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. George Roy Hill. Starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross Surrounded by the Bolivian army, there is no escape for Butch (Newman) and Sundance (Redford). They know it. Half a lifetime of crimes that made the two of them celebrities in the West, and which made it too difficult for them to stay home,… Read More Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
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. Joan Micklin Silver. Starring Amy Irving, Peter Riegert, Reizl Bozyk There are more romantic movies set in New York City than there are total movies set in Idaho, but the New York of these movies is so often a basically nonspecific one. To choose one (that I like!) at random, Set It Up is a perfectly… Read More Crossing Delancey (1988)
Dir. Chloe Zhao. Starring Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Bob Wells Nomadland is a movie in two halves, both of which I found confusing. In the first half, a woman named Fern (McDormand) gets into a lifestyle called vandwelling, which as far as I can tell is exactly what it should be called, and meets a number… Read More Nomadland (2020)
Dir. Shaka King. Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Lakeith Stanfield, Dominique Fishback Judas and the Black Messiah is a great title. Catchy, memorable, SEO-friendly. We clearly have a sense of what’s going to happen, even if the viewer has never heard of Fred Hampton (Kaluuya), let alone Bill O’Neal (Stanfield), although, as K. Austin Collins of Rolling Stone… Read More Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)
Dir. John Lee Hancock. Starring Michael Keaton, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch Ray Kroc (Keaton) has no gift for sales pitches, which is the first sign we have that he’s built for something very different. The chicken and the egg pitch he has for the five-spindle milkshake maker he’s hocking never works on anyone, although… Read More The Founder (2016)
Dir. Eliza Hittman. Starring Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, Théodore Pellerin After Autumn (Flanigan) has gotten her first appointment finished at the Manhattan Planned Parenthood, she’s back in a transit station with Skylar (Ryder). Autumn is taciturn, perhaps more actively standoffish and brusque with her cousin than she is at any other point in the movie.… Read More Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)
Directed Michael Mann. Starring James Caan, Tuesday Weld, Robert Prosky The opening sequence of Thief is gorgeous in that sort of meretricious urban way. Neon lights blurring out the moon, dark asphalt streets, wet pockets in potholes, the lights of cars glowing: it’s all very yellow fog rubbing its back against the window-panes. Watching Thief, I was put… Read More Thief (1981)
Seeing Things Secondhand 