One of the Grantland legacies I’m fond of, although I’m sure the idea didn’t start there, is the championship belt (RIP Grantland, long live Barnwell and Hyden). The purpose is to go year by year and create a list of who’s at the top of some field, which is a deceptively simple task, and one… Read More Anglophone Director Championship Belt, 1918-2018
1) The first thing I did, before I even began making predictions or thinking about how things might go, is check to see if any of these movies out for Best Picture had 11/2 odds. I speak, of course, of the 15% rule that The Ringer’s Kevin Clark frequently refers back to, which proclaims that any… Read More 91st Academy Awards: Quickly Scribbled Thoughts
Dir. John Schlesinger. Starring Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Terence Stamp There are better moments in Far from the Madding Crowd than this, but the most exquisitely Hardy moment of the film is at the wedding of Frank Troy (Stamp) and his pregnant girlfriend, Fanny (Prunella Ransome). (Runners-up in this movie include a thoughtless card, a fifty-pound payment… Read More Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)
Dir. David Frankel. Starring Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt “I wouldn’t care if you were pole dancing all night as long as you did it with a little integrity,” Nate (Adrian Grenier) tells Andy (Hathaway) one evening. It’s an interesting line—one that immediately follows a quip about how the guy who makes “port wine… Read More The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Dir. Ari Aster. Starring Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Gabriel Byrne Never trust Ann Dowd! I don’t watch that much television, and even I know never to trust Ann Dowd! Anyway, the movie I’ve seen Hereditary compared to most frequently is Rosemary’s Baby, which I’m not sure I understand. Granted, these are two horror movies without any real jump… Read More Hereditary (2018)
Dir. Barry Jenkins. Starring Kiki Layne, Stephan James, Regina King Thorough spoilers for a movie still in its wide release. There’s a noteworthy costume choice made in the first few moments of If Beale Street Could Talk. With the camera towering over Tish (Layne) and Fonny (James), we can see that their outfits go together.… Read More If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
I’m joining in the spirit of the year-in-review post, even though the way I watch movies isn’t really conducive to the kind of list that one usually sees at the end of the year. (Incidentally, if you happen to be a recent music aficionado, friend of the blog Matt will have his year-end list of… Read More 2018 Year-End Review: Fifty Movies
Dir. Dominic Cooke. Starring Saiorse Ronan, Billy Howle, Adrian Scarborough On Chesil Beach might even have been Atonement but for two things. (It is probably not fair of me to compare them, but Ian McEwan, sad lovers, I doubt I’m the first one here.) First, Ronan and Howle don’t have the power of Knightley and… Read More On Chesil Beach (2018)
Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. Starring Zoe Kazan, Tom Waits, Tim Blake Nelson If the six segments of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs are meant to cohere, then it’s as six distinct pieces of the various types of the western genre. It hits on virtually all of them from gunmen to highwaymen, wagon trails (why… Read More The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Dir. Yann Demange. Starring Jack O’Connell, Sean Harris, David Wilmot If you think that more civilized discourse would go a long way to solving our political problems, if you are socially liberal and economically conservative, if you wistfully recall the dominion of uber-WASPs like George H.W. Bush, if you think “All Lives Matter” gets at… Read More ’71 (2014)
Seeing Things Secondhand 