Dir. William Wyler. Starring Barbra Streisand, Omar Sharif, Kay Medford I will come clean about this movie: I had not seen it until recently, and worse still, I didn’t know much more about it than what you’d need to get a question right on it at trivia (“barbra streisand oscar fanny brice funny girl my… Read More Funny Girl (1968)
Dir. Sydney Pollack. Starring Robert Mitchum, Ken Takakura, Keiko Kishi Remember when you were in college and you had that one friend who studied abroad in London for a semester, and when he came back he called it “football” and not “soccer” because he had been enlightened by three months there? The Yakuza is the movie equivalent… Read More The Yakuza (1974)
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. My recollections of the 2017 movie season—the first one I followed with any real interest since I was blindsided with the double abominations of The Artist… Read More Top 100 Movies of the Decade (2010-2019) — 2017
Dir. Spike Lee. Starring Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Jonathan Majors I’m on top of things! Spoilers! Golly! Watching this movie I got a feeling that reminded me of watching The Edge of Seventeen. In that movie, the teacher carts in a TV and the class starts watching Young Mr. Lincoln. It was at that moment that I… Read More Da 5 Bloods (2020)
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)
Seeing Things Secondhand 