Dir. W.S. Van Dyke. Starring Jeanette MacDonald, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy Dir. Jan Troell. Starring Gene Hackman, Liv Ullmann, Eileen Heckart There’s nothing inherently weird about the idea of a disaster movie where the first three-quarters of it have nothing to do with the disaster itself. The reason Titanic turned into this enormous phenomenon was not really… Read More San Francisco (1936) and Zandy’s Bride (1974)
Dir. David Fincher. Starring Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Stellan Skarsgard All of us can name action movies or thrillers which don’t have all that much perspective to speak of, but have enough of a plot to remain entertaining and effective. This is Se7en, a movie which gets a lot of plot mileage out of punning… Read More The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Dir. Jon Watts. Starring Tom Holland, Jacob Batalon, Michael Keaton At the time I’m writing this, I have seen seventeen MCU movies; the first half of this sentence gives me heartburn. For the most part, those movies are like going to a fast casual joint. Even if you order the wackiest cheesecake off the menu… Read More Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Starring Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, Aaron Eckhart At the end of the movie, two final scenes find an ugliness in this movie’s heart that I’m not entirely sure the movie would think is ugly. In the first, Brockovich (Roberts) receives a check from Masry (Finney) which he “warns” her is not the… Read More Erin Brockovich (2000)
Dir. Autumn de Wilde. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Mia Goth Maybe it’s not the most important thing about this movie, but I know my favorite thing about Emma is Bill Nighy’s performance. Mr. Woodhouse, who speaks seldom and mostly about the presence of drafts in his home, is possibly not a human being. His performance makes… Read More Emma. (2020)
Dir. John Ford. Starring John Wayne, Pedro Armendariz, Harry Carey, Jr. It may be my contrarian inclinations, it may be my childlessness, it may be that I just prefer critters, but I know that whenever someone has a baby on a sitcom it bores me. It is one of two common topics in fiction (the other being… Read More 3 Godfathers (1948)
Dir. Agnès Varda. Starring Jean-Claude Drouot, Claire Drouot, Marie-France Boyer When Francois (Jean-Claude) is telling Therese (Claire) about how much more he feels thanks to his affair with Emilie (Boyer), how much his happiness has been amplified, how much greater his emotions are and how many more arms he can offer to embrace and feels embraced by,… Read More Le bonheur (1965)
Dir. Josh Boone. Starring Blu Hunt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams This one has such a tortured production history that it’s basically a Terry Gilliam movie. Goodness knows there’s something genuinely interesting about taking The New Mutants, which featured some of the most jawdropping art of any mainstream comic book I can name, and which features teenagers… Read More The New Mutants (2020)
Dir. Tom Hooper. Starring Francesca Hayward, Robbie Fairchild, Judi Dench The gamble that any production of Cats makes, whether it’s a stage show or a movie, is that the spectacle of the piece will outweigh the inherent strangeness of the material. The answer is a really hard “No!” for a lot of people for the musical itself,… Read More Cats (2019)
Dir. Danny Boyle. Starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels About an hour into Steve Jobs, it’s clear that something about the movie just isn’t working well enough. The first forty minutes are remarkably tight, so direct and effective that it’s easy to forget the freewheeling Danny Boyle is behind the wheel with a roadmap… Read More Steve Jobs (2015)
Seeing Things Secondhand 