With a Friend Like Harry

(Apparently also known as Harry, He’s Here to Help.) I almost didn’t watch this when, five minutes in, I knew for sure that it was dubbed. I HATE dubbed movies. But I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did.

Michael and Claire and their three young daughters encounter Harry and Brynn on the way to an old farmhouse they’ve spent five summers renovating. Michael ... Read more »

With a Friend Like Harry… (Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien)

(Apparently also known as Harry, He’s Here to Help.) I almost didn’t watch this when, five minutes in, I knew for sure that it was dubbed. I HATE dubbed movies. But I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did.

Michael and Claire and their three young daughters encounter Harry and Brynn on the way to an old farmhouse they’ve spent five summers renovating. Michael ... Read more »

Withnail and I

Here is a movie with a cult following that we just couldn’t get into. I understand it’s based on fact. Halfway through I realized I just didn’t want to spend any more time with these assholes, drinking and drugging themselves to death. I had the same problem with Leaving Las Vegas. I don’t object to a depressing story, but it needs a little more than the simple ... Read more »

Without a Clue

The beloved character of Sherlock Holmes has passed into the public domain, so he’s now fair game for anyone who wants to do a pastiche. This can produce good stuff, as in They Might Be Giants, where George C. Scott is a delusional man who thinks he’s Sherlock, and Joanne Woodward is Dr. Watson, his psychiatrist. (Oddly enough, this is out of print and very ... Read more »

Without a Paddle

This is Deliverance with the degenerate morons inside the canoe as well as outside, and no great banjo music. I’m not sure why we didn’t start the car and leave. I guess it was because there were a few laughs, but so few and so widely separated that I almost missed them as they sped by. Avoid this turkey.

Witness

I think Harrison Ford made this movie to move away from the mega blockbuster adventures of Indiana Jones and Han Solo, which had been four of his last five films (the fifth being another SF adventure, Blade Runner), to show he had more acting chops in him than could be expressed with a bullwhip or a laser blaster. So he chose this terrific script by Earl W. ... Read more »

Witness for the Prosecution

Charles Laughton was one of the best actors ever to appear in motion pictures. (He made a few stinkers, like everyone does, such as Hitchcock’s worst film, Jamaica Inn.) Here he is at the height of his powers, in a tour de force as a curmudgeonly barrister defending a man accused of murdering a rich old widow. Tyrone Power is strong as the accused, even though ... Read more »

Witness to Murder

It starts out as a pretty good noir thriller. Barbara Stanwyck gets up in the middle of the night to shut her window, and sees someone across the street strangling a woman. She calls the cops. Meanwhile, George Sanders, the murderer, has time to drag the corpse to an empty apartment. When the cops arrive, there’s no body, no evidence. The detective, Gary Merrill, suggests she just had a ... Read more »

Witnesses

Quite a strange TV series, which went for two seasons. It is set in Le Tréport, a small town 40 miles southwest of Calais on the English Channel. There is a weird, tiny funicular which climbs the cliffs that divide the town between upper and lower sections. The plots are far-fetched, maybe a little too unlikely. For instance, the first episodes of the first ... Read more »

The Wiz

What a hot mess of a film. Parts of it are stunningly good, and parts of it are pretty damn awful. I never saw the stage musical but I read the summary, and was amazed at just how little of it showed up in the movie. I’ve seen plenty of movies “based on real events” which were actually only inspired by events. Here is a musical film that is only inspired by the stage. Now, that’s not ... Read more »