Simon's Movie Reviews

Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978) is a prime example of how Christopher Walken is much more than a punch line. People often do impressions of him for his admittedly odd speech pattern, which sadly overshadows his great acting skills. In Cimino’s war film, the last he would direct before the financial disaster Heaven’s Gate , Walken plays a blue-collar worker in 1967 America who starts off as a happy young man only to be irrevocably transformed by the horrors of the Vietnam War. It is an amazing performance in a movie filled with some of the best actors of their generation also working at the top of their game. I had wanted to see this movie for a long time since it appears on many Best Movies of All Times list and it has a rather infamous Russian roulette sequence that is so iconic it became the movie’s poster. However this is a three-hour movie so you really need to clear your schedule if you are planning on viewing it all in one sitting. Fortunately it became available o...

Woody Allen: a filmmaker many of us have mixed feelings about. I feel that’s how most of my reviews about his films are going to start. He has written and directed very funny movies, he certainly knows how to shoot in New York City, and apparently he’s a pretty good jazz player. He is also a guy who married the adopted daughter of his ex-wife, has been accused of sexual molestation, and in his movies he often plays a character who dates women who are much younger than he is. All of the good and the bad traits of Allen are on display in Manhattan (1979), one of his most acclaimed movies. I liked many things about this movie when I first saw it. I enjoyed the use of black and white cinematography, the opening montage in which Allen lauds his home turf of NYC, the use of jazz music, and the cast of characters. However I was also uncomfortable with the fact that Isaac Mortimer Davis, the 40-year-old TV writer played by Allen, is in a relationship with Tracy (Mariel Hemmingway) a 17-...

Given that throughout her career Meryl Streep has been nominated for an Oscar 19 times, it would be a tall order to narrow down her best performances. However it would not be too much of a challenge to see the three films for which she has actually won. Her second win in her career was for Sophie’s Choice (1982), a searing drama whose title has become synonymous with making an impossible decision. Also noteworthy, it is the cinematic debut of Kevin Kline who delivers an equally powerful, but much more energetic performance. For years I had heard the expression “Sophie’s Choice” in pop culture as a way to express a decision with no good outcome without fully understanding the reference. Last January the movie became available on Netflix and the answer to the question “what is Sophie’s Choice?” was revealed to me towards the end of Pakula’s and it is a choice that only truly evil people could give. If by any chance you have not yet seen the movie or read the book on which it is ba...