Movie Reviews
Shrek 1 & 2
The second one was even better than the first, and the first was glorious.
The Show-Off
Here’s one from early in Spencer Tracy’s career. He plays a windbag who possibly doesn’t mean anybody any harm, but harms them nonetheless. As they say in Texas, he’s all hat and no cattle. A young woman inexplicably falls for him—okay, he’s glib, and she’s naïve, it happens—and they marry. He’s a liar and a fantasist, and I hated pretty much everything about him. He’s one of those guys ... Read more »
Show Business: The Road to Broadway
Compared to the movies, they don’t make a lot of documentaries about Broadway. This is one of the better ones. The conclusion you have to reach at the end is quite simple. Theater on Broadway could be immeasurably improved by lining about a dozen people up against a wall in Shubert Alley and shooting them. I’m referring to the theater critics, of course, mostly New York critics, who used ... Read more »
Shoulder Arms
Charlie Chaplin goes to war, and ends up capturing the Kaiser and most of the German army … but it turns out to be just a dream. This is the shortest of Chaplin’s feature films, and the most popular up to that point. It is also the last Chaplin feature I had never seen. I don’t think it’s his strongest. In fact, I’d say it’s my least favorite silent feature. The dream structure feels like ... Read more »
Short Cuts
We had seen this before, but a few weeks ago we saw an Australian film, Jindabyne, that inspired us to see it again. I have a Laserdisc copy. The thing is, Short Cuts, by Robert Altman, is a longish movie (183 minutes) made from nine short stories by Raymond Carver, intertwined. The Aussie film takes just one of those stories and ... Read more »
Shopgirl
An open letter to Steve Martin:
I love ya, baby, but you need to stop and evaluate your career. I’d suggest you sit down with Bill Murray to do so. What do you want, Steve? Big paychecks? I know your expenses are high, since you collect modern art. If so, keep churning out those remakes, and remakes of remakes, like Cheaper By the Dozen (two of ...
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The Shop Around the Corner
In 1937 a Hungarian named Miklós László wrote a slight little comic play called Parfumerie. It was about a man and a woman who work in the same store and really don’t like each other. At the same time, each has a pen pal, having hooked up through a personal ad in the newspaper. These postal would-be lovers have agreed not to write about what they do, what they ... Read more »
Ship of Fools
Stanley Kramer directed this long, sometimes ponderous movie from Katherine Anne Porter’s book, which she took 22 years to write. I’ve never read it, but it seems obvious that the screenwriter had to pick and choose among many stories, omitting some entirely. It’s an allegory, they say, about Nazism, set in 1933 on a voyage from Mexico to Bremerhaven. There are the usual characters—all of ... Read more »
Shine a Light
First off, let me say that I am not a fan of concert movies, even if they are directed by Martin Scorsese. Lee doesn’t agree with me. She has fond memories of The Last Waltz. I saw it, but can’t remember anything about it except that it happened in Winterland, where I saw a few concerts in the ‘60s. The only concert film I can recall really loving is Read more »
SherryBaby
Poor Sherry. She’s one of those people who go through life always a step or two behind other people, and behind where she’s trying hard to be. She’s not a bad person, but everything she does is just a little bit … off. She is inappropriate, she has a quick temper that doesn’t serve her well, she is impatient, she tries too hard, she is self-centered. She is a ... Read more »