Change Your Image
tcmay-1
Reviews
The Secret Garden (1993)
A great children's movie, but maybe even greater for adults
I had a 4th-grade teacher in 1961-62 who began to read aloud out of the book. We didn't get far before she stopped, so my vague memory was of a somewhat menacing character named "Dickin" and a strange boy in the basement named "Colin." I never did read the book....my reading then was more about Tom Swift Jr. and the Hardy Boys and what little I could follow then of "War of the Worlds" and "White Fang."
I happened to start watching this 1993 version on one of my HBO channels a couple of years ago. Not to sound like a pedophile, but the little girl played by Kate Maberly is just so cute. I think this would be the standard reaction of most people. And she played the role as an adult would, with none of the phoniness and we see in so many children's movies.
The three child actors are just great. And the three main adults--the housemistress, the gardener, and the uncle are also excellent. Also, the "commoner," the servant.
Watching it again, as I write tonight, I am struck by how great this film is. Roger Ebert had it right in his 1993 review when he said this is more of a great film for adults than it is a children's tale.
I highly, highly recommend it.
--Tim May, California
By the Sea (2015)
I lived for a year in 1964 between Nice and Monaco, and this was NOT a "Southern France" location
I lived for a year, all of 1964, in a coastal town between Nice and Monaco (specifically, in the Villefranche-sur-Mer and Eze-sur-Mer towns. Went to school near Cap Ferrat.)
I read the description that this about a couple living in Southern France. Yet the scenery was more desert-like. I went to the "Location" page and, sure enough, filmed in Malta. A very long way from southern France.
Perhaps a quibble, but it bugs me when I know a region and yet see something completely different on the screen. (Like seeing episodes of t.v. shows supposely set near some Eastern U.S. city and yet I can California mountains so plainly visible.)
The film itself was very slow-moving and presaged the anomie and jadedness of Angela Jolie and Brad Pitt in their real lives at the time.
--Tim May, California
America America (1963)
I saw this at a USO theater in Nice, France, when I was around 12
I might give it a rating higher than 7, except that I have not seen it since 1964.
We had access to the USO in Nice, France when I was a Navy kid living in nearby Villefranche sur Mer, then the flagship port of the USS Springfield, the flagship of the Sixth Fleet.
I had found an English copy of "The Diary of Anne Frank" in the villa we rented for the early part of 1964, so I knew a little about some past massacres and atrocities. But I didn't know a lot, and I knew zero about Armenians and their history.
But this film, which I saw in a grainy print in an only slightly-dark theater (we kids saw movies during the day) had a lasting effect on me. FWIW, the other film in this theater which had a lasting memory on me was "Lawrence of Arabia." Such a treat to later see it in a widescreen, properly-dark, Dolby 70mm print (maybe even Cinerama, as it was shown at the Santa Clara, CA "Cineramadome," when it was re-released some years ago.)
For several decades I had vague memories along the lines of "What was that movie I saw at the USO that involved the killing of Armenians and a long trek to America?" But before our new era of search engines, it was nearly impossible to track down.
Some years ago I used Google and IMDb to narrow it down to this film. Sorry for the long delay in commenting here.
Why is it shown so rarely that I cannot find a copy? Why in all the years I knew the name Elia Kazan did I not see clear references to it?
I'd like to see it again.
--Tim May, California
Halt and Catch Fire (2014)
So far, a mostly accurate portrayal of the early days of the PC
I'm enjoying this slightly-parallel-universe show..
Meaning, I had a primitive ARPANET account in 1973, I joined Intel Corporation in 1974, I built my first primitive PC in 1978, I was in the Homebrew Computer Club around that time, I had Intel's second VAX 11/780 in my lab in 1980, and I lived through most of "Halt and Catch Fire"'s stuff except for the gaming and home computer stuff.
(But after I retired from Intel in 1986 I got to know some Commodore 64 game programmers who went on to do the first home e-commerce markets, which led me a bunch of other things.)
The show is eerily about our modern world, with some kinky twists. The first season was about a kind of PC clone, like Compaq but yet not exactly Compaq. The second season seemed to be about a version of CompuServe, yet not exactly CompuServe.
And this season (spoilers) we are seeing Joe and Company looking to commercialize the Internet, a la the move to offer private accounts on the Internet in the late 1980s.
Wow. I got my first private account with access to the Internet in 1988 from Portal in Cupertino, CA.
It'll be fascinating to see this show move into the 1990s with the advent of the modern Net, including fictional portrayals of Netscape and the other pioneers.
--Tim May
Wonder Boys (2000)
A lot like "Shawshank," it's worth watching many times
Every year or so I see this film appear on one of my satellite channels. And nearly every time I am drawn in to watch it again. It just never gets tiresome.
Probably the best performance I've seen by Michael Douglas (and I correctly predicted he would win the Oscar for "Wall Street," just as I did for Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man" either the year earlier or the year later...my only winning streak).
Performances by everyone else are also excellent: Katie Holmes, Rip Torn, Iron Man, Spiderman, even John-Boy.
A sweet film. (And "sweet" is not a term I use lightly.)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
A great movie from the early 1970s era (though it was 1969)
For something different from a normal review, I went through a "William Goldman" phase in the early 1970s. He wrote a lot of great novels and (sometimes related) screenplays. Most of them were compelling page-turners.
