Movie Reviews
Titles starting with S
Seven Days in May
(Second review, 2016) What was it about the early ‘60s, and year 1964 in particular, that was so conducive to excellent black and white films about warm and politics? There was The Best Man, Fail-Safe, The Manchurian Candidate, Dr. Strangelove, and this one. Every one of them a classic.
I think we thought a military coup against our elected government was ... Read more »
Seven Pounds
There’s not really much I would want to say about this movie that I could say without issuing a SPOILER WARNING right up front. I suspect you’ll have a pretty good idea what’s really going on here by at least the halfway point. I did, a little earlier than that. And I was right, though I may not have known all the details. I mean, what ... Read more »
Seven Psychopaths
Pretty mixed feelings about this one. It’s a dark comedy, and I got some very good laughs. Quite a few, actually. But it was so aware of itself, so self-referential … and yet, that was a big part of the joke … as I said, I’m conflicted.
A rather normal guy (Colin Farrell) is writing a screenplay called Seven Psychopaths. But all he has is the title, and one ...
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Seven Samurai
What can you say? It’s simply one of the best films ever made … and I don’t even think it’s Kurosawa’s best. (That would be Ikiru.) But it would be in the top three, along with Ran. I just learned that it is an example of a genre of Japanese films that they call Jidaigeki, which means “period dramas.”
This one takes place in ... Read more »
The Seven-Ups
Here is a crackerjack cop thriller with another excellent performance by Roy Scheider and what I think of as the New York Mob Ensemble, which is about a dozen actors who were in just about every wiseguy film from The Godfather up to “The Sopranos.” A lot of familiar faces whose names you don’t know. But it owes its best scene to one guy you probably don’t know, but have seen: Bill Hickman. ... Read more »
The Seven Year Itch
It’s hard to believe, but I had never seen this one. It’s a Billy Wilder comedy, and I love Wilder, have seen almost everything he ever made, in America anyway. It’s based on a hit Broadway play that ran over 1,000 performances. But the code of the day meant the sexual situations and innuendo had to be toned down considerably, much to Wilder’s annoyance. Tom Ewell managed to get cast in ... Read more »
Shadow of a Doubt
There are many Hitchcock enthusiasts who rank this film as his best, and his first true masterpiece. Other contenders are Vertigo, Psycho, and my own favorite, Rear Window. Which is not to take anything away from this one. There is a psychological depth to the story and the characters, particularly Joseph Cotton’s wonderful performance ... Read more »
Shadows and Fog
Three major influences here: Franz Kafka’s The Trial, the music and lyrics of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, and German Expressionist directors of the 1920s and ‘30s, like Fritz Lang and Robert Wiene. I like Expressionism, I like the angry musicals of W&B, like The Threepenny Opera (Woody Allen uses much of the music from that ... Read more »
Shakespeare in Love
I have seen all of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays at least once, on stage or screen. Some of them I have seen multiple times. Example: I have seen the 1968 Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet, Baz Luhrmann’s modern updating Romeo + Juliet, a BBC production when they were doing all the plays, and the ridiculous 1936 version. (Juliet was 13 in ... Read more »
Shall We Dance
A total trifle, for when you’re in the mood for something that won’t strain your brain. A lawyer is suffering a mid-life crisis and, instead of boffing his younger secretary or whatever, decides to learn to dance. The only tension is how his wife will react to it, because he’s so uptight he doesn’t tell her, he sneaks around. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. The key to a movie like ... Read more »