Dir. Herbert Ross. Starring Sally Field, Julia Roberts, Dolly Parton Whaddaya like? You like coming home to a kiss? Somebody with a smile at the door? Whaddaya like? You like indescribable bliss? Then whaddaya wanna get married for? Just as Company makes sense in the New York City of the late ’60s, Steel Magnolias makes sense in… Read More Steel Magnolias (1989)
Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Starring Lily James, Richard Madden, Cate Blanchett Pretend I sound like your mother when I say: This is just a nice movie. The story of Cinderella (James) is one that banks on the obvious cruelty that the stepmother (Blanchett) and stepsisters (Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera) throw at our innocent heroine. Some… Read More Cinderella (2015)
Dir. Barry Jenkins. Starring Kiki Layne, Stephan James, Regina King Thorough spoilers for a movie still in its wide release. There’s a noteworthy costume choice made in the first few moments of If Beale Street Could Talk. With the camera towering over Tish (Layne) and Fonny (James), we can see that their outfits go together.… Read More If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
Dir. Peter Ustinov. Starring Terence Stamp, Peter Ustinov, Robert Ryan There are women in Lawrence of Arabia, even if one hears little of them and sees even less. Billy Budd, released in the same year, is genuinely devoid of women. They are a foreign presence at sea, though “foreign” may be too weak a word; “alien” would… Read More Billy Budd (1962)
Dir. Jeff Nichols. Starring Ruth Negga, Joel Edgerton, Nick Kroll My humble definition of a biopic is “any movie which makes months, and preferably years, of a real human being’s life into its plot.” By my own definition, I would say that Loving qualifies as a biopic of Richard and Mildred Loving (Edgerton and Negga,… Read More Loving (2016)
Dir. Bob Fosse. Starring Dustin Hoffman, Valerie Perrine, Jan Miner Lenny Bruce (Hoffman) is delivering his stand-up act, pulling from current events and the newspaper as is his wont. He’s intrigued by the discrepancy in pay for Zsa Zsa Gabor’s Las Vegas act ($60,000 salary) and the best-paid teachers in Nevada ($6,000). It’s “sick,” he… Read More Lenny (1974)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson There may not be an actor whose star persona has interested me more in the past eighteen months than Max von Sydow’s. (I admit to a limited understanding of his Scandinavian film career outside of Bergman and Jan Troell, so I’m not going to… Read More The Passion of Anna (1969)
Dir. James Ivory. Starring Helena Bonham Carter, Maggie Smith, Julian Sands There’s a neatness in A Room with a View that is a little offputting. The Edwardian neatness makes sense within its context, but in the film’s rush to create an opposition to that neatness, created almost entirely with looks to Wordsworth’s Nature, the movie… Read More A Room with a View (1985)
Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Starring Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm I wonder what Noel Coward would have made of All About Eve, which has much of the same species of charm that his own work has but with a major improvement: All About Eve thinks that women are perhaps even more interesting than men,… Read More All About Eve (1950)
Dir. Michael Curtiz. Starring Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Jack Carson I spent most of my life in the kitchen, Mildred (Crawford) tells a policeman in the beginning of the movie. It is bizarre to see Crawford in an apron not merely because she’s Joan Crawford, but because her star image was based primarily on the… Read More Mildred Pierce (1945)
Seeing Things Secondhand 