Movie Reviews
Osama
Not the Osama I’d like to spend some quality time with; just him, me, and a rusty Swiss Army knife. This is one of the most horrifying movies I’ve ever seen, the first movie made after the Taliban was ousted from power in that miserable country. While they were there, women were not allowed to leave their homes without a male escort, and not allowed to work, so I suppose they were expected ... Read more »
Origin of the Species
Six people, friends from childhood, get together one summer weekend as they have for the last ten years, since high school. They interact in various ways. Old issues are brought up, new issues arise. This is a small movie and not a bad one, but it didn’t affect me much. It may very well be a generational thing. These 29-year-olds just weren’t very interesting to me, unlike the people ... Read more »
Operation Petticoat
Sort of the tail end of the “Wasn’t World War II a barrel of laughs?” genre. I can sort of understand it. Millions of guys (and quite a few dolls) were in uniform 1941-45, shared common experiences, and even those in combat had a lot of time when they weren’t actually fighting. Many others never fought at all. It takes a lot of behind-the-lines personnel to back up one soldier in the ... Read more »
Millennium
What a disaster. I’ve always enjoyed stories by this John Varley dude, but maybe he should stick to short stories and novels. (Both the story and the novel this turkey are based on are lots better than the movie.) The writing credit blames only him, so I don’t see how he can foist the responsibility on anybody else. Just simply an awful movie.
Operation Mad Ball
This is from early in Jack Lemmon’s career. He had made three or four movies, including Mr. Roberts and It Should Happen to You (co-starring with Judy Holliday), but he hadn’t really arrived as a big-time box office draw. The Apartment and Some Like it Hot were in his near future. ... Read more »
Milk
This is a rather surprisingly traditional bio-pic. I say surprisingly given Gus Van Sant’s tendency to experiment, with results sometimes intriguing (Elephant) and sometimes disastrous (the horrible Gerry, and the loathsome Psycho remake). It avoids tracking Harvey Milk from his no-doubt awful childhood. You ... Read more »
Open Water
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! Get me out of the water!
This is the best thriller I’ve seen in years. Maybe it’s because I have two strong phobias: being underwater, and being in the water with sharks. The first is because I can’t swim, and I can’t swim because the evil Coach S., during my first swimming lesson when I was about 12, thought holding my head ... Read more »
The Mikado, or The Town of Titipu
I am on record as favoring reinterpretations of classic works. I enjoy it in music, where it has a long tradition. Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, for instance, was originally a piano piece, but it is now far more well known as Ravel’s later orchestration. I was a big fan of Walter Carlos’s performances of Switched-On ... Read more »
Only Angels Have Wings
Here’s a nice little film set in the mountains of Columbia, telling the story of the men who fly planes over the Andes … and sometimes even make it. Cary Grant is the tough-as-nails head of the operation. Jean Arthur shows up on her way to somewhere else, and stays, and—who would have guessed it?—falls in love. Rita Hayworth and Richard Barthelmess provide complications, he being a pilot ... Read more »