Dir. Ron Howard. Starring Tom Hanks, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise. This started because I wanted to talk about Argo. (Right now, and don’t hold me to this, the plan is to talk about Argo in conjunction with another movie of similar quality and subject matter). Argo is not a bad movie, necessarily, but I’m not sure it holds up… Read More Apollo 13 (1995)
Dir. Frank Lloyd. Starring Diana Wynyard, Frank Lawton, Una O’Connor For folks who lived in the 20th Century, or for people who can remember it, even, we’re at an increasingly strange point in our history. Super Bowl L (“50,” because now it makes sense to ditch the Roman numerals) is nigh. The 88th Academy Awards… Read More Cavalcade (1933)
Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring I have been vexed occasionally in the past year because I wanted to write something about a Powell and Pressburger film but couldn’t think of a good way to do it; as a general rule I don’t like to talk about what… Read More The Red Shoes (1948)
Dir. William Wyler. Starring Fredric March, Teresa Wright, Dana Andrews In 1979, Jimmy Carter gave a speech that, in my mind, ranks with George Washington’s Farewell Address or Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural as one of the most important in the history of the American executive. The “Crisis of Confidence” speech speaks to a statistic that… Read More The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Dir. Gus van Sant. Starring Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin There are some real howlers in the history of Best Picture winners. One thinks The Artist in 2011. 2011 wasn’t a terribly strong year, but Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy were at least viable options. (Bridesmaids and A Separation, for their own reasons, would… Read More Milk (2008)
Dir. Martin Scorsese. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, John C. Reilly In the Lindsay Lohan Parent Trap, once Hal and Annie have both been sent to the “Isolation Cabin” to work out the problems the two of them have with one another, a storm breaks out and the window gets stuck. The wind swirls. The girls work… Read More The Aviator (2004)
Dir. Joe Wright. Starring James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Saoirse Ronan In the past twenty years, I think moviegoers’ penchant for a twist ending has become stronger. People have always loved having that “Whoa!” moment at the end of a film – Vertigo and Psycho both indulge here – but since The Usual Suspects I think our appetites have been… Read More Atonement (2007)
Dir. Martin Scorsese. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brendan Gleeson Gangs of New York is the movie that made me love movies, which is like saying that All That You Can’t Leave Behind is the album which made someone love music. I apologize for nothing. The first half of Gangs of New York is remarkable. In 1862, Irish… Read More Gangs of New York (2002)
Dir. Nicholas Hytner. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Scofield, Joan Allen I always get nervous when writers get to redo their own work. George Lucas is the alpha and omega of this model, but fans of Amadeus or The Crucible or Doubt must know that even when excellent playwrights turn into screenwriters, they find themselves touching up scenes or… Read More The Crucible (1996)
Dir. Michael Haneke. Starring Burghart Klaußner, Christian Friedel, Susanne Lothar There’s a scene fairly early in The White Ribbon where the schoolteacher, fishing for trout, sees one of his students – Martin, the pastor’s eldest son, maybe twelve or thirteen years old – walking on the rail of a wooden bridge high above the stream. If he fell,… Read More The White Ribbon (2009)
Seeing Things Secondhand 