Dir. Steve James Like any good 20th Century icon, Roger Ebert sits on a throne of contradictions. He was half of the pair who made “Two Thumbs Up!” and a partner in reductivism, in his own way part of dumbing down the movies as much as Spielberg, Lucas, Eisner, or Katzenberg. It is also true that Ebert will… Read More Life Itself (2014)
Dir. Robert Altman. Starring Maggie Smith, Kelly Macdonald, Ryan Philippe In retrospect, it was a mistake to make Gosford Park a murder mystery. What makes Nashville and Short Cuts effective is the unbelievably patient burn among small pockets of people which culminates in an event which no person can ignore. In Short Cuts, it’s the earthquake that no one can escape from;… Read More Gosford Park (2001)
Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. Starring Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman Llewyn Davis (Isaac) has made an accidental habit of picking up orange cats. (I love cats. I confess to some slight distraction when they were on screen. Also, this movie has two cats, so by the standard the Academy set after The Artist, and… Read More Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Dir. Alejandro G. Inarritu. Starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone The star of Birdman is Emmanuel Lubezski, the cinematographer who at this writing has won three consecutive Oscars for Best Cinematography in three seriously stylish films: Gravity, Birdman, and The Revenant. Technically speaking, this is one of the most remarkable films of the decade. Edits are hidden so that… Read More Birdman (2014)
Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Starring Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth When I took a Faulkner class in college, we started with Flags in the Dust. It’s a messy book; right now, it’s notable almost entirely for a passage that Faulkner wrote about mules and the fact that Faulkner’s editors published it as Sartoris; in fact, Faulkner never… Read More Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Dir. John Carney. Starring Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Lucy Boynton, Jack Reynor The one-sentence synopsis of Sing Street – boy creates band on spot to impress cute girl he met – sounds like a nightmare of a mediocre screwball update. But what John Carney seems to have understood intuitively was that this is not a story about about a kid faking… Read More Sing Street (2016)
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. 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)
Dir. Denis Villeneuve. Starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker Amy Adams’ star image is like a braid. One strand is defined by Enchanted, but also includes Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Junebug, Catch Me if You Can, Julie and Julia, and The Muppets. Adams is, for my money, the most beautiful redheaded actress… Read More Arrival (2016)
Dir. Ronald F. Maxwell. Starring Tom Berenger, Jeff Daniels, Martin Sheen I can’t think of another movie made in the past quarter-century which should have seen big screens less than Gettysburg. This isn’t a statement of the film’s quality, but of its marketability, because let’s face it, this is a unicorn of a film. Longer… Read More Gettysburg (1993)
Seeing Things Secondhand 