Movie Reviews
Seven Days in May
(Second review, 2016) What was it about the early ‘60s, and year 1964 in particular, that was so conducive to excellent black and white films about warm and politics? There was The Best Man, Fail-Safe, The Manchurian Candidate, Dr. Strangelove, and this one. Every one of them a classic.
I think we thought a military coup against our elected government was ... 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 »
The Split
This is taken from the book The Seventh, one of the twenty terrific novels about the one-named thief named Parker, written by “Richard Stark,” a pseudonym for Donald E. Westlake. I’m sorry to say there is very little here that’s terrific. They changed Parker’s name to McClain, and cast Jim Brown to play him. Making Parker black poses no problem for me. What I ... Read more »
The Jungle Book
This is the first of what I think of as the Big Three versions of the Kipling book (there are innumerably other versions), long before the Disney animation in 1967 and the CGI “live action” one in 2016. The star is Sabu, who I recall from The Thief of Baghdad. It was made by the Korda brothers, Zoltan, Alexander, and Vincent, during the period when the war forced ... 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 »
Shakespeare in Love
I have seen all of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays at least once, on stage or screen. Some of them I have seen multiple times. Example: I have seen the 1968 Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet, Baz Luhrmann’s modern updating Romeo + Juliet, a BBC production when they were doing all the plays, and the ridiculous 1936 version. (Juliet was 13 in ... Read more »
Learning to Drive
One of those minor little films that are enjoyable to watch, but I know I’ll have forgotten almost everything about it a year from now. The chief pleasures are the cast. Patricia Clarkson is a New York writer whose husband has just left her. She decides she needs to learn to drive, and hires Ben Kingsley, a Sikh, as an instructor. Through a series of misunderstandings and culture clashes, ... Read more »
The Man Who Knew Infinity
Dev Patel, who got a terrific break with his first film, Slumdog Millionaire, plays Srinivasa Ramanujan, the most brilliant man you have probably never heard of. He grew up in India with very little formal education, certainly none in higher mathematics. But he was a natural genius who made almost unbelievable contributions to the field known as identities ... Read more »
The Princess Bride
As far as it would be possible to make a great movie out of William Goldman’s book, this one succeeds. Since the screenplay was written by Goldman himself, I doubt it could have been made any better. But it would be totally impossible to put the entire richness of it on the screen. For one thing, how in the world would you deal with the brilliant conceit of framing the story as one that ... Read more »
The Graduate
We saw an interview with Mike Nichols, the last one he did before he died. This was his second film. He had been taken with the music of Simon and Garfunkel, and intended to use it in the film, which was a very unusual thing to do in those days. Mostly it would be stuff they had already recorded, but he also wanted an original song that had something to do with Mrs. Robinson. Simon wrote ... Read more »