Dir. Fred Schepisi. Starring Steve Martin, Daryl Hannah, Shelley Duvall I’ve been watching this movie for, oh, fifteen years or so now, but it’s taken me until this most recent viewing to see what Fred Schepisi saw when he was making this movie. (Maybe I was dazzled by the pitch-perfect ’80s theme by Bruce Smeaton,… Read More Roxanne (1987)
Dir. John Ford. Starring Henrietta Crosman, Maurice Murphy, Marian Nixon Pilgrimage is built on three shots. Not scenes, not sequences, not moments, but shots. Pilgrimage, John Ford on a diet of F.W. Murnau, designed this film around three shots. The characters, the story, the beats, the emotions, the ideas: they are all sublimated to these… Read More Pilgrimage (1933)
(To see the results of last year’s Grouches, go here. To see the first Grouches, which also carries a significantly more complete version of my criteria, go here.) The Grouches are back this year to award last year’s films, although I’ve timed this up to be on a similar timeframe for the Oscars. (I got… Read More 3rd Annual Grouches: 2021 Movie Year Awards
This is not about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. For commentary on that historic moment, I’d be glad to direct you to this little place I know called “the rest of the Internet.” At my apartment, I was ready for the Oscars. I was able for the first time since the pandemic began to have… Read More I Watched the Worst Oscars Ceremony Ever
With the Oscars around the corner, I’m doing blurbs for each of this year’s Best Picture nominees in lieu of full reviews. (I don’t plan anything I do, so I’ve linked to ones with reviews already published…) I’ve ranked the films from best to worst below as a method of organization. Occasionally I’ll reference my… Read More 94th Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees, Ranked
To borrow a melody from Tom Lehrer: All the board members Hate the craft guilds And the craft guilds Hate the board members All the publicists Hate the press corps And we all hate ABC. That’s right, it’s now two weeks away from the Academy Awards, and we’re all tired of thinking about these movies… Read More The Worst Oscar Categories of the Expanded Nominee Era
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose Somewhere, J.J. Abrams left a movie theater, blinking a little bit behind those signature glasses of his, and he murmured to himself, “Gosh…the new West Side Story has a lot of lens flare, doesn’t it?” I suppose I should feel some gratitude to Steven Spielberg,… Read More West Side Story (2021)
Dir. Jon Watts. Starring Tom Holland, Zendaya, Willem Dafoe Spoilers, but also I might be the last person in America to see this. In Spider-Man 2, there are two climactic action scenes which must be considered alongside the best sequences of this subgenre. First, the one where Spider-Man stops a speeding train, saving the many… Read More Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Dir. John Ford. Starring John Wayne, William Holden, Constance Towers The standout sequence of The Horse Soldiers is about the cadets of the Jefferson Military Academy, which is to say that the best part of this movie about Marlowe (Wayne) and Kendall (Holden) has very little to do with either one of them. In a… Read More The Horse Soldiers (1959)
In the spring of 2017, a friendly nimrod with good intentions and only a tyro’s understanding of, hem hem, cinema, decided he wanted to create a list of the top 100 American movies which would be better than the American Film Institute’s. While recognizing that he did not have the learning to make such a… Read More Which Movies Will Be on the Next AFI Top 100 List?
Seeing Things Secondhand 