Wild Man Blues

I avoided this film for a long time. I’ll admit it, though I try hard not to let the personal lives of artists affect my view of their work, there are exceptions, like Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson and, for a while, Woody Allen. It was just so weird and distasteful for a man to fall in love with and marry his sort-of stepdaughter. (The relationship is a lot more complicated than that. Soon-Yi ... Read more »

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

Yes, it is about parrots, and they are wild (though they will eat out of your hand), but it’s really about Mark Bittner, who is the birdman just south of Alcatraz. There are small flocks of escaped tropical birds all over the US, including a bunch of parakeets in Chicago until the city evicted them. Apparently they can withstand the cold climate, but often have trouble finding the ... Read more »

Wild Strawberries

Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället) (1957) During my brief stay at Michigan State University—1965-1967—I did a lot more movie watching than studying. (The last term, no studying at all.) Between the local art houses in East Lansing, the film society, and various other programs in some of the dorms, you could see a film every night and only occasionally have to pay for it. It was here I was ... Read more »

Wild Tales

Part One: Pasternak. A man and a woman get to talking aboard an airliner as it is taking off. She speaks of her first boyfriend, Pasternak, a failed composer who she dumped many years ago. Upon hearing the name the man tells her, with some surprise, that he is a music critic, and was on the panel who totally ravaged Pasternak’s work and ruined his musical career. Behind him, a woman can’t ... Read more »

Wild Target

Bill Nighy is a hit man who puts me in mind of Lawrence Block’s series of stories about a man named Keller, who kills people but, in most other respects, is just like you and me. The guy next door, maybe. He’s conflicted, undergoing analysis, has a dog, passionately collects stamps. Victor Maynard is a killer because it’s the family business. Dad gave him a Beretta for his seventh ... Read more »

Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

For some reason neither of us ever got around to seeing this, so we decided to rent it so we could compare it with the new version. I read up on it a little, discovered that though the screenplay credit is to Roald Dahl, he was extensively rewritten and hated this movie so much he wouldn’t sell the movie rights to the sequel. Now I suspect I’ll have to read the book.

Without even ... Read more »

Win Win

I hate boxing. I kind of like wrestling. In boxing your objective is to damage your opponent to the point he can’t go on. Knock him out if possible. Wrestlers try to overpower their opponents with strength, agility, craftiness, strategy. It’s a pretty pure sport, going all the way back to the original Greek Olympic games. It’s damn ironic that so-called professional “wrestling” has ... Read more »

Winchester

When I lived in the Haight-Ashbury, oh these many years ago, we used to load the family into the old rustbucket and drive down the peninsula to one of half a dozen drive-in movies. Alas, all gone, all gone. It was always a double feature, and in the intermission in addition to the admonitions from dancing popcorn boxes and bubbling cups of Coke to “Let’s all go to the lobby!” there were ... Read more »

Winchester ’73

Jimmy Stewart and his trail buddy come a-ridin’ into Dodge City on the day of the Centennial, July 4, 1876. (Not much over a week after the Battle of the Little Bighorn.) They meet Wyatt Earp (Will Geer, in a bit of castin’ even he thought was odd) and have to surrender their shootin’ irons, as all citizens do when in town. And a good thing, too, because the polecat Jimmy was a-lookin’ to ... Read more »

Wind

Carroll Ballard has directed just six films, and four of them are masterpieces: The Black Stallion, Never Cry Wolf, Fly Away Home, and this one. I had hopes that a fifth one, adapted from The Master, an almost unknown novel by T. H. White, author of The Once and Future King, would be a fifth masterpiece. I ... Read more »