Six Feet Under

(HBO) We followed our usual practice of waiting until the DVD came out to see this. It’s not really part of a plan, but it works out well. We usually don’t seek out new things to watch on TV; there’s not enough time in the day to watch all the stuff that people say is good. Thus, I personally never saw Cheers, Friends, Read more »

The Sixth Sense

M. Night Shyamalan made one really good movie (this one), one okay movie (Unbreakable), and everything else his hand has touched has been garbage. Yes, I can see that most of his movies have made money, and some have even been critical successes, but they have all been stupid, as he tried over and over to duplicate the “twist ending” success of this one, and ... Read more »

The Skeleton Key

Kate Hudson is tremendously appealing and was terrific in Almost Famous. Since then, she’s been in pretty much nothing but turkeys. She’d better start finding better roles in better movies, or she’s going to vanish.

This isn’t that part, nor that movie. It has its B-movie charms, and most of the drawbacks. I’ll allow a director two or three Read more »

Skidoo

I found myself wondering if anything in the world has ever dated as fast as ‘60s (and into the ‘70s) movies about hippies, LSD, and the counterculture. I mean, these things became embarrassing relics between the time the bulb was switched on in the projector and the light hit the screen. Of course, in one sense they were dated the moment the shooting script was finalized, as no writer or ... Read more »

Skins

There is a small but growing genre of films about modern-day Indians, most of them heartfelt but maybe technically a bit deficient, because they are made on a shoestring budget, and maybe not the best acting, because a lot of amateurs or first-timers are used. If you don’t mind this (and I don’t, if it’s from the heart), this is a good one. A particularly good ending, which I will not ... Read more »

The Sky Above, the Mud Below

I have often said, while viewing one of the marvelous nature videos we have seen from David Attenborough and others, “I am so glad they went there and filmed this, so I don’t have to.” Seldom have I meant it more. This was a rather notorious film back when it was released, simply because it may have been the first film publicly shown in the US to show full-frontal nudity. (Remember, in ... Read more »

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

We just spent a week in North Bend, Oregon, looking after Lee’s mom, who suffered a small stroke a while ago. I didn’t have a lot to do, so I did something I don’t do a lot of these days: went to see two movies in actual movie theaters. The first was De-Lovely, because I like musicals on the big screen. This was the second, and we caught the very first showing at ... Read more »

Skyfall

… is the ancestral estate of McBond, James McBond. I hadn’t known he had Scottish roots, but it seems they got that right. In fact, the screenwriter went to some pains to include some of the things that Ian Fleming revealed about the character, including the fact that his parents died when he was eleven. I was surprised when he arrived there at the ugly old house, which was short of being ... Read more »

Skyline

An alien invasion film that gets maximum use from its CGI critters, but the story is so lame I’m surprised I finished it.