BoyActors - Reviews/Ratings by diogenes

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Reviews by diogenes

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350 reviews/ratings - 18 pages (20 reviews/ratings per page)

Skippy and the Intruders (1969)

What worked well in a 25 minute format seems terribly overlong stretched to 1 1/2 hours. Skippy herself is quite superfluous in this story. The final sequence on the sand dunes is visually quite impressive. Overall, it's a pity that they chose not to do anything more imaginative with the feature length format than just attempting to stretch a fairly humdrum 'Skippy' episode to fill the available time. A 'skipped' opportunity (sorry!).

My Movie Rating:

5 / 10

Skyggenes dal (2017)

Gorgeous.

My Movie Rating:

9 / 10

Slepoy dozhd (1968)

I love the little dance that the boy with the bucket of paint does! (@11:00-11:40)

My Movie Rating:

9 / 10

So Dear to My Heart (1949)

Excellent Disney film with lots of barefoot boys in a rural town in Indiana in 1903. Bobby Driscoll was a fine actor - as he showed in "The Window" and "Song of the South", and as he shows in this film as well. Not a very deep story, and both the songs and the blending of live action with animation are not quite on the same level as "Song of the South", but the superb acting makes up for it. Recommended.

My Movie Rating:

7 / 10

Sokout (1998)

A beautiful and enchanting film, but I'm knocking off a couple of points for casting a girl as a boy!

My Movie Rating:

7 / 10

Song of the South (1946)

Disney is good at certain things, and terrible at others. "Song of the South" exhibits Disney at its very best. The blending of live action with animation is done thrillingly well, and the signature song is gloriously memorable. Johnny (Bobby Driscoll) is upset by his parents' temporary separation, particularly as his mother insists on dressing him up as Little Lord Fauntleroy (thus proving without a shadow of a doubt that Boys Need Fathers). Fortunately, Uncle Remus is on hand with his tales of Brer Rabbit, to help Johnny face his problems in a more intelligent way. Personally, I rather liked the Favor brothers, particularly the tall freckled brother, Joe (played by Gene Holland). There is a touch of Huck Finn in the fact that the brothers go around barefoot. True, they like drowning puppies, but then everyone needs a hobby. Ignore the Politically Correct fools who think there's anything wrong with this movie. We all know the kind of people: the kind who, already determined to see this as racist, will stare and stare at it, and then STARE HARDER, until they 'see' the racism they so desperately wish to find. In fact, Uncle Remus is a superb character, a gentle and wise old man, to whom kids will readily relate. And unlike the PC brigade, kids won't think about his colour when they warm to him; they'll just like him for who he is. And why shouldn't they? The idea that a negro in the American South should always be portrayed as miserable is tantamount to saying that people should be defined by their colour. The narrative unfolds on a POST-bellum plantation, and Uncle Remus is a man who was once a slave but is now free, so why the heck shouldn't he be happy? Finally, in a very moving scene at the end of the film, Johnny, who is lying in bed having been seriously injured, reaches out as he recovers consciousness to hold Remus' hand. The scene makes clear that it is precisely his relationship with Remus which has enabled his recovery, and in doing so affirms the value of a sociability between adults and children that pays no regard whatever to racial distinctions. The movie thus constitutes a very powerful statement against racial Segregation, at a time when Segregation was very much a reality in the South. Only a snivilisation as morally corrupt as our own could find this movie objectionable.

My Movie Rating:

9 / 10

Sovsem propashchiy (1973)

Nearly all film versions of Twain's Huckleberry Finn have to excise a portion of the novel to avoid being overlong. This version gives only a passing nod to the Grangerford-Shepherdson feud, and omits the whole of the Evasion Sequence (roughly the last quarter of the novel). This last omission is not as terrible as one might think, since Twain's ending for his novel has divided critics, with many seeing it as unsatisfactory, or at least as on a lower level of inspiration to the preceding narrative. The removal of the novel's ending does, however, make the movie's conclusion a bit of a non-conclusion, with nothing really resolved. But as a 'riff' on the original novel (which every film adaptation is anyway) this is still a gorgeous and unique version, very much worth seeing, and Madyanov makes an enchanting and photogenic Huck (even if he is a little too young and a little too well-fed for Twain's Huck!).

