Dir. Richard Attenborough. Starring Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins, Ryan O’Neal In that subgenre of war movies which has to do with soldiers in battle, there’s a moment I always look for and rarely find. An officer, typically a name-brand actor, tells subordinates to move ahead on a position knowing that doing so will get them… Read More A Bridge Too Far (1977)
Dir. Roy Del Ruth. Starring Eleanor Powell, Jack Benny, Robert Taylor I’m not usually a person who goes in for tedious humor, which is where a lot of the jokes in Broadway Melody of 1936 come from. Robert Wildhack is the movie’s primary vessel for this kind of joke, playing a man who is trying to… Read More Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935)
Dir. Max Barbakow. Starring Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J.K. Simmons Seeing as this is a recent release, and I genuinely think you’re more likely to enjoy this one if you don’t know much about it going in, a wholehearted “spoiler alert!” So when you do a time loop movie and the action is more “romantic… Read More Palm Springs (2020)
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. Masaki Kobayashi. Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Rentaro Mikuni, Akira Ishihama I’m not usually a person who cares very much about spoilers, but I’ll grant that there are certain movies where it’s hard to imagine the first viewing being as good with information as it is without information. Recently, Parasite has become the standard-bearer for folks like me,… Read More Harakiri (1962)
To see the entire list of my 100 top movies of last decade, or to find the landing page for the other years in this series, click here. For every 2015 movie that ultimately made this list, there’s another one that I liked but which never had the energy to climb aboard. For a… Read More Top Movies of the Decade (2010-2019) — 2015
Dir. King Vidor. Starring James Murray, Eleanor Boardman, Bert Roach I rate Sullivan’s Travels as highly as the next guy unless the next guy is Jeet Heer, but I still think the movie’s message, for that’s what it is, comes off a little corny. When Joel McCrea sits there, laughing with a bunch of convicts screaming their… Read More The Crowd (1928)
To see the entire list of my 100 top movies of last decade, or to find the landing page for the other years in this series, click here. To read the first half of this post, click here. 51) The Lost City of Z, directed by James Gray I like to use the example of… Read More Top Movies of the Decade (2010-2019) — 2016, Part 2
Dir. David Dobnik. Starring Will Ferrell, Rachel McAdams, Dan Stevens I realize this is a recent release, so I’ll drop the spoilers tag, but also…come on. No one in Lars (Ferrell) and Sigrit’s (McAdams) hometown wants to hear their Eurovision song at any point in the movie. They’ll be at the bar performing, and Lars… Read More Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)
Dir. Jeff Chan and Andrew Rhymer. Starring Jack Quaid, Maya Erskine, Ed Begley, Jr. Dir. Jennifer Westfeldt. Starring Jennifer Westfeldt, Adam Scott, Maya Rudolph FOMO is a very Internet term, although I think in most cases it refers to the life that takes place outside the bounds of one’s phone or TV or laptop. Sure,… Read More Plus One (2019) and Friends with Kids (2011)
Seeing Things Secondhand 