Reviews

Stand By Me (SBM) is as watchable today as it was 30 years ago.

Casting Dreyfus as narrator was a genius move.

The fact that I was "12 going on 13" in 1959 empowers me to suggest that Reiner nailed the characters' personalities--not just the 4 comrades, but also the older guys.

My daughter is 25, and I'll bet we watched SBM 10 times as she was growing up.

Highly recommend.

Madoff isn't glamorized. DeNiro nails the character. The supporting cast is top notch. Nice to see Barry Levinson nail one.

One take, in particular, is mesmerizing, the one in which black and white photos of Madoff's victims.....

Worth watching for sure.

Sam takes Timothy Bottoms and Billy to the "tank", a man made watering hole for cattle on land that he owned 40 years ago before his "boys was dead" and his "wife lost her mind". While the silent Billy fishes, Sam reminisces about taking a young lady horseback riding out to the tank about 20 years ago. She bet him a silver dollar that she and her her horse could out-swim his across the tank. "She did." Sam guesses that she still has that silver dollar.

Bottoms asks Sam why he didn't marry her. "She was already married". "Young and foolish; A woman like that ...." Then the scene ends with Sam noting that he's "gettin' old".

Ben Johnson won an Oscar for this movie and that scene was why.