Dir. Richard Curtis. Starring Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson Although I don’t watch nearly as much television as I used to—at this point in my life, I really feel like I’m down to Food Network and sports—anyone who turns on the set during December will inevitably see a car commercial and a jewelry commercial.… Read More Love Actually (2003)
Dir. Frank Capra. Starring Ronald Colman, H.B. Warner, Thomas Mitchell While watching this movie, I couldn’t help but ask myself what device they were going to use to make sure Bob (Colman) left Shangri-La so we’d get our big finish. What they eventually choose is not bad on its face—Bob’s brother George (John Howard) has… Read More Lost Horizon (1937)
Dir. Alan J. Pakula. Starring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol There’s a lot about Sophie’s Choice that works, but none of that addresses the central problem in the story: everything is too exaggerated to work well. Wouldn’t a jealous lover suffice as well as one with paranoid schizophrenia? Wouldn’t a haunting experience outside the Holocaust have… Read More Sophie’s Choice (1982)
Dir. David Lean. Starring Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond In Reds, Gene O’Neill makes a comment critical of Louise Bryant’s performance in some rehearsals for a play he’s written which she’s performing in. “You’re supposed to be searching for your soul, not an ashtray,” he sneers at her. Blithe Spirit has much the same… Read More Blithe Spirit (1945)
Dir. Elliot Silverstein. Starring Jane Fonda, Michael Callan, Lee Marvin I wish they’d just gone for it. There are moments of sheer joy in Cat Ballou. Jed (Dwayne Hickman), in his parson get-up, runs through the same speech half a dozen times in an attempt to get in to Clay (Callan), currently under arrest by… Read More Cat Ballou (1965)
Dir. Douglas Sirk. Starring Robert Stack, Lauren Bacall, Rock Hudson Written on the Wind is stuck in a really strange place for a movie. It chips at the very limits of frankness and decency for its time period, but to work well it has to go much further than all that 1956 could allow. The story… Read More Written on the Wind (1956)
Dir. George Stevens. Starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters In a movie that frequently sits on Montgomery Clift emoting – a very good choice, that – and lingers on closeups of Elizabeth Taylor, the most important player is Shelley Winters, the patron saint of women who want things too much and never can take… Read More A Place in the Sun (1951)
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. Terry Gilliam. Starring Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, Michael Palin Brazil gives itself an awfully difficult task to pull off, requiring a faceless evil to fight against, a clear vision of the world of the future, and a protagonist who can both guide us through the future and hold our sympathy. It requires those primary… Read More Brazil (1985)
Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Luis Guzman “This is Barry,” Barry (Sandler) says whenever he picks up the phone. It’s one of those friendly touches one adds to whatever entrepreneurs call bedside manner – “Yes, ma’am, there is a real live human on the other end of this line!” – and it’s… Read More Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
Seeing Things Secondhand 