Movie Reviews
Titles starting with S
Sweet Sixteen
Ken Loach is an unabashedly Socialist writer and director who has made quite a few films in England and never been tempted to go Hollywood. He specializes in the working class in the UK, and if you liked films like Ladybird, Ladybird, or Bread and Roses, (which we did), you’ll probably like this one. It is a tough life with few options ... Read more »
Swimming Pool
ritically well-received, but Lee and I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. If you understand the ending, please write and explain it to me.
Swimming Upstream
Based on a true story, from the 1960s. Sports movies tend to follow a pattern. That doesn’t mean they can’t be stirring and exciting and insightful and involving, but the better ones find a way to depart from that pattern. This one seems fairly standard: The only blonde child in a family of 5 is real good at swimming, but his sports-mad alcoholic father favors another son who is only ... Read more »
Swiss Army Man
Jeez, where to begin on this one … okay. Hank (Paul Dano) is stranded on a tiny island. He is in the process of hanging himself from pure boredom and loneliness when who should wash up on the beach but Harry Potter. Well, Daniel Radcliffe, actually. The only trouble is, he is dead. His corpse, however, is amazingly flatulent. So full of gas is he, in fact, that Hank is able to use his ... Read more »
Swiss Family Robinson
This is one of the first books I remember reading as a child, and I surely did love it. My friends and I used to play like we were stranded on an island, building huts and stuff. And when this movie came out I loved that, too. Hell, I loved the Swiss Family Tree House at Disneyland, and was pissed off when they re-themed it to Tarzan, that musclebound ape. There are still Swiss Family Tree ... Read more »
Swiss Miss
Say you had a piano that had to be taken up a narrow path on the side of a mountain, over a swaying rope bridge with only one rope handrail over an almost bottomless chasm, and delivered to a tree house on the other side. Who would you choose for the job? Well, based on their classic two-reeler “The Music Box,” I think you’d have to go with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. They had to take ... Read more »
The Sword in the Stone
Once again, I have to admit that I am not that familiar with the source material, which is the first part of T.H. White’s tetralogy The Once and Future King. And I’d have to say that this one has some of the same problems as Alice in Wonderland, mainly that it is great execution and not enough heart. I never felt deeply involved in the ... Read more »
Synecdoche, New York
Here’s an object lesson in why you shouldn’t get your hopes up too high. In my opinion, Charlie Kaufman is the most exciting writer working in Hollywood today. After an apprenticeship in TV, he exploded onto the scene with Being John Malkovich, one of the most amazing films ever made and a great favorite of mine. When I saw John Cusack manipulating a puppet of ... Read more »
Syriana
The advance word on this was very good, and I entered the theater with high hopes. And it was very good … just not quite as good as I had hoped. A case of too much expectation, I guess, because it is by no means a bad film, in fact it is quite good. But it is very confusing. Half the time I didn’t have a very clear idea of what was going on. And when I found out, it wasn’t always ... Read more »