on the site so it’s up to…Read More
Review: The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
I have fond memories of the 1960’s TV series “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”, with Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) as secret agents for the United Nations Command for Law Enforcement. They were like the Impossible Mission Force, but with a Cold War twist as befit the era and global tensions that still defined much of 60’s politics and culture. Could über-hip director Guy Ritchie do the story justice? I was eager – and…Read More
Review: Ex Machina
What makes us human? It’s a philosophical puzzle that goes back as far as human history is recorded, something we’ve wrestled with since the dawn of time. In the modern era, it was savant Alan Turing who suggested the definitive test for the “humanness” of an artificial intelligence, now known as the Turing Test: if you interact with an unknown entity through a computer and cannot ascertain whether it’s an AI or an actual person,…Read More
Review: Anna Karenina
Tolstoy’s classic novel of love and infidelity, Anna Karenina has been brought to stage and screen many times, often with mediocre results. It’s a complicated story, so pay attention: It’s mid-1800’s Russia and Anna (Keira Knightly) is married to Karenin (Jude Law), a dull but faithful St. Petersburg public servant. When her brother Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen) has an affair, Anna travels to Moscow to try and prevent her sister-in-law Dolly (Kelly Macdonald) from divorcing Oblonsky….Read More