Dir. Philip Kaufman. Starring Ed Harris, Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn The Right Stuff, when it’s functioning at its highest levels, is a story about the death of the Western, and no one could have been better equipped to play the leading role than Sam Shepard. History will remember Shepard the playwright, but to me he will… Read More The Right Stuff (1983)
Dir. Dan Gilroy. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rene Russo Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal) is an enterprising American entrepreneur. Almost entirely self-trained, with the help of some business classes from the Internet, he represents the “school of hard knocks” approach to building a company. Through a combination of dogged persistence, on-scene training, hard work, and a… Read More Nightcrawler (2014)
Dir. Denis Villeneuve. Starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker Amy Adams’ star image is like a braid. One strand is defined by Enchanted, but also includes Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Junebug, Catch Me if You Can, Julie and Julia, and The Muppets. Adams is, for my money, the most beautiful redheaded actress… Read More Arrival (2016)
Dir. John Crowley. Starring Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Jane Brennan Saoirse Ronan, the Girl with the Huge Pupils, is costumed beautifully by Odile Dicks-Mireaux in this film. Ronan wears rich orangey-browns and cool blue-greens in the beginning, but by the end seems at home in bright yellow and pink; in one scene, she wears an… Read More Brooklyn (2015)
Dir. Stanley Kramer. Starring Spencer Tracy, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell Burt Lancaster, as disgraced German jurist Ernst Janning, doesn’t have very much to say in Judgment at Nuremberg. Like a smart defendant, he is mostly silent for vast swaths of the film; Janning – through his lawyer, Hans Rolfe (Schell) – questions the validity of an… Read More Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Dir. Hal Ashby. Starring Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern There’s a “Just So” story I encountered for the first time when I was a little boy. It was depicted in 3-D comic book form and came with the requisite glasses. (I may be making this up, but I’m pretty sure it came from a… Read More Coming Home (1978)
Dir. Patrick Garland. Starring Claire Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, Anna Massey For all of the hype about the end of A Doll’s House (which I rather prefer translated as “A Doll House” but which is not terribly important to what I’m saying here), one forgets that it reads rather like the second draft of a dramatic encounter on The… Read More A Doll’s House (1973)
Dir. Peter Jackson. Starring Viggo Mortensen, Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen. The Fellowship of the Ring – Plot As long as narrative fiction remains, there will always be a need for strong plots. John Gardner has been paraphrased as saying that there are only two plots in literature: “someone goes on a journey” or “a stranger… Read More Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Dir. Michael Haneke. Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Isabelle Huppert After Anne has had her first stroke – indeed, towards the tail end of her life as a more or less ambulatory, thinking human being – she and Georges are eating a meal together. He’s almost cleared his plate. She still has a fair bit… Read More Amour (2012)
Dir. Tom McCarthy. Starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams With about half an hour left in Spotlight – one of those two hour movies which is punctual about its length – Mike Rezendes (Ruffalo) is on Sacha Pfeiffer’s (McAdams) porch, calmer than he was a few minutes ago but still blindingly angry. He has… Read More Spotlight (2015)
Seeing Things Secondhand 