Movie Reviews
Titles starting with S
Saving Mr. Banks
My friend Harlan Ellison has posted a diatribe about just how phony this whole story is. (Harlan is the biggest anti-Internet person I know, but when he discovered YouTube he just couldn’t resist pontificating … and I say that with the utmost respect; no one can pontificate like Harlan.) And he is absolutely right. The story is of the creation of the movie Mary ... Read more »
Saving Private Ryan
Possibly the best war movie ever made. I can’t think of a real rival. The opening scenes of the landing on Omaha Beach at Normandy on D-Day are so harrowing I was breathing hard by the time it was over. It is filmed newsreel style, and you are right down there in the sand with those poor boys, watching them get slaughtered. One stunning thing: We begin with a Higgins boat full of soldiers, ... Read more »
Saw
How do you turn $1,000,000 into $100,000,000? Here’s one way: Chain two people at opposite ends of a filthy men’s room, too far away from each other to touch. Tell one of them the only way he can get out is to kill the other. Add plot complications. Ta-da! A gigantic movie franchise in the torture/dismemberment/horror genre is born. As I write this Saw IV is ... Read more »
A Scanner Darkly
I was, frankly, stunned at how bad this movie was. Not a single thing worked. It was, famously, done with interpolated rotoscoping. The interpolated part is computer-generated; rotoscoping was invented by Max Fleischer in 1914 for his Koko the Clown movies. Here, it is a horrible distraction. Keanu Reeves’ beard looks like some awful fungus crawling all over his face. Many things ... Read more »
The Scarecrow
Buster Keaton two-reeler. The first reel of this short is simply amazing. Two men share a small one-room house. It is filled with the most ingenious and comic labor-saving devices. Some of the shots must have needed a lot of takes to pull off, as they relied on not just perfect timing, but a lot of luck. I was roaring. The second half is not so inspired, but still funny. This is available ... Read more »
Scarface
Now that Dennis Hopper is dead, the undisputed title of largest amount of scenery chewed in a single movie belongs to Al Pacino. One also tries to think of a movie that has more over-the-top scenes, and nothing comes to me immediately. I admit I haven’t see the last twenty or so super-team movies, you know, X-Men, Justice League, Suicide Squad, Captain America, ... Read more »
The Scarlet Pimpernel
Sir Percy Blakeney, Baronet and silly fop, is actually the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel, who has devoted himself to rescuing the aristocracy from the horrors of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Perhaps you saw the original, classic 1934 version with Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon. (Or maybe Chuck Jones’ “The Scarlet Pumpernickel, starring Daffy Duck.) This is a lush, ... Read more »
Scene of the Crime
Van Johnson is a LA cop investigating the murder of another cop, who may be dirty. He had $1000 in cash on him when he was killed. Van doesn’t believe it, of course, and this being 1949, I didn’t expect he would be, either. Dirty cops was not a subject they made a lot of movies about in those days. He’s married to Arlene Dahl who, you’ll never guess … that’s right, who wants him to quit ... Read more »
The Scent of Green Papaya
This is more a composition than a traditional movie. There are two large sets, both on soundstages in Paris, believe it or not, one of a middle-class home in Saigon in 1951, another a rich man’s home in 1961. Both are meticulously thought out down to the last drop of water, cricket in a cage, trail of ants, frog on a leaf, grain of rice. It would be impossible to point your camera anywhere ... Read more »
Schindler’s List
What can I say? A masterpiece. I wept several times. Many times more I wanted to kill somebody, but almost any Nazi movie can do that to me.