Shakespeare in Love (1998)

SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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To see or not to see… that is the question.

Proceed with caution. Shakespeare in Love boasts the year’s best screenplay, Gwyneth Paltrow’s best performance (even better than her work in Emma), and an incredible supporting cast including Judi Dench in her most outlandish, showstopping role. It is as lusty as movies come…

…but it’s also lust-filled, and that’s a different matter entirely.

Shall We Dance? (2004)

SHALL WE DANCE?

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Masayuki Suo’s Shall We Dance? became a favorite of moviegoers around the world when it opened in 1996.

Thus, as they have done with so many acclaimed foreign films, American filmmakers have taken something beautiful and hammered it down into an unremarkable mush. They proceed to spoon feed it to the audience, assuming that we don’t want to be bothered by having to chew on anything.

Shanghai Noon (2000)

Shanghai Noon

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Shanghai Noon, Tom Dey’s high-spirited new action comedy, is a winner.

While the formula’s familiar, the dialogue crackles and the action’s ablaze. It never takes itself seriously for a moment. And while a troubling western boastfulness (“The U.S. is so much better and wiser than the East”) is squirm-inducing, Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan make the adventure a barrel of fun. In a summer when the special-effects-extravaganza blockbusters have been disappointments, here’s a movie that doesn’t promise much, but delivers plenty. It’s the same kind of guilt-free, old-fashioned, get-your-five-bucks’-worth good time that made The Mask of Zorro a pleasant summertime surprise two years ago.

Sideways (2004)

Sideways

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Nothing can rankle my nerves like a movie review. More than once I’ve been prompted to write a film review because someone else’s review infuriated me with misinterpretation, exaggerated praise, or inappropriate condemnation.

So I understood perfectly when a friend emailed me to proclaim her dismay at the critical acclaim for Alexander Payne’s latest film, Sideways. The film upset her because some of its central characters are self-absorbed, promiscuous, and willing to enable each other’s reckless misdeeds.

I understand her objections. But I must politely disagree with her, because I don’t think Payne’s film is condoning misbehavior. Sideways is likely to make viewers wince, and sometimes even laugh. The characters do make alarming decisions, but they glow with such conflicted personalities that I cannot help but feel affection for them as they blunder their way into all kinds of trouble. Beneath all of the tomfoolery and trouble, each one has a big, beating heart and qualities that earn my respect.

Shrek (2001)

Shrek

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Shrek is a somewhat subversive fairy tale about a reclusive swamp-dwelling ogre who strikes a bargain with an egotistical power-mad lord.

You see, the swamp has become crowded with fairy tale chracters cast out of the castle where the wicked ruler Lord Farquand routinely tortures and abuses them. Shrek, demanding to be left alone in his unhappy existence, marches in to the castle and makes a deal: In exchange for a little peace and quiet back home, he agrees to rescue an imprisoned princess from a fire-breathing dragon so the conniving Farquand can marry her and become king. Then, with sidekick Donkey in tow, he ventures off on a journey that will teach him that the world does not have the right to call him ugly. Beauty… surprise surprise… is more then skin deep.

Sin City (2005)

Sin City

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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“After a while I’m only punching wet chunks of bone into the floorboards, so I stop.”

That’s just a snippet of the narration provided by one of the “heroes” in Sin City, an effects-heavy orgy of violence and sensuality based on Frank Miller lurid comic book. The narrator tells us this after we’ve watched him beat a man senseless, and eventually beat him face-less … just about head-less, in fact.

But the lines captures the nature of the whole film.

The Sixth Sense (1999)

The Sixth Sense

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense is the best kind of scary movie.

These days, most horror films and thrillers are like electroshock treatment, and audiences, eager for new sensations — any sensations at all — line up to have wires applied to their heads. We jump and shriek, growing more and more desensitized all the time, and having nothing worth remembering after the film is over.

But The Sixth Sense is good old fashioned storytelling of the creepiest kind. Its shocks are not gratuitous; they’re meaningful. And the movie is not intended to send us home scared of the dark. It’s intended to inspire us to reflect on our lives.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Writer/director Kerry Conran is very much in touch with his inner 10-year-old. In fact, his feature-length debut seems like it has been downloaded directly from the wildest dreams of a kid who spent the day watching old B-movies, playing with action figures, and reading old Buck Rogers comics.

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Sleepy Hollow

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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When I attended a screening of Tim Burton’s new film Sleepy Hollow last week, I was not surprised to hear euphoric cheering, half-hearted applause, and outraged boo-ing as the end credits rolled past. On the way out, several people grumbled about how Burton consistently disappoints us, failing to provide anything of substance. It is worth mentioning, though, that those same peeved viewers had waited in line eagerly with the rest of us for 90 minutes just to feast their eyes on Burton’s latest achievement. Substance or not, we love this guy.

Small Time Crooks (2000)

Small Time Crooks

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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A question that frequently arises in my conversations with film buffs is “What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie?”

The question comes up again and again, partly because the guy writes and directs a new movie every year. It seems like everybody has a favorite. While his resume boasts an incredible range — zany sci-fi epics (Sleeper), mock documentaries (Zelig), fairy tales (The Purple Rose of Cairo), weighty morality plays (Crimes and Misdemeanors) — they all bear that unmistakable wit and bizarre knack for characterization that was true of his early standup comedy routines. Pull out any conversation, any introspective monologue from his work — it’s not hard to recognize Woody Allen’s voice.

That voice in the 1990s was souring, at times becoming a caustic, painfully embittered tantrum about failed loves and an unforgiving society, tainted with self-loathing. (Deconstructing Harry may be have been the peak of Allen’s most self-interested and self-indulgent work, while remaining a fascinating exploration of the artist and ego. It may have been his most autobiographical film, inadvertently or otherwise.)

Perhaps with the dawn of new decade, or millennium, Allen wants to go back to the basics. His new film is a strong indication. Small Time Crooks sounds more like early Woody — simpler, zanier. But, not unlike George Lucas’s mixed success at returning to Star Wars storytelling, the seams are showing. The transitions are clunky; there may as well be chapter headings for the film’s abrupt changes in tone. The characters are closer to being caricatures than believable individuals. Still, a mediocre Woody Allen film is better than most Hollywood comedies any day of the week.