Movie Reviews
Titles starting with S
Spare Parts
We all love underdog stories, don’t we? From Rocky to Pitch Perfect, it doesn’t much matter what the competition is, it’s great to see the underdog put the smug favorites in their place. This is one of the better ones, and it seems they have taken remarkably few liberties with it. It’s the story of a team of young men from Carl Hayden ... Read more »
Spartacus
This doesn’t have the stunning action scenes of Ben-Hur nor the parting of the Red Sea like The Ten Commandments, but it is certainly the best of the swords-and-sandals epics of the 1950s and ‘60s. What it does have is a good, non-religious story, and a crackerjack battle scene near the end. Kubrick always wanted to make a movie about ... Read more »
Spartan
Written and directed by David Mamet. This got off to an excellent start, and throughout it was miles better than your usual spy thriller, never indulging in the usual idiotic fistfights. It surprised me several times. Still, by the end it had somehow gone astray. The final revelation, which I will not spoil, would have been wildly unbelievable 20 years ago, but these days I’d believe ... Read more »
Special Correspondents
Ricky Gervais’s brand of humor is not for everyone, but I’ve loved him since I watched the original, British version of The Office, which was vastly superior to the American copy. The Invention of Lying is one of my all-time favorite comedies. This one is not quite on that level, but it’s pretty funny. ... Read more »
Species
The only reason we saw this is that we just bought a rather unlikely DVD, a double feature with this and Alien. I guess the pairing makes sense in a way—they both involve scary aliens, and both aliens were designed by that seriously sick man, H.R. Giger. In fact, the two aliens look a lot alike, which shouldn’t surprise me, as Giger only has the one alien to ... Read more »
Spectre
Bottom line: This is a quarter of a billion dollars and two-and-a-half hours of real silliness. That’s what they spent making this thing, and that doesn’t even count the publicity. This franchise is now saddled with so much stuff they have to get in … the can-you-top-this opening credits. “Bond. James Bond.” The Bond girls, three this time. The pretty tame sex scenes with the Bond girls. ... Read more »
Speed
… is simply one of the best balls-to-the-wall pedal-to-the-metal (literally!) action thrillers ever made. Even the title is perfect. What an insane idea! A honkin’ big old city bus that can’t go below 50 mph without blowing up! If I had been a studio exec in 1993 all I would have needed was to hear that sentence and I’d reach for my checkbook. The stunt work was ... Read more »
Speed Racer
I hated, hated, hated this television show, because my youngest son loved it, and watched it all the time, and that damn song kept worming its way into my head. “Go Speed Racer! Go Speed Racer! Go Speed Racer, go!”
What can you say about a family that names their son Speed? Racing was all that existed in this world, which reminded me a lot of professional ... Read more »
Spellbound
“Aw, that Freud stuff’s a lotta hooey!” says Gregory Peck at one point in the movie. I partially agree with you, Greg. My impression is that psychiatry is split into many different camps these days with not a lot of strict Freudians left, but back in the day he was just about the only game in town, and this is a very Freudian movie. I think Freud was on target ... Read more »
Spellbound
Not the Alfred Hitchcock thriller; this film follows 8 finalists in the National Spelling Bee from their homes to the final competition in Washington DC. Tears you up because, personally, I was rooting for 5 of the 8, and you knew there could only be one winner. These were such incredibly bright kids, and they worked so hard. One girl, from a ranch in Texas, had a father who couldn’t even ... Read more »