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)
Dir. David Miller. Starring Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, James MacColl I’m not entirely sure where this paradox begins. When people read a story or watch a movie or whatever about a dramatic historical event, they look for the depiction thereof to have even more drama scooped on top of it. However, it stands to reason… Read More Executive Action (1973)
Dir. Godfrey Reggio. If there is one thing that I didn’t expect Koyaanisqatsi to make me do, it’s laugh. But it did. There’s that sequence in which we see how they make the hot dogs, or at least how the hot dogs come out of the machinery. They come down little ramps, cased together. Two men… Read More Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
Dir. John Ford. Starring Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, Gilbert Roland There’s a shot in Cheyenne Autumn that my little heart took note of, either because I am very sensitive to bravado or because I am very partisan. Wright (Walter Baldwin), a Quaker ministering to the Cheyenne’s needs on the reservation as best he can, works with his… Read More Cheyenne Autumn (1964)
Dir. Ladj Ly. Starring Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti, Djebril Zonga The circus is in town, and it is pissed off. The circus van, which had previously meandered around Montfermeil advertising the show, has changed its tune considerably. A slew of profanity seems to both precede and follow the vehicle, all of it in response to… Read More Les Misérables (2019)
Dir. Nicholas Meyer. Starring William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, Christopher Plummer It’s a little hard to love the execution of The Undiscovered Country, a movie which throws quotes from Shakespeare around with total abandon in lieu of actualy dialogue—which suffers from a lack of any really good scenes between the one where Kirk (Shatner) and McCoy (Kelley)… Read More Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
Dir. S. Craig Zahler. Starring Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins There’s nothing new, precisely, in Bone Tomahawk, nothing that you couldn’t alchemize out of John Ford and Wes Craven. O’Dwyer (Wilson) is a Christian who insists on praying before meals, crosses himself with a Catholic gusto (one of those touches which feels odd for the… Read More Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Dir. Mimi Leder. Starring Téa Leoni, Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman Hi, everyone. My name is Tim. In my spare time I like to write about movies. I have never been so confused by a movie as I was by Deep Impact, a picture long known to me as being the weird twin of Armageddon. I was not… Read More Deep Impact (1998)
Dir. Dan Scanlon. Starring Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus There are no true standout moments in Onward, no really funny bits, no moments of great pathos, no witticism in a line or line reading that I’ll be able to point to in a year or so when I recall the movie. There are no particularly… Read More Onward (2020)
Seeing Things Secondhand 