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. I don’t know that a great crowd of people is going out of their way to say this, but at least from where I’m sitting, 2018… Read More Top 100 Movies of the Decade (2010-2019) — 2018, Part 1
Dir. James Ponsoldt. Starring Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Mary Elizabeth Winstead I was listening to an old episode of Screen Drafts the other day, the one on Films About Filmmakers, and one of the guest drafters was James Ponsoldt. I was really taken with him. I’ll let you listen to the episode (which he does with… Read More The Spectacular Now (2013)
Dir. John Cromwell. Starring Raymond Massey, Gene Lockhart, Ruth Gordon Why was Lincoln two and a half hours long when the only things that anyone cared about were Daniel Day-Lewis saying “Now! Now!” and that one dude speaking the greatest line in movie history? I am mostly kidding, because I do recall going to theaters to see… Read More Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)
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. I feel a bit on an island rating 2019 as low as I do in this decade. Only two years debut on my list later than… Read More Top 100 Movies of the Decade (2010-2019) — 2019
I don’t know that there has been a time in living memory when we could so freely cast aspersions on the reality of our lived experience. Never has the possibility of receiving so much truth been so blunted by the presumed infallibility of perception (he said, taking a risk before debuting a list which could… Read More Top 100 Movies of the Decade (2010-2019): Introduction and List
Dir. Kenneth Lonergan. Starring Casey Affleck, Lucas Hedges, Michelle Williams The premise of Manchester by the Sea is one that would have fit neatly enough into the serious dramas of the ’40s or ’50s, in part because its drama is fever-pitch loud, and in part because it’s not hard to imagine someone like Casey Affleck… Read More Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Dir. Howard Hawks. Starring Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Richard Haydn Watching Ball of Fire, you get the sense that Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett were just more interested in telling a story about eight men writing an encyclopedia than they were in telling the story of an unlikely romance between a gangster’s moll, Sugarpuss O’Shea (Stanwyck)… Read More Ball of Fire (1941)
Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. Starring Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich Watching Hail, Caesar! with the knowledge that the Coens’ next movie is The Ballad of Buster Scruggs makes Caesar look better, a kind of “learning to walk before you can run” aspect. In Buster Scruggs, which is pure anthology, there is no central character to whom everyone is tied, functioning… Read More Hail, Caesar! (2016)
Dir. Andrey Zyvagintsev. Starring Nadezhda Markina, Andrey Smirnov, Elena Lyadova “To understand all is to forgive all,” Tolstoy wrote, but Zyvagintsev seems to disagree. Elena is one of the boldest movies of the last decade because it is austerely antagonistic. One lane heads north, and on that highway there’s pity for the characters. Then there’s another lane… Read More Elena (2011)
Dir. George Stevens. Starring Ronald Colman, Jean Arthur, Cary Grant For one reason or another, there are only so many movies that one can imagine being remade without serious alterations today: the business angle, the dearth of irony, the surfeit of suggestion. But it’s not hard to imagine The Talk of the Town coming out…well, you know… Read More The Talk of the Town (1942)
Seeing Things Secondhand 