Movie Reviews
The Same River Twice
My generation, the Baby Boomers, have been a pain in the ass since we reached elementary school. Our doting parents spoiled us outrageously, and we figured we were the greatest generation of all time, when in fact our parents have a better claim to that honor. We were going to change the world.
Well, we shook things up a little, but now we’re tired, and spoiling children of our ... Read more »
They Might Be Giants
This was not available for a long time. It’s possible to buy it now at Amazon for $135 new or $90 used! Wow. You must really love it to pay that price. I do love it but luckily it’s also available streaming on Netflix. So we just saw it for the first time since it was new. It holds up very well. Both George C. Scott as a man who was emotionally shattered and now believes he is Sherlock ... Read more »
Salt
If you’re like me, you really should write your review of a movie like this the same day you see it. As of now, it’s been about two months (it is one of many in my backlog that built up while finishing the new novel), and I honestly can’t recall a single plot point. I just now scanned the Wiki article about it, and a few scenes come back to me, none of them with much enthusiasm. I recall ... Read more »
They Drive By Night
If this movie was a truck, it would be weaving back and forth across the yellow line, skidding on ice, doing a 180, and tipping over on 9 wheels as George Raft slept soundly back behind the cab. In other words, it’s all over the place.
It starts off well, being about independent truck drivers and the hardships they face. I was immediately struck by how much things have changed, and ... Read more »
They Came to Rob Las Vegas
Boy, did I ever have a crush on Elke Sommer when I was in high school. It was that face, sweet and sexy at the same time. And, yes, that bouffant hair. All the girls were wearing it that way, poor things. It was the berries. Starting with her nude scene in The Victors (and damn it, when is that going to come out on video?) and going on to A ... Read more »
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
For some reason the British refer to what the rest of the world knows as Yemen as “The Yemen.” They do that with “The Lebanon,” too, and I think maybe a country in Africa, whose name doesn’t come to mind right now and which might not even exist. If anyone out there knows why they do this, I’d like to hear about it. It’s a mystery to me, like the superfluous U in labour, harbour, honour, ... Read more »
There Will Be Blood
One of the worst titles ever, in my opinion. Even worse than Sorcerer. (That was the name of one of the trucks, fer cryin’ out loud, and you had maybe a 2-second oblique glimpse of that twice in the movie, if you look hard.)
Every once in a while a film comes along that gets almost universal praise, and when I see it, I can’t figure out why. There are two ... Read more »
Sahara
Memo to the Department of Defense:
They say that only one out of a thousand rounds fired in combat are actually aimed at anything. The other 999 are fired to keep the guy who is shooting at you from having time to aim at you. My own figures, compiled informally from viewing approximately 1,000 movies where bullets ...
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Theodora Goes Wild
Nice little screwball comedy. This was the first comic role for Irene Dunne, and she turned out to be so good at it that she did a lot of them later on. It seemed to be an article of faith in these movies that the way to a woman’s heart was to be as obnoxious as possible. Melvyn Douglas is so grating, in fact, that I thought if he’d whistled “The Farmer in the Dell” (and what grown-up ... Read more »
Them!
Here is one of the better “Giant Mutated Radioactive Insect!” movies of that crazy age. It was actually the first “big bug!” film. If this seems like damning with faint praise, it’s not, really. I sort of dug a lot of them when they were new, and still like some of them. People of today will sneer at the big ants, but they are actually done pretty well, and let me tell you, when I saw this ... Read more »