Dir. John M. Stahl. Starring Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain Leave Her to Heaven reminds me less of other noirs and more of stories of the bad seed, which is all the more interesting because the film predates the first known use of the term by some years. Ellen (Tierney) is not a traditional… Read More Leave Her to Heaven (1945)
Dir. Martin Campbell. Starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen It’s just a little too talky, isn’t it. Not a lot too talky, but it’s just talky enough that it pulls you away from what’s really exciting about the film itself. Before anyone arrives in Montenegro for the poker game, there’s a ceiling on what… Read More Casino Royale (2006)
Dir. Pablo Larrain. Starring Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Sally Hawkins Spoilers for a recent film, but one of the best things about Spencer is that I’m not sure it can actually be spoiled in any meaningful way. In the first few minutes of the movie, a fleet of Land Rovers drives perilously close to the… Read More Spencer (2021)
Dir. George Roy Hill. Starring Robin Williams, Glenn Close, Mary Beth Hurt “The Pension Grillparzer” is the story in The World According to Garp, the novel, which changes Garp’s life. It’s presented clearly as the best of his work, the purest expression of him as a writer. It’s why Helen Holm marries him. It’s not… Read More The World According to Garp (1982)
Here’s a fun game to play: try to find a ranking of directors which doesn’t have Alfred Hitchcock in the top five. I can tell you that out of sources that I find generally credible (even if I largely disagree with them), I haven’t been able to do so. In 2002, Sight and Sound polled… Read More Alfred Hitchcock Meta-Analysis
Dir. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez. Starring Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard As a horror movie, The Blair Witch Project is pretty disappointing. There are a couple moments here and there which are nervy, but on the whole it’s hard to credit the picture as a truly frightening one. The Blair Witch Project… Read More The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Dir. Seth Gordon “Remember the first rule of politics,” Jim Broadbent says as Boss Tweed in Gangs of New York. “The ballots don’t make the results. The counters make the result.” The counters in Gangs of New York have a simple goal: ensure that Democrats win every election in 1860s New York. It doesn’t matter… Read More The King of Kong (2007)
Dir. Robert Altman. Starring Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Sally Kellerman One could sit around with a couple cocktails and some jazz in the background and have a very pleasant debate about which genre the swell matters more in. Does the swell matter more in drama, where a series of events pile on top of one… Read More M*A*S*H (1970)
Dir. Vince Marcello. Starring Joey King, Jacob Elordi, Joel Courtney Like most of its constituent pieces, The Kissing Booth is primarily interesting because of where we’ve seen it somewhere else before. It’s the 21st Century in this film, but I can hardly remember anyone even looking at a cell phone, let alone getting into the… Read More The Kissing Booth (2018)
Dir. Denis Villeneuve. Starring Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Sharon Duncan-Brewster Spoilers follow. I mean, there’s not that much that happens in this sucker, but it’s a recent release, so…spoilers. Friends, Prestige television has been affected by a powerful and terrible scourge in the years since I gave up on it. Presumably guided by the perspective… Read More Dune (2021)
Seeing Things Secondhand 