To see the entire list of my 100 top movies of last decade, or to find the landing page for the other years in this series, click here. To read the first half of this post, click here. 71) BlacKkKlansman, directed by Spike Lee There are not many scenes that are quite as funny… Read More Top 100 Movies of the Decade (2010-2019) — 2018, Part 2
Dir. David Fincher. Starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Julia Ormond There aren’t any people in this movie, and the clearest statement of how true that is in that final montage that Benjamin (Pitt) narrates over. There are plenty of bodies in the movie, and each of those bodies has had a characteristic ascribed to then.… Read More The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
To see the entire list of my 100 top movies of last decade, or to find the landing page for the other years in this series, click here. I don’t know that a great crowd of people is going out of their way to say this, but at least from where I’m sitting, 2018… Read More Top 100 Movies of the Decade (2010-2019) — 2018, Part 1
Dir. James Ponsoldt. Starring Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Mary Elizabeth Winstead I was listening to an old episode of Screen Drafts the other day, the one on Films About Filmmakers, and one of the guest drafters was James Ponsoldt. I was really taken with him. I’ll let you listen to the episode (which he does with… Read More The Spectacular Now (2013)
Dir. John Cromwell. Starring Raymond Massey, Gene Lockhart, Ruth Gordon Why was Lincoln two and a half hours long when the only things that anyone cared about were Daniel Day-Lewis saying “Now! Now!” and that one dude speaking the greatest line in movie history? I am mostly kidding, because I do recall going to theaters to see… Read More Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)
Dir. Ken Burns In the past few years it has become popular to lob grenades at Shelby Foote, whose three-volume history of the Civil War remains the most enjoyable and readable compendium on the war that I’ve ever come across. The flaws are there, certainly, and I’m preparing some projectiles myself. Foote’s primary interests are… Read More The Civil War (1990)
To see the entire list of my 100 top movies of last decade, or to find the landing page for the other years in this series, click here. I feel a bit on an island rating 2019 as low as I do in this decade. Only two years debut on my list later than… Read More Top 100 Movies of the Decade (2010-2019) — 2019
I don’t know that there has been a time in living memory when we could so freely cast aspersions on the reality of our lived experience. Never has the possibility of receiving so much truth been so blunted by the presumed infallibility of perception (he said, taking a risk before debuting a list which could… Read More Top 100 Movies of the Decade (2010-2019): Introduction and List
Dir. Kenneth Lonergan. Starring Casey Affleck, Lucas Hedges, Michelle Williams The premise of Manchester by the Sea is one that would have fit neatly enough into the serious dramas of the ’40s or ’50s, in part because its drama is fever-pitch loud, and in part because it’s not hard to imagine someone like Casey Affleck… Read More Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Dir. Howard Hawks. Starring Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Richard Haydn Watching Ball of Fire, you get the sense that Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett were just more interested in telling a story about eight men writing an encyclopedia than they were in telling the story of an unlikely romance between a gangster’s moll, Sugarpuss O’Shea (Stanwyck)… Read More Ball of Fire (1941)
Seeing Things Secondhand 