Movie Reviews
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 »
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 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 »
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 »
Barney’s Version
The author of the book, Mordecai Richler, wrote another book called The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, from which an excellent little movie was made. But sometimes a movie has a lot of interesting parts, and they just don’t all come together for an interesting story. I don’t demand linear storytelling, nor that there be a specific point the writer is trying to ... Read more »
Waitress
I guess everyone knows the sad story of this little film by now. The writer-director, Adrienne Shelley, was brutally murdered by a piece of human garbage, Diego Pillco, when she complained he was making too much noise in an adjoining apartment. Diego’s explanation? He was having “a bad day.” May he never have another good one. As of now he’s awaiting trial, and should never be a free man ... Read more »
Waking Sleeping Beauty
At the end of the ‘80s the Disney animation department was at a low ebb. Nobody had any new ideas, and the movies weren’t making any money. There was serious talk of shutting it down completely. Only Roy Disney wanted to stick with animation. Then Frank Wells, Michael Eisner, and Jeffery Katzenberg arrived, and within a few years they were making movies like {{The Little Mermaid, Who ... Read more »
Barbershop 2
Not as good as the first one. But it contains a pretty ingenious plug. Next door to the barbershop is the beauty shop, run by Queen Latifah. And before the show there is a trailer for … guess what? Beauty Shop.
Waiting for Guffman
One of Chris Guest’s little gems, this time about amateur theatrics in a small town. He manages to tread the careful line, sometimes lampooning their pretensions and still managing to make us like them.
Wait Until Dark
One of the all-time-best thriller movies. It was adapted from a stage play by Frederick Knott, who also wrote Dial M for Murder. It’s easy to see how it could all be staged on one set, as it almost is here with just a few outside shots. On Broadway the Audrey Hepburn role was played by Lee Remick, with Robert Duvall as the bad guy played by Alan Arkin. I’d like to have seen that. Honor ... Read more »