Shrek 1 & 2

The second one was even better than the first, and the first was glorious.

Shrek 4-D

Only 12 minutes long, and as far as I know the only places to see it are Universal Studios in Orlando and Hollywood. It’s shown in a theater where the seats rock and bump along with the action. I have to say I wasn’t too impressed. All it really has going for it is the 3D, and by the end of 12 minutes even that is wearing thin. No real plot (there’s hardly time for one). Worth seeing ... Read more »

Shrek Forever After

Shrek is fed up with his family life and decides he’d like his old, carefree ogre life back. He makes a deal with Rumpelstiltskin that ends up such that he was never born. He returns to Bedford Falls to find it is now ruled by … wait a minute, that’s Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. Okay, so Far Far Away is now ruled by Rumpy and a lot of green witches, ... Read more »

Shrek the Third

The reviews were not good, which is good … I mean, in the sense that my expectations were lowered. They needn’t have been. I liked it. True, nothing is going to beat the originality of the first one, and it wasn’t even as good as the second, but when you start off from a point as high as Shrek, you can come down considerably and still be worth ... Read more »

Shutter Island

It’s going to be hard to write very much about this. I don’t think it’s any secret that the ending is quite a large surprise, and I won’t say anything more about it than that it is a surprise. But I got the surprise by reading the book, both when it was new and a few months ago to refresh my memory. And while I was watching I was struck that, subjectively, there are two movies here. Sort ... Read more »

Sicario

It’s a Mexican slang name for hitman. I was just reflecting that the only good thing to ever come out of our brain-dead, idiotic, useless, totally counterproductive War on Drugs (and a mighty small “good thing” it is) is that when book and movie writers ran out of Bad Guys like Fucking Nazis and Muslim Terrorists there were always Mexican Drug Cartels to fill in for them. The trouble is, ... Read more »

SiCKO

Dear Michael Moore,
All right, I give up. You’ve won me over. I don’t think I’m ever going to like you very much, but I’ve come to believe that you’re a necessary evil, and I’m at the point where I’ll accept almost anything that fights the current regime and the multiple messes that exist in this country—not all of them the direct ... Read more »

Side Effects

Stephen Soderbergh has said he will retire, or at least take a hiatus, from movie directing. If so, this and Behind the Candelabra, which he did for HBO and I haven’t seen yet, could be his final films. And if he sticks to it, the world will have lost one of its best directors. Aside from the very successful commercial Oceans films, his ... Read more »

Sidewalks of London

This is how it was listed at TCM, where we watched it, so I was a little surprised to see the title come up as St. Martin’s Lane. Seems that was the orginal title. I think the change was a good idea, at least for foreign audiences, since it’s about buskers, who perform on the sidewalks. This is the best thing about it, exploring the lives of these hard-working Brits who entertain people ... Read more »

Sideways

There are so many things to love in this movie it’s hard to know where to start. The writing and the acting are just about perfect. So how about … the wine?

Describing fine wine to me is like describing a sunset to a blind man. I can accept that people can distinguish fine nuances, but for myself, I can barely distinguish a red from a white with my eyes closed. Read more »