Solo: A Star Wars Story

This is the last Star Wars movie I have seen, and it’s quite likely to be the last ever. I’ve grown very tired of it, just as I was underwhelmed by the first Harry Potter spinoff about beasts, whatever that was called, and didn’t bother with the second one. Like most people, I was stunned by the first Star Wars, Episode IV, and enjoyed ... Read more »

The Soloist

This is a well-intentioned movie about homelessness, madness, and friendship that didn’t quite make it for me. I didn’t go in expecting another inspirational thing like Shine. This is also a movie about a musical prodigy who ends up homeless and on Skid Row, but Nathaniel Ayers the cellist is not David Helfgott the pianist. Nathaniel was discovered on the streets ... Read more »

Some Like it Hot

One of the all-time great comedies, and still as good today as it was the day it was made. I understand that back in those pre-out-of-the-closet days when gay men mostly hid their sexual orientation, this was a most popular movie, screened frequently. Well, just look at it: Two guys in dresses—and looking damn good, too, especially Tony Curtis—and Marilyn Monroe. ... Read more »

Someone to Watch Over Me

Tom Berenger is a working-class cop happily married to Lorraine Bracco. Mimi Rogers is an extremely rich woman who witnesses the murder of a wealthy man by a mob boss. Her life isn’t worth a nickel if the boss can get to her before she can testify against him. Tom is assigned to her round-the-clock protection detail. He and other cops virtually move in with her in her jaw-droppingly ... Read more »

Something New

Race is such a bitch. Things are almost infinitely better than they were when I was growing up in Texas, but we still have such a long way to go. Good news: Every day I see bi-racial couples, and little children who would have been called mulattos, or quadroons, or even mongrels when I was young. More and more every day. Where I grew up, it would have been unthinkable, especially a black ... Read more »

Something Wild

The “road movie” has a long and often distinguished history, probably starting out with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night. The formula: two mismatched people start out for some destination, and along the way fall in love, or learn to respect each other if it’s two guys. Or two girls as in Thelma and ... Read more »

Something’s Gotta Give

It’s always a pleasure to see both Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton work, but this really didn’t have much else going for it.

The Son

One of the most frustrating movies I’ve ever not finished. We rented it on the strength of the raves on the box. Eight major critics put it on their Top 10 of 2002 lists. And we found it to be virtually unwatchable. For one thing, it’s all in close-up, with a hand-held camera. Every shot! I am so glad we didn’t see this in the theater, it would have given me ... Read more »

Son of Rambow

Two young misfit boys set out to make an action-adventure movie in the style of Stallone. The director tries for whimsy, but whimsy is hard. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, and a lot of it is subjective. It didn’t work for me. See Millions for something very like that, except that it works.

One of the boys is being raised in one of those ... Read more »

A Song Is Born

To remake a film is not an unusual thing in Hollywood. To remake it with virtually the same script is almost unheard of. Not only that, but this film and its predecessor, Ball of Fire, were made only 6 years apart, and by the same director, Howard Hawks. Both were based loosely on the Snow White story (only there actually are seven professors in this one, not ... Read more »