My Movie Rating:

9 / 10

Space Camp (1986)

My Movie Rating:

2 / 10

Spelen of sterven (1990)

One of the most intense portrayals of introversion and social isolation ever committed to film. What a brilliant actor Geert Hunaerts was in this. An absolute classic.

My Movie Rating:

10 / 10

Spring and Autumn (1972-1976)

Gentle comedy, a lot better than I expected, with some nice interaction between Jimmy Jewel and Charlie Hawkins.

My Movie Rating:

8 / 10

Spy (2011-2012)

Sharp, witty, fast paced, this is not deep and meaningful; it is a pure bauble of delight, nothing more, nothing less. Jude Wright is fantastic.

My Movie Rating:

9 / 10

The Squid and the Whale (2005)

My Movie Rating:

7 / 10

Sto dney do prikaza (1991)

Despite the pervasive bleakness, this is a kind of hymn to masculinity, showing camaraderie and tenderness between men and presenting the male body as an object of aesthetic appreciation. In any case, it's very beautiful.

My Movie Rating:

10 / 10

Strýta (2012)

The basic concept is surely by now a little hackneyed, but the cinematography (or is that just the Icelandic landscape?) is undeniably magnificent.

My Movie Rating:

7 / 10

Stutter (2016)

My Movie Rating:

4 / 10

Svampe (1990)

A delightful Norwegian fantasy. Martin Bliksrud has an elfin charm, and is utterly wonderful in the title role of this extraordinary, dreamlike film. Recommended.

My Movie Rating:

10 / 10

Svolochi (2006)

An affirmation of the human value of friendship within the context of a bleak (and I would say truthful) vision of human behaviour (i.e. the victors in WWII were not necessarily morally much better than the vanquished - think of the orgy of rape and murder by the Red Army during the invasion of Berlin, the wanton destruction of cities, the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki...). Director Aleksandr Atanesian would have done better not to claim that his film was historically accurate - a marketing ploy that was easily exposed - but this should not obscure the moral truth that the movie embodies. The youthful actors are all superb, and the cinematography is gorgeous.

My Movie Rating:

8 / 10

Sweeney Todd (2006)

Well, I really liked it. I like the fact that Fielding is as melancholic as Sweeney Todd - a sort of mirror image of him, as it were. The movie is rather relentlessly grim, but it is indisputably atmospheric, and I think it is an interesting project to try to make a completely 'serious' version of the classic horror story. Oh, and I like the handsome, elegant boy [caps 3-8 in the BA Gallery] who delivers Mrs. Lovett's pies to Todd near the beginning.

My Movie Rating:

8 / 10

Swimming Upstream (2003)

My Movie Rating:

6 / 10

Taken (2002)

This series boasts some normally superb young actors, but even they seem a little flat in this drama. I was quite irritated by the constant intrusion of the girl narrator (Allie) with her pearls of fatuous cod philosophy and meaningless New Age tripe. At one point, she informs us that people do evil things only because they are afraid. Oh really? The Holocaust? It was a cry for help, darlings! It really goes to show how utterly shallow the Hollywood set are. Worse, Allie turns out to be the whole point of the aliens' breeding programme. That's right. All they wanted was a human-alien hybrid with a personality bypass, whose scintillating conversation is an uninterrupted flow of nauseating pseudo-profound psychobabble. (This apparently being the next step in the evolution of life.) Oh, and she has magical powers - though it takes her 'a lot of energy' to 'manifest' them. Yawn! The opening few episodes were intriguing (if you subtract Allie's narration), but it leads finally to banality on an epic scale. A huge disappointment.

My Movie Rating:

2 / 10

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