Dir. Michael Curtiz. Starring Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Jack Carson I spent most of my life in the kitchen, Mildred (Crawford) tells a policeman in the beginning of the movie. It is bizarre to see Crawford in an apron not merely because she’s Joan Crawford, but because her star image was based primarily on the… Read More Mildred Pierce (1945)
Dir. Peter Weir. Starring Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Lukas Haas The line between “wants to make you feel this” and “doesn’t make you feel much of anything” is one of the most difficult and most subtle lines to walk in a movie. Go too far to the former, and the viewer is alienated by the… Read More Witness (1985)
Dir. Guillermo del Toro. Starring Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones, Michael Shannon I can’t help but feel I saw The Shape of Water for the first time back in October, when I went to see Murder on the Orient Express in theaters and first encountered the trailer for Shape of Water. If you’ve seen the trailer, or if you watched the Oscars… Read More The Shape of Water (2017)
Dir. Noah Baumbach. Starring Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Michael Zegen Frances Ha is occasionally a relentless series of moments far too short to even be vignettes. They are visual one-liners, which is a seriously risky way to make a movie and the only good way to tell a story about Frances (Gerwig). But for a little… Read More Frances Ha (2012)
Dir. James Ivory. Starring Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Anthony Hopkins “I pity you from the bottom of my heart,” Ruth (Vanessa Redgrave) tells Margaret (Thompson) upon hearing that her recent companion will lose her home in a matter of months. It is the place where she and her siblings were born, and it will… Read More Howards End (1992)
Dir. Ryan Coogler. Starring Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong’o, Michael B. Jordan Everything else being equal, all of us can choose between a Golden Corral steak and a filet from a good steakhouse; the tougher choice comes when the Golden Corral option disappears and is replaced with a lobster. There are two good choices in Black… Read More Black Panther (2018)
Dir. Billy Wilder. Starring Ray Milland, Howard Da Silva, Jane Wyman The holy grail of movies about alcoholism, with apologies to My Name is Joe or Withnail and I or The Shining, remains Wake in Fright. Somewhere a little behind those masterpieces, which stare alcoholism in the face and lock your head in a vise so you can… Read More The Lost Weekend (1945)
Dir. Bob Fosse. Starring Roy Scheider, Leland Palmer, Ann Reinking All That Jazz is such a mess, and it’s one of the most entertaining and spellbinding messes I’ve ever seen. Take the first six minutes or so of the movie, which give us Joe Gideon’s (Scheider) morning routine, a peek into the gray world of Angelique… Read More All That Jazz (1979)
Dir. Clint Eastwood. Starring Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman Hurt, sad, defeated, [Emma Stone] collapses, face first, onto her bed while a wall-sized image of Ingrid Bergman smiles behind her. It’s not often that a movie finds a way to create a self-describing image, but La La Land, bless its heart, pulled it off.… Read More Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Dir. Martin Scorsese. Starring Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Barbara Hershey Only a bold film, one creeping up to outright foolhardiness, tries to tell its viewers what it’s “about” at the outset. Last Temptation does just that, beginning with a quote from the author of its source material, Nikos Kazantzakis, and then with words from the filmmakers. This… Read More The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Seeing Things Secondhand 