Dir. John Huston. Starring Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, Leo Genn It’s easier for me at least to identify single choices in form, structure, performance, and so on which torpedo a movie rather than elevate it. In Moby Dick, there’s an all-timer of a decision which elevates the movie to mysterious heights, and that is the… Read More Moby Dick (1956)
Dir. Chris Charles Scott and Seth Porges Directors of documentaries frequently look for ways to make sure that their words reinforce the images they’ve chosen for the screen, whether it’s by writing a narration or appearing in front of the camera. If you’re Michael Moore, at the far end of both qualities for intrusiveness, it… Read More Class Action Park (2020)
Dir. David Lean. Starring Sarah Miles, Robert Mitchum, Trevor Howard There’s a scene in Madeleine, made two decades earlier and under a radically different set of censorship instructions, where a sex scene is replaced, essentially, with a torrid reel. Rather than depicting a coital sequence between Ann Todd and Ivan Desny which wouldn’t have passed… Read More Ryan’s Daughter (1970)
Dir. Edmund Goulding. Starring Tyrone Power, Coleen Gray, Joan Blondell Everyone has a few quotes that rattle around in their brains in perpetuity for no good reason at all. Here’s one of mine: Gillis: They’re pretty hot for it over at Twentieth, but I think Zanuck’s all wet. Can you see Ty Power as a… Read More Nightmare Alley (1947)
Dir. Ema Ryan Yamazaki There are more than 350 Division I men’s basketball programs in the United States. The 68-team March Madness tournament remains one of the great unifiers of offices across the nation, as even casual observers get pushed into pools to submit their brackets. Its randomness is its calling card, and for three… Read More Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams (2019)
To see my running list of the hundred greatest movie stars in American film history, click here We’ve reached the top 10! At this point, every star gets their own post. 1) James Stewart When I started this list a while back (see above), I came up with a hilariously long list of qualifiers for what… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars: 1
To see my running list of the hundred greatest movie stars in American film history, click here We’ve reached the top 10! At this point, every star gets their own post. 2) Bette Davis It’s fair to say that pretty much any year between 1938 and 1946 was the year of Bette Davis, but for me… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars: 2
To see my running list of the hundred greatest movie stars in American film history, click here We’ve reached the top 10! At this point, every star gets their own post. 3) Katharine Hepburn The greatest movie stars tend to have some bodily quality which makes them stand out from the merely great ones. It is… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars: 3
To see my running list of the hundred greatest movie stars in American film history, click here We’ve reached the top 10! At this point, every star gets their own post. 4) Jack Nicholson Anger Management, which I watched for the first time in order to supplement my early aughts Nicholson education (About Schmidt, Something’s Gotta… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars: 4
To see my running list of the hundred greatest movie stars in American film history, click here We’ve reached the top 10! At this point, every star gets their own post. 5) Meryl Streep What’s lost in the Meryl Streep hagiography—the twenty-one nominations and three Oscar wins over thirty-nine years, the “greatest actor of her generation”… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars: 5
Seeing Things Secondhand 