Movie Reviews
Savage Sam
I put this in the DVD player primarily to see if Kevin Corcoran, who played younger brother Arliss in the classic Old Yeller, could possibly be as annoying as he was in that film. He could. The idea that this little self-centered, shithead monster, who chucks rocks at everything he doesn’t like and never obeys ... Read more »
Old Yeller
The first question I ask myself is, if I were seeing this for the first time, at age 72, would I have cried as hard as I did when I was 10? Probably not, though I won’t rule it out. I cried again this time, just not as hard, but I can’t tell if it might have been the memory of that first, traumatic viewing that made it inevitable that I would cry. It’s even worse ... Read more »
Happy, Texas
Here is one of those little gems that show you don’t need a big budget to make a great comedy. What you need is a good idea and a great cast. The plot: Two small-time crooks accidentally escape from prison when the bus carrying them wrecks. They steal an RV owned by two gay men who travel the country organizing beauty pageants. Not the Miss America type pageant, more like the Jon Benet ... Read more »
The Glenn Miller Story
This and Old Yeller are the earliest films I remember seeing. I was seven, and my family lived in Fort Worth, Texas. We often went to the drive-in theater, with my younger sisters. We would dress in pajamas and play on the swings and slides up near the screen until it got dark, then it was back in the old Hudson with a coil of Pic burning on the floorboard and a ... Read more »
The Salesman
This was directed by Asghar Farhadi, an Iranian. It tells the story of a man and woman forced to move from their Tehran apartment because … it is collapsing! It never totally falls down, but has huge cracks and is clearly untenable. So they end up in a much worse apartment. It turns out the place was previously the home and place of business of something that’s not supposed to exist: an ... Read more »
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
What can you say that hasn’t already been said? Movies like this are preposterous, so unless you can check your critical faculties at the gate, there’s no point in seeing them. But if you are just looking for a highly entertaining action movie, they don’t get much better than this. And there is that little frisson of incredulity in knowing that that crazy Scientologist is actually Read more »
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
This would be M:I5, if you’re counting. By the time most franchises reach #5 they have pretty much played out. I’m happy to report that this one is still going strong. It’s just about the best series for real, almost old-fashioned stunt work, and for once, when they say the star actually performed his own stunts, it’s pretty much true. In #4 he really did dangle on a rope midway up the ... Read more »
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
This was directed by Brad Bird, who previously has only done animation for Pixar, movies I liked a lot. We had a good time. I hardly ever saw the TV show, but I know the idea, that the M:I team fooled people into believing something that was not true. A Big Con, high-tech. This had a lot of that—plus, of course, a lot of slam-bang action, too—and it was a team, ... Read more »
Mission: Impossible III
Luckily, this great action series was able to bounce back here after the John Woo disaster. J.J. Abrams, in his first outing in the director’s chair, takes the idea back closer to its roots. It is full of the usual well-done action scenes, but I must admit to you that it’s been about a month since I saw it, and my memory for plots and stunts has never been good, so I won’t try to quote ... Read more »
Mission: Impossible 2
Among the half-dozen eggs in this basket, there probably had to be a rotten one, and this is it. And brother, is it rotten. I hated it, hated it, hated it, and its hugely overrated director, John Woo. He is hailed far and wide as a great action director, but don’t you believe it. He is incompetent. He is terrible. He’s talentless. There are several reasons I say this, but let’s just stick ... Read more »