Dir. Catherine Hardwicke. Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke In the last six or seven years, the conversations about Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have turned. We’ve gone from “These two can’t act worth a crap” to “These are two of our best actors under thirty-five.” The impetus for that first part, of course,… Read More Twilight (2008)
Dir. Jeff Chan and Andrew Rhymer. Starring Jack Quaid, Maya Erskine, Ed Begley, Jr. Dir. Jennifer Westfeldt. Starring Jennifer Westfeldt, Adam Scott, Maya Rudolph FOMO is a very Internet term, although I think in most cases it refers to the life that takes place outside the bounds of one’s phone or TV or laptop. Sure,… Read More Plus One (2019) and Friends with Kids (2011)
Dir. David Fincher. Starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Julia Ormond There aren’t any people in this movie, and the clearest statement of how true that is in that final montage that Benjamin (Pitt) narrates over. There are plenty of bodies in the movie, and each of those bodies has had a characteristic ascribed to then.… Read More The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
Dir. John Cromwell. Starring Raymond Massey, Gene Lockhart, Ruth Gordon Why was Lincoln two and a half hours long when the only things that anyone cared about were Daniel Day-Lewis saying “Now! Now!” and that one dude speaking the greatest line in movie history? I am mostly kidding, because I do recall going to theaters to see… Read More Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)
Dir. Mimi Leder. Starring Téa Leoni, Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman Hi, everyone. My name is Tim. In my spare time I like to write about movies. I have never been so confused by a movie as I was by Deep Impact, a picture long known to me as being the weird twin of Armageddon. I was not… Read More Deep Impact (1998)
Dir. Dan Scanlon. Starring Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus There are no true standout moments in Onward, no really funny bits, no moments of great pathos, no witticism in a line or line reading that I’ll be able to point to in a year or so when I recall the movie. There are no particularly… Read More Onward (2020)
Dir. Jon Turteltaub. Starring Nicolas Cage, Justin Bartha, Diane Kruger Could anyone else besides Nicolas Cage have pulled this kind of movie off? There’s no one who I think we, as a society, expect this kind of tightrope walking from. This guy has an Oscar, which I forget about all the time, in much the… Read More National Treasure (2004)
Dir. Arthur Hiller. Starring Ryan O’Neal, Ali McGraw, Ray Milland This is a movie about two and a half things. The half-thing is Harvard, which always manages to insert itself into places it doesn’t really have any reason to be, though I appreciate the commitment to the bit and I also appreciate how this movie… Read More Love Story (1970)
Dir. Ari Aster. Starring Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper Upon being shown the living arrangements for the young people of the Hårga, Mark (Will Poulter) is aghast at how open they are. Everyone sleeps around the perimeter of a single square room. By now we’re at least an hour into the picture, and… Read More Midsommar (2019)
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bob Odenkirk The camera moves a whole lot. It’s Steven Spielberg and Janusz Kaminski; one expects that it’s going to move elegantly. For the most part that’s even the case in this movie, I would say, typically able to move us around a newsroom or the offices… Read More The Post (2017)
Seeing Things Secondhand 