Tammy L. Schilling

Like a Traffic Accident, Jun 11 2004

House of Sand and Fog is like a traffic accident, you know you should look away, but somehow you just can't. One the one side, you have Kathy, an alcohol and drug addicted woman whose just lost her husband and is scraping by as a housecleaner. On the other side, you have an Iranian immigrant family, headed by former-General Behraini, trying to make money and reestablish themselves in the United States, after losing their aristocratic position in Iran with the overthrow of the government.

When Kathy's home is taken as a result of a county tax mistake, and then sold at auction to Behraini, a battle of the wills ensues. What these two opposing forces do to each other, and themselves, is… Read more

A Favorite!!, Jun 11 2004

The Philadelphia Story is a romantic comedy with Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart. As far as I'm concerned, it would be darn near impossible for any movie with those three to be bad. They are just too good. Luckily, however, The Philadelphia Story is anything but bad. It's hysterical, laugh out loud, funny. The dialogue is sharp and the wit is quick.

Katherine Hepburn plays a divorcee about to get remarried. She's cool, hard, and very self-righteous. Her former husband, played by Cary Grant, comes to the wedding uninvited, in part to stop his former father-in-law from being embarassed in the press and in part to make a general nuisance of himself, setting his… Read more

Vertgo is Awesome, Jun 10 2004

Vertigo is a movie that can no longer be made. It had an actor and actress that truly act. It had a story that stands up even now as being suspenseful. It had a director with an unusual talent for drawing the audience into the psychosis of the characters, subtly, not relying on overdone scenes or cheap tricks. It is one of the few movies that manages to make you feel the background thoughts of the characters, as if it were a novel, without ever pronouncing them out loud. That is a very, very difficult thing to do in a movie.

The story is actually fairly spare, but not shallow, and revealing any of it here would be criminal. Suffice it to say that it has elements of love, betrayal,… Read more