Anyway, as to this movie, I think I saw it in around 1970-71, a year or two later after it appeared in theaters. (I saw very few current releases in theaters at that time. $$$) I had just entered college and a lot of movies I had missed in the late 60s were suddenly available. (And around that time I saw the c. 1940 classic "Citizen Kane." Before cable or satellite or Netflix, this is how many of us saw these classics. Often in rooms with projectors set up and us sitting on the floor.)
In the era of MASH, a great film. I agree with many that the 1970s was a golden era of movies. Too many to start name and 2001, a great film.
However, sometimes things were weird. I think one of the first independent films I saw when I arrived in college in 1970 was "The End of the Road," with Stacy Keach. Wow. was this a trip on the dark side!
--Tim May, California
Urban Cowboy (1980)
A good period film about the "Cowboy renaissance" of the early 1980s
I saw it when it came out in 1980, and then several times since then on cable or satellite.
A great soundtrack, a pretty good story, and some good performances by Scott Glenn and the others.
I'd not liked John Travolta much before (Kotter, Grease, etc.) so this was the first role I thought was "substantial."
The Western theme (mixed with Houston astronauts, high tech oil rigs) was appropriate for the 1980s, where Texas was well into the high-tech revolution and yet where "cowboy regalia" was part of the culture.
Again, the soundtrack was great.
--Tim May, California
Terminator Genisys (2015)
Happy with the film, saddened that it got negative reviews
I saw Terminator at age 32, and was much impressed. T2 followed about 7-8 years later and was even better.
T3 and T4 (for want of better short names) were fairly boring. T3 was at least a bit entertaining, but T4 was pretentiously boring.
T5, the new one, was very entertaining. The time travel paradoxes were paramount, but what else is to be expected? At least these are now being put out in front, prominently. I see a lot of promise in this.
As for the less than stellar opening, I'm surprised. I didn't like the new "Road Warrior" movie much at all (I saw RW in 1982 and call the series by that name, not "Mad Max"). Likewise, "Jurassic World" was fairly boring.
I hope Terminator Genisys grows in recognition.
I agree with Cameron that it's _the_ logical successor to T2. The paradoxes are a bit confusing, but, as I said, that's the nature of the beast. (I think some of the possible worlds semantics of Kripke and others is relevant, "theoretically" (ObArnold).
It's the best movie I've seen so far this year.
--Tim May, Corralitos, California
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
I thought I'd discovered this movie
I'd never heard of "The Shawshank Redemption" when I tuned in to it about 15 minutes in on one of my satellite channels, sometime around 1997 or so.
It mesmerized me, and the last 20 minutes astounded me. The twists, the musical score, the final scene. Amazing.
I recall doing some searches (in those pre-Google days, probably with Alta Vista) to find out if anyone else had ever heard of this film. I found out that they had. It turns out a whole lot of people discovered this film as a "sleeper," on DVD or cable or satellite.
My favorite movies of around that time, seen in theaters, had been "Pulp Fiction" and "Heat." I didn't see "Forrest Gump" until around 2000 or so, and didn't care for it much. A good year for films.
Given the comments in the past half year or so (that I've gone back through), I suppose "Shawshank" will fall below some other films. There seems to be a a trend toward making "Hey, it's not all that!" (That is, it's not all that good, it's lousy, it's overrated, etc.)
Whatever, it's a great film. And when I happened to see it late one night on my satellite system, I thought I was the first to realize how great it was. It took several years for me to spot the high ratings on IMDb and to read that it had become a cult classic favorite.
(Ditto for "The Big Lebowski," which for a while I thought I was the only fan of. Now it's a subject of festivals and midnight watchings, sort of like "Rocky Horror" once was. I saw "Rocky Horror" in 1976 at the World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City and thought it was not very entertaining.)
For me, the last 20-30 minutes is just the best. One twist after another, all seamlessly done. And a compelling musical score. Unforgettable.
Lilies of the Field (1963)
It was one of the first great films I ever saw
I saw "Lillies" on board a ship that had sailed out of New York the same afternoon that Kennedy was killed. We left the harbor before the killing, but heard about it by transistor radio as we were clearing the Verrazano Narrows bridge. A year in France.
Anyway, I saw LotF as an 11-year-old, almost 12, one of my first "adult oriented" movies. (On the same voyage I also got to see "Sunday in New York," with Jane Fonda, a decidedly more adult film. Sort of like today's equivalent of a kid watching a Skinemax movie.)
I thought "Lillies of the Field" was amazing, Even as an 11-year-old with no ax to grind for black or left-wing causes. Stunning acting, the whole "singing fading in the distance" as Homer sang "Amen" and as the Mother Superior realized what he was doing.....amazing.
The next better film I saw after this was in a beat-down USO theater in NIce, France. It was a grainy, jaggedy version of "Lawrence of Arabia," sometime in the summer of 1963.
These were the first two great films I ever saw.
And, hey, just a week or so ago I saw "Inception," one of my favorites of the past, what, 47 years as a reasonably-adult viewer.
(It exceeds Lawrence for me, which is saying a lot.)
As usual, I have no idea if this comment will appear. I started following IMDb when it was small, but many of my comments seem to vanish without explanation.
--Tim