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)
Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos. Starring Angeliki Papoulia, Christos Stergioglou, Mary Tsoni. Dir. Nicholas Ray. Starring James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo. I don’t think anyone besides crusty parents and out-of-touch principals ever denies that growing up is difficult, and even then those people only exist in the pictures. Certainly this is the premise of Rebel Without a Cause,… Read More Dogtooth (2009) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
The difference between the Academy Awards in 1932 and 2018 is as stark as the difference between baseball in 1932 and baseball now: it’s obviously the same sport just at a glance, but it could hardly be more different in terms of execution, style, and personae. How can one compare the first ceremony, which honored… Read More The 90th Academy Awards and the Possibility of Another Grand Hotel
Dir. Vincente Minnelli. Starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant It’s impossible to talk about An American in Paris without referencing La La Land now, and I promise that I will contain all of my vexation to this paragraph. In La La Land, the most memorable piece of the movie is Gosling and Stone’s dance at sunrise, which takes place against… Read More An American in Paris (1951)
Dir. Bill Morrison. Before anything else, this movie is a ghost story. There are a thousand and one facts to be learned in Dawson City: Frozen Time, a documentary which is rich with knowledge but never didactic. Many of them are part sad and part funny: take, for example, that in the first nine years of… Read More Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016)
Dir. Leo McCarey. Starring Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald, Risë Stevens “Schmaltz isn’t selling this season,” Father O’Dowd (Frank McHugh) reports to his buddy, Father O’Malley (Crosby). O’Malley—Chuck to his friends, a label which contains multitudes, including some guys who will go on to father Jets and the diva of the Metropolitan Opera—is a little chastened.… Read More Going My Way (1944)
Dir. David Lean. Starring William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins It’s likely, if not probably, a coincidence that The Bridge on the River Kwai premiered as far away from the end of its war as Full Metal Jacket, The Cranes Are Flying, and All Quiet on the Western Front did from their wars. There were… Read More The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Dir. Roman Polanski. Starring Natassja Kinski, Peter Firth, Leigh Lawson Dir. Delbert Mann. Starring David Niven, Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth Two scenes from Tess, one of the great movies of the 1970s, made me wonder what the movie would have been like in another director’s hands. When Angel (Firth) returns from Brazil, with a shaggier beard… Read More Tess (1979) and Separate Tables (1958)
Dir. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Starring Rinko Kikuchi, Adriana Barraza, Brad Pitt Babel is one of those movies one wants to reward because of its boldness, an irrational confidence all-star which belongs in the same stratum as Cloud Atlas. Babel is less affecting, I think, and less compelling. It doesn’t call for us to be curious about… Read More Babel (2006)
Seeing Things Secondhand 