Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken Steven Spielberg’s top six movies, per the AFI in 2007: Schindler’s List (8th) E.T. (24th) Jaws (56th) Raiders of the Lost Ark (66th) Saving Private Ryan (71st) Close Encounters of the Third Kind (64th in 1998, off the list in 2007) Steven Spielberg’s top seven movies, per Metacritic:… Read More Catch Me if You Can (2002)
Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Starring Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, Aaron Eckhart At the end of the movie, two final scenes find an ugliness in this movie’s heart that I’m not entirely sure the movie would think is ugly. In the first, Brockovich (Roberts) receives a check from Masry (Finney) which he “warns” her is not the… Read More Erin Brockovich (2000)
Dir. Autumn de Wilde. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Mia Goth Maybe it’s not the most important thing about this movie, but I know my favorite thing about Emma is Bill Nighy’s performance. Mr. Woodhouse, who speaks seldom and mostly about the presence of drafts in his home, is possibly not a human being. His performance makes… Read More Emma. (2020)
Dir. Danny Boyle. Starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels About an hour into Steve Jobs, it’s clear that something about the movie just isn’t working well enough. The first forty minutes are remarkably tight, so direct and effective that it’s easy to forget the freewheeling Danny Boyle is behind the wheel with a roadmap… Read More Steve Jobs (2015)
Dir. Miguel Gomes. Starring Ana Moreira, Carloto Cotta, Teresa Madruga I was watching Thor: The Dark World with my wife the other night, and within fifteen minutes both of us were disengaged, disturbed by the literal and tonal brownness of the images on screen. The longer the movie went, the more it felt like it had taken… Read More Tabu (2012)
Dir. Shane Black. Starring Robert Downey, Jr., Paul Bettany, Guy Pearce It’s really something that what makes this Marvel movie (what’s killing cinema in my salad days) interesting and enjoyable is its closeness to ”80s and ’90s action movies (you know, what was killing cinema when I was a little kid). Shane Black, who I… Read More Iron Man 3 (2013)
Dir. Jon Favreau. Starring Robert Downey, Jr., Sam Rockwell, Mickey Rourke I’ve been workshopping this take since about halfway through this movie, and here’s what I’ve got: this is a significantly more interesting movie than Iron Man. It is not necessarily a better movie than Iron Man, because there is some real flab on this movie: the… Read More Iron Man 2 (2010)
Directed by Ol Parker. Starring Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan Eventually we get to “Dancing Queen.” This is the part where I would make a joke about “contractual obligations” or something, but for all I know there are contractual obligations which mandate that “Dancing Queen” is played at least once in any ABBA movie.… Read More Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)
Dir. Paul Dano. Starring Ed Oxenbould, Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal Few phrases give me the heebie-jeebies faster than “actor-turned-director.” not because I don’t think these people are capable—”a great artist can come from anywhere,” per Ratatouille—but because the track record is so depressingly flat. This is practically the Redford or Eastwood guarantee: the performances will… Read More Wildlife (2018)
Dir. Roy Del Ruth. Starring Eleanor Powell, Jack Benny, Robert Taylor I’m not usually a person who goes in for tedious humor, which is where a lot of the jokes in Broadway Melody of 1936 come from. Robert Wildhack is the movie’s primary vessel for this kind of joke, playing a man who is trying to… Read More Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935)
Seeing Things Secondhand 