Dir. Lee Isaac Chung. Starring Yeri Han, Steven Yeun, Alan Kim With this movie still wearing that “early access” badge on Amazon, I feel duty bound to mention that spoilers are below. The shot of the year in American popular cinema is in Minari. The Yis are all at the hospital, that one that has… Read More Minari (2020)
Dir. Darius Marder. Starring Riz Ahmed, Paul Raci, Olivia Cooke If you know the basic premise of Sound of Metal going into the film, even if it’s as simple as “rock drummer starts going deaf,” then you know what’s going to happen in this movie. The scenes fall into place in logical ways. If you… Read More Sound of Metal (2020)
Dir. Raoul Walsh. Starring James Cagney, Priscilla Lane, Gladys George The ingredients of The Roaring Twenties are almost comically simple, and the story is a little easy at times as well. In the midst of a firefight in the later days of the First World War, George Hally (Humphrey Bogart) is minding his business in a shell… Read More The Roaring Twenties (1939)
Dir. Joan Micklin Silver. Starring Amy Irving, Peter Riegert, Reizl Bozyk There are more romantic movies set in New York City than there are total movies set in Idaho, but the New York of these movies is so often a basically nonspecific one. To choose one (that I like!) at random, Set It Up is a perfectly… Read More Crossing Delancey (1988)
Dir. Shaka King. Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Lakeith Stanfield, Dominique Fishback Judas and the Black Messiah is a great title. Catchy, memorable, SEO-friendly. We clearly have a sense of what’s going to happen, even if the viewer has never heard of Fred Hampton (Kaluuya), let alone Bill O’Neal (Stanfield), although, as K. Austin Collins of Rolling Stone… Read More Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)
Dir. Eliza Hittman. Starring Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, Théodore Pellerin After Autumn (Flanigan) has gotten her first appointment finished at the Manhattan Planned Parenthood, she’s back in a transit station with Skylar (Ryder). Autumn is taciturn, perhaps more actively standoffish and brusque with her cousin than she is at any other point in the movie.… Read More Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)
Dir. David Fincher. Starring Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Stellan Skarsgard All of us can name action movies or thrillers which don’t have all that much perspective to speak of, but have enough of a plot to remain entertaining and effective. This is Se7en, a movie which gets a lot of plot mileage out of punning… Read More The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Dir. John Ford. Starring John Wayne, Pedro Armendariz, Harry Carey, Jr. It may be my contrarian inclinations, it may be my childlessness, it may be that I just prefer critters, but I know that whenever someone has a baby on a sitcom it bores me. It is one of two common topics in fiction (the other being… Read More 3 Godfathers (1948)
Dir. Richard Attenborough. Starring Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins, Ryan O’Neal In that subgenre of war movies which has to do with soldiers in battle, there’s a moment I always look for and rarely find. An officer, typically a name-brand actor, tells subordinates to move ahead on a position knowing that doing so will get them… Read More A Bridge Too Far (1977)
Dir. King Vidor. Starring James Murray, Eleanor Boardman, Bert Roach I rate Sullivan’s Travels as highly as the next guy unless the next guy is Jeet Heer, but I still think the movie’s message, for that’s what it is, comes off a little corny. When Joel McCrea sits there, laughing with a bunch of convicts screaming their… Read More The Crowd (1928)
Seeing Things Secondhand 