Dir. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Starring Rinko Kikuchi, Adriana Barraza, Brad Pitt Babel is one of those movies one wants to reward because of its boldness, an irrational confidence all-star which belongs in the same stratum as Cloud Atlas. Babel is less affecting, I think, and less compelling. It doesn’t call for us to be curious about… Read More Babel (2006)
Dir. Clint Eastwood. Starring Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman If you give an actor the director’s chair, he’ll want his star persona to go with it. This is how we end up with Unforgiven, which looks like it’s rattling along as an interesting movie until it works itself out, unsurprisingly, as Eastwood machismo killporn… Read More Unforgiven (1992)
Dir. Samuel Fuller. Starring Peter Breck, Constance Towers, James Best Here’s the movie equivalent of finding a worm in your apple, and a good apple too. There’s a story edged with lightning to work with here: a journalist (Breck) with a little too much ambition and much too much confidence decides to have himself admitted… Read More Shock Corridor (1963)
Dir. Nicholas Ray. Starring Farley Granger, Cathy O’Donnell, Howard Da Silva A woman is like a dog, Keechie (O’Donnell) tells Bowie (Granger) one night. I knew a dog who lost his master and refused to eat food from anyone else’s hand, would let no one pet him. It is a humiliating comparison, and Keechie is… Read More They Live by Night (1948)
Dir. Elia Kazan. Starring Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty, Audrey Christie In The White Ribbon, the kids doing the evil deeds in pre-World War I Germany are given an opening because all four loci of power—business, medicine, education, and religion—fail to maintain their control; they abdicate, depending on one’s point of view, their responsibilities or positions.… Read More Splendor in the Grass (1961)
Dir. Tony Maylam. Starring James Coburn. Maylam pares down the Olympics to what makes them thrilling, the reason why every couple of years we stop doing what we do for two weeks and become curling strategists or figure skating nitpickers or speed skating enthusiasts. In the Winter Olympics in particular, speed is the answer. The… Read More White Rock (1977)
Dir. Hayao Miyazaki. To wit: a girl, goaded on by her parents, accidentally enters a world where spirits are visible and not always nice; where her gluttonous parents are turned into pigs and left on the edge of slaughter for days; where she must fight for a job just to be allowed to stay, where… Read More Spirited Away (2001)
Dir. Breck Eisner. Starring Matthew McConaughey, Steve Zahn, Penelope Cruz Dir. Kerry Conran. Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Giovanni Ribisi Two blockbusters, like in indignity, In the mid-aughts, where we lay our blame, From seared desert to dieselpunk city, Where bad reviews force bad pictures aflame. In Sahara, a group of ex-Navy Americans assist a… Read More Sahara (2005) and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
Dir. Roman Polanski. Starring Adrien Brody, Ed Stoppard, Frank Finlay “It’s a funny time to say this, but” Wladyslaw (Brody) begins to say to his sister Halina (Jessica Kate Mayer) as they walk to the cattle cars which will take his family away from Warsaw. “What?” she says. “I wish I knew you better,” he… Read More The Pianist (2002)
Dir. Albert Brooks. Starring Albert Brooks, Julie Hagerty, Garry Marshall Dir. John Carpenter. Starring Roddy Piper, Keith David, Peter Jason Any fool can point at an American movie from the ’80s and say, with some authority, “Well, I declare! This picture here’s a critique of Reagan-era capitalistic excess!” What strikes me about the pairing of… Read More Lost in America (1985) and They Live (1988)
Seeing Things Secondhand 