Movie Reviews
The Story of the Weeping Camel
A completely charming and hard to classify movie. Some call it a “narrative documentary,” of the type Robert Flaherty pioneered in Nanook of the North and Man of Aran. That is, the director films real people in their real milieu, scripts what he can, but basically is showing their way of life. There is barely any plot. An extended ... Read more »
Stone Reader
A very rare thing: A movie about reading, made for lovers of books. Quite a challenge, and the director, Mark Moskowitz, pulls it off. The center of the movie is his search for the author of a book, The Stones of Summer, published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1972 to good reviews, which promptly sank without a trace. The author, Dow Mossman, never wrote another book. ... Read more »
Stone
Robert De Niro is a burned-out probation officer and Edward Norton is a convict trying to bullshit his way into an early release, with Milla Jovovich the con’s girlfriend who may or may not be helping him out. It is a battle of wits, I guess, and the acting is good, but I lost interest pretty fast. It’s hard for me to get involved when I really don’t like any of the three players, and ... Read more »
A Stolen Life
Bette Davis plays two roles, twin sisters, one of them evil. The good girl falls in love with a simple lighthouse keeper (Glenn Ford), and the bad one takes him away from her. She next falls for a truly detestable “artist,” the kind of asshole who doesn’t think anyone else’s work is any good. When we get a glimpse of his stuff, it is laughable knockoffs of Picasso and Kandinsky. And he has ... Read more »
Still of the Night
Robert Benton has written some of my favorite movies, including Bonnie and Clyde, What’s Up, Doc?, The Late Show, and Places in the Heart. He directed and wrote this one. It’s a neat little thriller starring Roy Scheider and Meryl Streep, two of the best in the business. Roy is a ... Read more »
Stephen Fry in America
I have often envied Michael Palin in his second career, after Monty Python. He has traveled the world, going around it, from pole to pole, and around the Pacific Rim. (I didn’t envy him his trip around the Sahara, that looked unpleasant, but I’m glad he did it so I don’t have to.) Now Stephen Fry has set himself the task of visiting all 50 of the United States, driving a London taxi. (And, ... Read more »
Stephanie Daley
Sundance had something to do with this small film. Like a lot of such indies, it didn’t get any distribution. It made a total of $25,073. (Yes, thousand, that’s not a misprint!), and never played on more than 3 screens, most of which were probably film festivals. No indication of what it cost, but a party scene was shot in the location manager’s basement, so it ... Read more »
The Stepford Wives
It sounded like an interesting idea when I first heard of it: remake the creepy but not really believable 1975 film about women being turned into robots as a comedy, and with a 21st Century sensibility. But this really never gets off the ground. The direction by Frank Oz was ponderous, I didn’t laugh once; all the one-liners were blown, the physical comedy didn’t work. Naturally this one ... Read more »
Steelyard Blues
In the 1970 there were some films—I hesitate to call it a genre—that were somehow, in some way not easy to define, anti-establishment. I’m not talking about Easy Rider, which was right up front about it. Not even The Strawberry Statement, based on the Columbia student protests and campus takeover. These were films like Read more »