Dir. Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, Tom Tykwer. Starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Doona Bae Mark Harris, whose best work as a film critic concerns the larger trend of American studios making the safest decisions possible to the detriment of American film, has spent years on the topic by now. I don’t know what his opinion… Read More Cloud Atlas (2012)
Dir. Alan Parker. Starring Barry Miller, Maureen Teefy, Gene Anthony Ray A fun thought exercise for future car trips: what’s your trilogy of (insert city here) movies? For example, my Los Angeles trilogy features Sunset Boulevard, Blade Runner, and Pulp Fiction (with special apologies to Double Indemnity and Chinatown). I’ve given less thought to my… Read More Fame (1980)
Matt and I talk about some movies that we really think you need to watch. Find out just how artsy-fartsy Tim can get when he talks about foreign films (made in the countries which were America’s enemies during the middle of the 20th Century, so how’s that for being anti-American), and discover how Matt’s lowbrow… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 29: I Like Movies with Lots of Pretty Flowers…Being Crushed by a Giant Pterodactyl
Dir. Elem Klimov. Starring Aleksey Kravchenko, Vladas Bagdonas, Olga Mironova Come and See lays animals into the picture in ways that I don’t think any other war movie even attempts to do. Consider the turkeys which get full camera focus in Flor’s house, or the cow that Roubej gives his life to steal. Think of the… Read More Come and See (1985)
Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Starring Kirk Douglas, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready If you don’t count Fear and Desire, and from what I can tell Stanley Kubrick would really rather you didn’t, Paths of Glory is Kubrick’s third film of twelve and his first certain classic; if you don’t count Fear and Desire, it’s also Kubrick’s first film about war, a… Read More Paths of Glory (1957)
Dir. Martin Scorsese. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder The Age of Innocence is the mirror universe of Gangs of New York, films released and set less than ten years apart, with the same director and the same leading man. Admittedly, the differences begin to proliferate from there; Day-Lewis’ Newland Archer is never quite as… Read More The Age of Innocence (1993)
Dir. Gavin O’Connor. Starring Kurt Brooks, Patrick O’Brien Demsey, Eddie Cahill Miracle and Argo make an interesting pair. The events of the two films happen almost concurrently; their climaxes (the Canadian Caper leaves the airport in Tehran and the Miracle on Ice) occurred within about three weeks of one another. One movie is a Disney movie, one of… Read More Miracle (2004)
Dir. Nicholas Hytner. Starring Richard Griffiths, Stephen Campbell Moore, Samuel Barnett The film adaptation of The History Boys manages to bring everyone back, as it were, for another term. Alan Bennett wrote the play and the screenplay. Nicholas Hytner directed the play and the film. The cast of the play and the film is identical. (Nearly… Read More The History Boys (2006)
Dir. Robert Redford. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Rob Morrow, John Turturro About an hour or so into Quiz Show, I found myself…not bored, exactly, but struggling from an almost oppressive dose of formula. About an hour and five minutes into Quiz Show, I wondered if that was necessarily the movie’s fault. After all, most of the… Read More Quiz Show (1994)
Dir. Dan Scanlon. Starring Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Helen Mirren The girls are at summer camp. They report something strange is in their cabin. None of them are frightened – in fact, some even seem a little giddy. Regardless, forest rangers and other law enforcement quickly evacuate the girls before heading in. Slowly, quietly, cautiously,… Read More Monsters University (2013)
Seeing Things Secondhand 