Dir. Akira Kurosawa. Starring Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Isao Kimura Of all the lines spoken in Seven Samurai, none is more piercing than the Old Man’s (Kokuten Kodo) advice to the men who venture into the city searching for ronin. “Get hungry samurai,” he tells the little troupe. His meaning is probably limited to the literal hunger of… Read More Seven Samurai (1954)
Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Starring Kenneth Branagh, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tom Bateman Spoilers, I guess. It seems seriously unnecessary to do that for a movie based on an eighty-year-old novel with multiple adaptations, but… There are more than a dozen named characters squeezed into a fairly limited space for the bulk of this movie, and I’m not… Read More Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Starring Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, Edna Best There’s a scene towards the beginning of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir which is actually even a little spooky. Lucy (Tierney) is walking around the cottage which used to belong to a sea captain, Daniel Gregg (Harrison). Mankiewicz is working at a disadvantage here. For one… Read More The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
You can read up on the basis for this series here, and also find links to other posts in the series. Movies I’ve reviewed on this site have a link in the title which you can follow to read my full review. 5) Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), directed by Woody Allen (Straightens tie, looks… Read More 100 Exceptional American Movies in 10 Genres: Family Drama, 5-1
Dir. Frank Capra. Starring Ronald Colman, H.B. Warner, Thomas Mitchell While watching this movie, I couldn’t help but ask myself what device they were going to use to make sure Bob (Colman) left Shangri-La so we’d get our big finish. What they eventually choose is not bad on its face—Bob’s brother George (John Howard) has… Read More Lost Horizon (1937)
Dir. Richard Linklater. Starring Blake Jenner, Glen Powell, Temple Baker In my experience, there is no species of jock as endlessly arrogant as baseball players. I can’t adequately explain why that is despite having played some kind of baseball for nearly fifteen years. Part of it absolutely is in the highly individualized nature of the… Read More Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)
Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Robert Rousenville, Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine The Tales of Hoffmann is one of those lovely movies which is a personality test for the viewer. The movie is a technical marvel, totally beautiful, beautifully aligned. It is no small thing to decide to take an opera, which are essentially… Read More The Tales of Hoffmann (1951)
Dir. David Carson. Starring Patrick Stewart, Malcolm McDowell, Whoopi Goldberg In Somm, one of the candidates, Ian Cauble is a little notorious among his in-group because of the smells he claims to be able to get hints of in a glass of wine; doubtless the most idiosyncratic is the “freshly opened can of tennis balls.” But Ian… Read More Star Trek Generations (1994)
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw Watching Jaws now is like speaking to an oracle. One sees Spielberg the marvelous technical filmmaker with a strong sense of how the Weird sidles up to the Everyman: the shark is the vision of Devil’s Tower, the coming of E.T., the opening of the Ark of… Read More Jaws (1975)
You can read up on the basis for this series here, and also find links to other posts in the series. Movies I’ve reviewed on this site have a link in the title which you can follow to read my full review. 10) Long Day’s Journey into Night (1962), directed by Sidney Lumet Picture links… Read More 100 Exceptional American Movies in 10 Genres: Family Drama, 10-6
Seeing Things Secondhand 