I have no doubt that if these two movies had come out in 2018 instead of 1998, the Discourse would have reached absolutely incandescent levels. As it is, one can tell from reading the old reviews that the Discourse, analog and slow as it was in 1998, was lit. You know it’s bad when the… Read More Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, and the Critics
Dir. Frank Darabont. Starring Morgan Freeman, Tim Robbins, Bob Gunton The first piece of writing about writing which I can recall reading is Orson Scott Card’s introduction to his own novel, Ender’s Game. (This is before Card made that hard right turn that so many of the novelists who are influential to young adults seem to… Read More The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Dir. Anthony Minghella. Starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law On an individual level, just about everything in this movie is wonderful. Anthony Minghella’s direction is competent and assured. His screenplay is effectively paced, providing ample time for us to watch Tom Ripley come up with ideas about how to manipulate his compatriots in age… Read More The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Starring Al Pacino, Andy Garcia, Eli Wallach They got Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, and Gordon Willis back. They intercut scenes from both of this movie’s predecessors. It begins with a party, and many of the beats that we’ve come to expect from our Godfather movies are poking around: a… Read More The Godfather Part III (1990)
Another year of Oscars, another year of “I have a day job and I have to do this after everyone else’s takes have already filled the marketplace of takes.” 1) Several months ago, when I thought AMPAS would keep the 93rd Academy Awards to 2020 releases, I was really excited about what we might get… Read More 93rd Academy Awards: Hastily Scribbled Thoughts
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn A “Zemeckis cube” and a DeLorean, a long chapter of the film devoted to painstakingly recreating The Shining, namedropping the Millennium Falcon, and of course, the somewhat controversial usage of the Iron Giant. If on one snowy night, his lip cut up from a punch and his mind… Read More Ready Player One (2018)
Dir. Raoul Walsh. Starring James Cagney, Priscilla Lane, Gladys George The ingredients of The Roaring Twenties are almost comically simple, and the story is a little easy at times as well. In the midst of a firefight in the later days of the First World War, George Hally (Humphrey Bogart) is minding his business in a shell… Read More The Roaring Twenties (1939)
The question of “What is the best MCU movie” feels like a fairly pointless question, but as one of the idiots who lives in it, I’ve come up with my own set of answers. (You can find my intro to my rankings, 1-8, and 9-23 elsewhere on the site!) I feel pretty strongly about my own… Read More Infinity Saga/MCU Ranking: Critical Meta-Analysis and Poll Results
To read my introduction to this set of rankings, go here. I’ve broken the twenty-three movies from this franchise into tiers of irregular size. I still have a fairly firm ranking in my head for each of them, but I include the tiers to give a sense of what movies roughly match each other in… Read More Infinity Saga/Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranking – Part 2
To read my introduction to this set of rankings, go here. I’ve broken the twenty-three movies from this franchise into tiers of irregular size. I still have a fairly firm ranking in my head for each of them, but I include the tiers to give a sense of what movies roughly match each other in… Read More Infinity Saga/Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranking – Part 1
