Walk, Don’t Run

We had just seen The More the Merrier, and thought it would be fun to see this one, which is a remake, 23 years later. And it was! There is a housing shortage in wartime Washington/Tokyo during the Olympics. Charles Coburn/Cary Grant inveigles Jean Arthur/Samantha Eggar into subletting her apartment. Later, Coburn/Grant sublets his part to Joel McCrea/Jim Hutton. ... Read more »

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

I guess I’d have to call this one intermittently funny. It sets out to spoof all those musical biopics, in particular Walk the Line, Ray, and even La vie en rose, to name a few more recent ones, and does a pretty good job of including all the clichés, hammering a little hard on them to be sure you get the ... Read more »

A Walk in the Woods

Bill Bryson is one of my favorite non-fiction writers. He is wryly funny and observant, self-deprecating, able to puncture the pretensions of people wherever he travels. At one point in his life he decided to hike the Appalachian Trail, which begins in northern Georgia and ends in Maine, almost at the Canadian border. (There is an extended trail that runs from Key West to the northern tip ... Read more »

Walk on Water

It’s always nice to discover a movie you’re heard absolutely nothing about, and find that it’s really quite good. I can’t call it a sleeper, since no one in the US saw it, but I guess “buried treasure” works pretty well. It’s mostly in English, though there is a fair amount of Hebrew and German, too.

We open here with a really nice cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s ... Read more »

Walk the Line

This was pretty much what I expected it to be. A biopic, and even more a biopic about a contemporary musician, always seems to have the same story line. Comes from nowhere, early struggles, success, bigger success, crisis and downfall (usually from booze and/or drugs), triumphant return. There are exceptions, like The Doors, but if they ever do Jimi or Janis, ... Read more »

Walkabout

I had heard this movie praised from the moment it was released, but somehow, I never got around to seeing it. Now, 42 years later, I find it was well worth the wait.

I fell deeply in love with Australia during the couple of weeks I was able to visit as Guest of Honor at the Australian National SF Convention, in Perth, quite a while ago now. Partly it was the Aussies who were my ... Read more »

Walking With Monsters/ Walking With Dinosaurs/ Walking With Beasts

On one of Larry Niven’s Known Space worlds there is a creature called the runforit. I’ve always loved this critter. You don’t need to describe it, and as far as I can remember Larry doesn’t. The name says it all. It was named after what the person who first saw it immediately said: “Run for it!” I’ve always wondered if there were similarly named creatures somewhere in Known Space. Beasts ... Read more »

Walking With Monster/Walking With Dinosaurs/Walking With Beasts

On one of Larry Niven’s Known Space worlds there is a creature called the runforit. I’ve always loved this critter. You don’t need to describe it, and as far as I can remember Larry doesn’t. The name says it all. It was named after what the person who first saw it immediately said: “Run for it!” I’ve always wondered if there were similarly named creatures somewhere in Known Space. Beasts ... Read more »

WALL●E

What can I say? This is currently getting an astronomical 93% at Metacritic (lowest score: 70), 97% at Rotten Tomatoes. There are essentially no dissenting voices. And everything they say is true. It’s an awesome movie, and one that will make you feel good instead of just a bit exhausted. The story is simple enough. WALL●E is a trash compactor, still functioning at the task of cleaning up ... Read more »

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

I’d heard about Wallace and Gromit for a long time, but never seen one of their shorts. This is the first feature-length, and there will probably be more, given the stellar reviews for this one. I admire the devotion of these people who have stayed with stop-motion in an age of CGI, but I can’t say I understand it. The process takes a degree of patience that is almost incomprehensible to ... Read more »