Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier “I have a competition in me,” Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) says. “I want no one else to succeed.” He’s speaking to his brother, Henry (who, it will turn it, is neither his brother nor a Henry), a man he’s only met earlier that day. With only… Read More There Will Be Blood (2007)
Dir. Philip Kaufman. Starring Ed Harris, Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn The Right Stuff, when it’s functioning at its highest levels, is a story about the death of the Western, and no one could have been better equipped to play the leading role than Sam Shepard. History will remember Shepard the playwright, but to me he will… Read More The Right Stuff (1983)
Dir. Rupert Wyatt. Starring Andy Serkis, James Franco, John Lithgow What makes Rise of the Planet of the Apes really different from other serious blockbuster movies of its time is its conscience. Like the original Planet of the Apes, which guesses that a nuclear holocaust would obliterate humanity, Rise of the Planet of the Apes… Read More Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Starring Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Skerritt Contact is fundamentally a story about belief, and whether or not our beliefs should be primarily scientific or primarily religious. The first clause would almost certainly make for an interesting movie; questioning what is worthy of belief, separating truth from untruth, or challenging beliefs have historically… Read More Contact (1997)
Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, John Travolta Matt and I accidentally/jointly named Pulp Fiction the greatest movie in American history when we did our podcast on the matter a little while back. It’s certainly the greatest movie released in my lifetime (not literally, but essentially, since 1991). And as we recede further and… Read More Pulp Fiction (1994)
Dir. Peter Weir. Starring Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, Max Pirkis From whatever side you look at it, Master and Commander feels like a movie that was destined to be forgotten. It’s a movie about sailing and naval combat and intrigue which premiered the same year as Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. It would have been… Read More Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Dir. Jason Reitman. Starring Aaron Eckhart, William H. Macy, Cameron Bright In 2005, when this movie first came out, I’m not sure that the slide with the names of four executive producers, men without any real creative input on the film, would have raised many eyebrows. In 2017, watching a movie that has the names… Read More Thank for You Smoking (2005)
Dir. Nicholas Meyer. Starring William Shatner, Ricardo Montalban, Leonard Nimoy 1:34:51– What I will say is that the dude holding Terrell looks exactly like a sad Will Ferrell. When I wrote that back in May of 2013, I was in the habit of writing about movies and TV with linear recaps rather than the more… Read More Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) – Redux
Dir. Damien Chazelle. Starring Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend Early in the film, Mia (Stone) has a pretty bad day. She gets cut off by a guy in an old car while she’s practicing a monologue she’s going to audition with. She’s late for the audition itself, has to rush out of her coffee… Read More La La Land (2016)
Dir. Morten Tyldum. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Allen Leech The Imitation Game is structurally deficient. By virtually any standard it’s got all of the best elements of a good biopic: a well-known (but not too well-known) historical figure with some relevance to even casual viewers, a story which relates back to an important historical… Read More The Imitation Game (2014)
Seeing Things Secondhand 