Dir. Kathryn Bigelow. Starring Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Mark Strong If Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and Stephen Gaghan were making hyperlink cinema in the years preceding Zero Dark Thirty, then what Bigelow and writer Mark Boal are making is more like citation cinema. There’s a fascination with phrases which become title cards, such as “black site”… Read More Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Dir. Martin Campbell. Starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen It’s just a little too talky, isn’t it. Not a lot too talky, but it’s just talky enough that it pulls you away from what’s really exciting about the film itself. Before anyone arrives in Montenegro for the poker game, there’s a ceiling on what… Read More Casino Royale (2006)
Dir. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez. Starring Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard As a horror movie, The Blair Witch Project is pretty disappointing. There are a couple moments here and there which are nervy, but on the whole it’s hard to credit the picture as a truly frightening one. The Blair Witch Project… Read More The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Starring Al Pacino, Andy Garcia, Eli Wallach They got Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, and Gordon Willis back. They intercut scenes from both of this movie’s predecessors. It begins with a party, and many of the beats that we’ve come to expect from our Godfather movies are poking around: a… Read More The Godfather Part III (1990)
To read my introduction to this set of rankings, go here. I’ve broken the twenty-three movies from this franchise into tiers of irregular size. I still have a fairly firm ranking in my head for each of them, but I include the tiers to give a sense of what movies roughly match each other in… Read More Infinity Saga/Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranking – Part 2
To read my introduction to this set of rankings, go here. I’ve broken the twenty-three movies from this franchise into tiers of irregular size. I still have a fairly firm ranking in my head for each of them, but I include the tiers to give a sense of what movies roughly match each other in… Read More Infinity Saga/Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranking – Part 1
(If you’re just here for the links to the actual rankings, bless you: Infinity Saga/Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranking – Part 1 and Infinity Saga/Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranking – Part 2. You can also find the results for the meta-analysis and poll here.) I’ve seen all of these now, which I guess makes me like everybody… Read More Marvel Cinematic Universe Ranking – Landing Page
Dir. Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. Starring Josh Brolin, Zoe Saldana, Robert Downey, Jr. For about six months now I’ve been casually watching these MCU movies, typically watching a couple at a time and then leaving them alone for a couple weeks. Infinity War was part of a double feature with Thor: Ragnarok for me, a movie which I’d… Read More Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Dir. Catherine Hardwicke. Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke In the last six or seven years, the conversations about Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have turned. We’ve gone from “These two can’t act worth a crap” to “These are two of our best actors under thirty-five.” The impetus for that first part, of course,… Read More Twilight (2008)
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 