I had forgotten about the New York Post’s article about how Millennials don’t watch movies from before 2000 (“exponentially more likely to have binged on films of the last 15 years than on classics from bygone eras”), largely because clickbait only lasts so long before it disappears. (Honestly, I’m more haunted by the fact that… Read More What Movies Millennials Watch
Dir. Norman Jewison. Starring Topol, Norma Crane, Rosalind Harris It’s been more than forty years since they made this movie, and with the possible exception of Moulin Rouge!, Fiddler on the Roof stands as the last good live-action Hollywood musical. I vividly remember Hugh Jackman saying during the filming of Les Miserables he did not always want to go for the… Read More Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
Dir. Jan Troell. Starring Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg (My review of The Emigrants, which is less the first movie in a two-part series than it is the first half of this film, is here.) “We’ll have to figure out what that means,” Karl Oskar (von Sydow) murmurs as he reads over a… Read More The New Land (1972)
Dir. Frank Capra. Starring Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore It’s a Wonderful Life presents an interesting viewing paradox to me. The movie was always going to get its due as a classic after it famously lost to The Best Years of Our Lives among moviegoers in December 1946. (The movie may not have been like, super popular,… Read More It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
You can read up on the basis for this series here, and also find links to other posts in the series. Movies I’ve reviewed on this site have a link in the title which you can follow to read my full review. 5) Gangs of New York (2002), directed by Martin Scorsese Ironically, the flaws… Read More 100 Exceptional American Movies in 10 Genres: Period, 5-1
Dir. Fred Zinnemann. Starring Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Katy Jurado The most famous reviews of High Noon are surely the grenades tossed at it by John Wayne and Howard Hawks; both men criticized the story for how it portrays a marshal who utterly fails to rouse his comrades to serve law and order. Hawks’ smear of how… Read More High Noon (1952)
You can read up on the basis for this series here, and also find links to other posts in the series. Movies I’ve reviewed on this site have a link in the title which you can follow to read my full review. 10) L.A. Confidential (1997), directed by Curtis Hanson Other movies in this series are going… Read More 100 Exceptional American Movies in 10 Genres: Period, 10-6
Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams In that long lull in the beginning of Gettysburg’s fourth act, there’s a throwaway scene with Hancock and Chamberlain which serves to show that Hancock is thinking about Armistead almost as much as Armistead thinks about him. Hancock asks the learned Chamberlain, a professor… Read More The Master (2012)
Dir. Alain Resnais. Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada, Bernard Fresson Dir. Spike Jonze. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams In a sea of other people, a French actress (Riva) and a Japanese architect (Okada) fall painfully and deeply in love. That sea of other people is less the present population of Hiroshima and more… Read More Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Her (2013)
Dir. Elia Kazan. Starring Marlon Brando, Eva-Marie Saint, Karl Malden It’s hard to say this about Leonard Bernstein, who was one of the great American musical minds of the last century, but his score for On the Waterfront is occasionally distracting; there are times when one can more easily imagine this music in the background of a… Read More On the Waterfront (1954)
Seeing Things Secondhand 