Movie Reviews
Subway Stories: Tales From the Underground
HBO held a contest for people to send in stories of their true experiences on the New York subways, and these 10 vignettes are the result. Each has a different director, the best known being Jonathan Demme and Abel Ferrara. I’m not sure I believe all of them; some sound suspiciously made-up. But most of them ring true, in that they are not neat, they don’t tie up as most stories do, they ... Read more »
The Stunt Man
I loved this film even before I met and worked with the man behind it, writer-director Richard Rush. Then I liked it even more as he regaled me with stories of the making of, and about working with mercurial Peter O’Toole. It’s about illusion and reality, and uses the metaphor of film wonderfully. Things happen that could never happen on a real film shoot, but it doesn’t matter. Richard is ... Read more »
Stuck On You
The Farrelly brothers have a lot of balls to make a comedy about conjoined twins— who don’t even look alike. There are some big laughs, particularly when they are separated and one finds himself walking sideways like he has his whole life, and they fall over when they try to stand up. Instead of going for their usual crude jokes they work hard to humanize the characters. But it ... Read more »
Strike
This is the fictionalized story of Anna Walentynowicz, who worked at the same Polish shipyard as Lech Walesa during the labor unrest that eventually led to the collapse of the Polish Communist regime, and, it can be argued, the downfall of communism in Europe and Russia. If this story is to be believed (and from what I can find out, it’s pretty accurate) she really had more to do with the ... Read more »
Strictly Dishonorable
Before Preston Sturges became one of the very best writer/directors in Hollywood in the 1940s, he wrote a great many screenplays, but he got his start on Broadway with several hit shows. This was one of them, and it was filmed in the static manner made necessary in the early sound days by the bulkiness of the equipment and lack of technology for overdubbing and other sound tricks. So it is ... Read more »
Strictly Ballroom
Now that I’ve seen this, I’m even more sure that Baz Luhrmann should never have wasted his time doing that overblown old-fashioned epic, Australia. He was all wrong for that. He should have given it to another Aussie director, maybe Peter Weir, or Bruce Beresford. Strictly Ballroom was Luhrmann’s first of only four movies so far, and it ... Read more »
Stranger Than Paradise
Jim Jarmusch is a weird filmmaker, and I mean that in the best possible way. Right now he’s got a film in theaters, Broken Flowers, which we haven’t seen yet but it’s getting very good reviews. Lee and I loved his series of little vignettes, Coffee and Cigarettes. This is very much in the same vein, but much earlier, his third film. ... Read more »
Stranger Than Fiction
It’s rare that a film takes an interesting though totally impossible concept and runs with it all the way to the end, exploring all the possible consequences. Films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation come to mind (all three by Charlie Kaufman). Also, though not quite on the same level, ... Read more »
Stranger on the Third Floor
Peter Lorre had two days left on his contract at RKO, so they put him to work in a small but crucial part in this movie, and gave him top billing, which must have pissed off the stars, John McGuire and Margaret Tallichet. But who ever heard of John McGuire and Margaret Tallichet? (Well, people probably knew their names back then, but neither of them lasted, like Lorre’s has.) He plays a ... Read more »
The Stranger
There were plenty of directors in Hollywood in the ‘40s and ‘50s that—mostly without knowing it or thinking about it—developed the distinctive look we’ve come to know as film noir. I don’t think any were better at it than Orson Welles. In fact, he pioneered many of the signature camera angles and lighting. This is one of the best noirs I know, with Edward G. Robinson a dogged pursuer of a ... Read more »