Dir. Byron Howard and Rich Moore. Starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Jenny Slate Zootopia is built on sight gags, one of those rare gifts to animated film that just work better there than in real life. Judy Hopps (Goodwin), who is incredibly small compared to the other animals in Zootopia, chases a thief into a… Read More Zootopia (2016)
Dir. Patrick Garland. Starring Claire Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, Anna Massey For all of the hype about the end of A Doll’s House (which I rather prefer translated as “A Doll House” but which is not terribly important to what I’m saying here), one forgets that it reads rather like the second draft of a dramatic encounter on The… Read More A Doll’s House (1973)
Dir. Laurent Cantet. Starring Francois Begaudeau, Franck Keita, Rachel Regulier The title of The Class, en francais, is Entre les murs. “Between the Walls” is a much better title for this film than “The Class.” What goes on between the walls of a classroom is not precisely secret, but it is meant to be self-contained. When Khoumba (Regulier)… Read More The Class (2008)
Dir. Charles Sturridge. Starring Ted Danson, James Fox, Mary Steenburgen I have long been on the record that just because something shares the same title as its source material doesn’t mean, necessarily, that it must follow the source material’s lead. In practice, what that means is that film adapters should feel real freedom to edit… Read More Gulliver’s Travels (1996)
Dir. Tom McCarthy. Starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams With about half an hour left in Spotlight – one of those two hour movies which is punctual about its length – Mike Rezendes (Ruffalo) is on Sacha Pfeiffer’s (McAdams) porch, calmer than he was a few minutes ago but still blindingly angry. He has… Read More Spotlight (2015)
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Richard Dreyfuss, Francois Truffaut, Melinda Dillon Close Encounters, if I’m honest, is a hard movie to love. A lot of the film is about Richard Dreyfuss rapidly going insane after having been the only witness in his family to three UFOs. It’s one thing to listen to him pontificate about the… Read More Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
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. Frank Lloyd. Starring Diana Wynyard, Frank Lawton, Una O’Connor For folks who lived in the 20th Century, or for people who can remember it, even, we’re at an increasingly strange point in our history. Super Bowl L (“50,” because now it makes sense to ditch the Roman numerals) is nigh. The 88th Academy Awards… Read More Cavalcade (1933)
Dir. J.J. Abrams. Starring Daisy Ridley, Harrison Ford, Adam Driver This is absolutely riddled with spoilers. If you want a review without spoilers, this is not the one you’re looking for. Let’s get this out of the way. The Force Awakens is a good movie. It is not a great movie, but it is significantly… Read More Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens
Dir. Nicholas Hytner. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Scofield, Joan Allen I always get nervous when writers get to redo their own work. George Lucas is the alpha and omega of this model, but fans of Amadeus or The Crucible or Doubt must know that even when excellent playwrights turn into screenwriters, they find themselves touching up scenes or… Read More The Crucible (1996)
Seeing Things Secondhand 