Movie Reviews
The Son
One of the most frustrating movies I’ve ever not finished. We rented it on the strength of the raves on the box. Eight major critics put it on their Top 10 of 2002 lists. And we found it to be virtually unwatchable. For one thing, it’s all in close-up, with a hand-held camera. Every shot! I am so glad we didn’t see this in the theater, it would have given me ... Read more »
Twisted
A totally routine thriller, and a big disappointment from Philip Kaufman, the man who directed The Right Stuff.
Twin Sisters
Quite a tearjerker, adapted from a novel that was very popular in Holland and Germany. Twin orphaned sisters, 8 or so in age, are divided up between uncles. One goes to live on a farm in Germany, the other with well-off Dutch people. Both families are horrible, the farmers physically and the city folks mentally. They aren’t allowed to communicate, and never told that letters aren’t being ... Read more »
Something’s Gotta Give
It’s always a pleasure to see both Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton work, but this really didn’t have much else going for it.
Something Wild
The “road movie” has a long and often distinguished history, probably starting out with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night. The formula: two mismatched people start out for some destination, and along the way fall in love, or learn to respect each other if it’s two guys. Or two girls as in Thelma and ... Read more »
Some Like it Hot
One of the all-time great comedies, and still as good today as it was the day it was made. I understand that back in those pre-out-of-the-closet days when gay men mostly hid their sexual orientation, this was a most popular movie, screened frequently. Well, just look at it: Two guys in dresses—and looking damn good, too, especially Tony Curtis—and Marilyn Monroe. ... Read more »
Twilight
What a cast! Paul Newman, James Garner, Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, Stockard Channing, Reese Witherspoon (back before she was a big star and was hungry enough to do a nude scene), Liev Schreiber, John Spencer. And written and directed by Robert Benton, who did The Late Show, Places in the Heart, Kramer vs. Kramer, and Nobody’s Fool. ... Read more »
The Tuttles of Tahiti
Charles Laughton is the head of a family that seems to number about 10,000 (probably more like 50), all talking at once, who live in a big ramshackle house in the tropical paradise. They enjoy fishing and cock-fighting and gambling, and none of them has a lick of sense about money. A huge windfall is quickly pissed away and in the end they are as poor as they started out, but happy, and ... Read more »
The Soloist
This is a well-intentioned movie about homelessness, madness, and friendship that didn’t quite make it for me. I didn’t go in expecting another inspirational thing like Shine. This is also a movie about a musical prodigy who ends up homeless and on Skid Row, but Nathaniel Ayers the cellist is not David Helfgott the pianist. Nathaniel was discovered on the streets ... Read more »
Turtles Can Fly
(Kurdish language) A joint Iran-Iraq production, and the first film produced after the fall of Saddam Hussein. It takes place in a Kurdish refugee camp along the Iraqi-Turkish border, in an area hopefully called “Kurdistan” by the people who live there. Kurds are a people without a homeland, being unwelcome guests in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Nobody wants them, but everybody wants their ... Read more »