Dir. Howard Hawks. Starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson Picture links back here Westerns are, as a general rule, as formulaic and reliable as any movie genre this side of romantic comedy. Rio Bravo doesn’t lean far away from any of its tropes. You can check off grizzled sheriff, struggling drunk, goofy geezer, tough… Read More Rio Bravo (1959)
Dir. Lynne Ramsay. Starring Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell We Need to Talk About Kevin is terribly powerful. During the first half-hour, I found myself doing something which, philosophically, I am deeply opposed to: I tried to turn the movie into a single word. I thought “unsparing” might be the right word, but that’s… Read More We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
Dir. Terrence Malick. Starring Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Ramon Bieri Picture links back here I’m not sure I’ve ever reacted to the end of a movie before like I did with Badlands; I’ve never been given a clearer, more concrete grip on character motivation and thought it obliterated the movie’s feel. (The last movie I… Read More Badlands (1973)
Dir. John Ford. Starring Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Vera Miles The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a real giveaway, up there with classics like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Not only that, but the movie makes it fairly clear what happens to its main characters before we even know they’re the… Read More The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Dir. Wim Wenders. Starring Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, Nastassja Kinski Like the angels in the sky over Berlin, whose job is to record and preserve the little human moments they witness, our job as moviegoers is to watch without hope of climax and see with wide, sympathetic eyes. I said this about Wings of… Read More Paris, Texas (1984)
Dir. Whit Stillman. Starring Chloe Sevigny, Chris Eigeman, Kate Beckinsale No one with a name seems able to have fun in The Last Days of Disco, and no one is keen to expose him- or herself as a genuine human being. Obviously, this is a tricky line to walk in a discotheque, perhaps to the… Read More The Last Days of Disco (1998)
Dir. Ernst Lubitsch. Starring Herbert Marshall, Kay Francis, Miriam Hopkins In the last scene of Trouble in Paradise, which calls back to some of the funnier moments early on in the movie, Lily (Hopkins) and Gaston (Marshall) have stolen objects from one another. Lily walked out with 100,000 francs originally belonging to Madame Mariette Colet… Read More Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman Hitchcock doesn’t waste any time getting to the plot in this movie, which is a delectable little truffle among Hitchcock’s movie scenarios. Among his better, or at least his most famous movies, this rush to get to the meat of it is a little unusual.… Read More Strangers on a Train (1951)
Dir. David Fincher. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey, Jr. Zodiac is a film which seems like it ought to be easily classifiable in several ways. It’s a period piece, but aside from some appropriate costume and facial hair, it’s does not flaunt its period credentials. (I forget where I originally read the following… Read More Zodiac (2007)
Dir. John Carpenter. Starring Kurt Russell, Dennis Dun, Kim Cattrall I think everything you need to know about the movie is abundantly clear from the name. Films are not usually catchy, but this one is; it uses abundant color, histrionic acting, and runaway dialogue so that you can’t help but get swept up in it. For… Read More Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
Seeing Things Secondhand 