Movie Reviews
Singin’ in the Rain
See my review of An American in Paris. I said that the best musical of all time was whichever one of these two I’d seen most recently. So now this one is the all-time champion. AAIP is only a darn good musical for most of its length, and then comes the ballet, which boosts it onto a whole new level. SITR is ... Read more »
Since Otar Left
An old woman, her daughter, and her granddaughter, share a home in Tbilisi, Georgia. The country is a mess, something I hadn’t realized; the power goes off at night, the daughter used to be an engineer and now can’t find work. The old woman thinks things were better back in the days of Stalin. Her son, Otar, a medical student, has moved illegally to Paris to find work. Then Otar dies, and ... Read more »
Sin City
Say you’ve got a great big pile of steaming horseshit. You’ve heard that there are a lot of people out there who like great big piles of steaming horseshit, or maybe you’re a horseshit aficionado yourself. So you hire the very best photographer in the world. Cartier-Bresson, or Ansel Adams, or Dorothea Lange, if they weren’t all dead. The photographer lights it wonderfully, with that ... Read more »
Silver City
A few weeks ago I did what I hope was a humorous riff about Robots, where I drew parallels with the Bush administration. I was goofing that time, but in Silver City it really could not be more obvious who director John Sayles and star Chris Cooper are skewering. Cooper plays little Dickie Pilager (cute), son of the Governor of Colorado, ... Read more »
Silk Stockings
Take the best male dancer ever to hoof it in Hollywood (Fred Astaire) and my personal favorite female dancer (Cyd Charisse), add in the music of the best writer of popular songs (Cole Porter) and the choreography of Hermes Pan (and don’t you just love that name?—real last name, Panagiotopoulos), and how can you go wrong? Well, you can’t, though it isn’t quite as good as the film it is a ... Read more »
The Silence of the Lambs
One of the all-time great adaptations of a book. And it was the sequel to an excellent movie in its own right: Manhunter, originally titled Red Dragon, which itself was remade to cash in on Anthony Hopkins’ incredible creation of Hannibal Lector. Don’t even ask me about Hannibal. Okay, ask me …
Signs
I totally, absolutely loathed this movie. From the whole crop circle idiocy (it has been conclusively disproved, but that’s not enough for some morons), to the mindless absurdity of finding out that throwing water on the invading aliens will kill them (and I hope, if you haven’t seen it, that I’ve just ruined ... 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 »
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 ...
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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 »