Dir. David Fincher. Starring Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Stellan Skarsgard All of us can name action movies or thrillers which don’t have all that much perspective to speak of, but have enough of a plot to remain entertaining and effective. This is Se7en, a movie which gets a lot of plot mileage out of punning… Read More The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
To see the entire list of my 100 top movies of last decade, or to find the landing page for the other years in this series, click here. I feel a bit on an island rating 2019 as low as I do in this decade. Only two years debut on my list later than… Read More Top 100 Movies of the Decade (2010-2019) — 2019
Dir. Nicholas Meyer. Starring William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, Christopher Plummer It’s a little hard to love the execution of The Undiscovered Country, a movie which throws quotes from Shakespeare around with total abandon in lieu of actualy dialogue—which suffers from a lack of any really good scenes between the one where Kirk (Shatner) and McCoy (Kelley)… Read More Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
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. Michael Mann. Starring Russell Crowe, Al Pacino, Christopher Plummer There are home goods chains with fewer lighting options than Mann makes use of in The Insider. Indoor lighting, outdoor lighting, faded out darkness, microscopic clarity, shadows, penumbras, pore-gazing well-lit closeups, the works. This is a truly omnivorous movie for lighting, and they primarily shine on… Read More The Insider (1999)
The following is from my series of Oscar Best Picture rankings, as well as my strongly worded suggestions for what should have won from among the nominees. For an introduction to the project, click here. For a way to vote on some Oscar-related ideas, click here. If I’ve written a review on any of the… Read More Better than the Oscars: 45-41
Honorable mentions: “Something Good,” “Edelweiss” The Sound of Music, your mother’s and my mother’s favorite musical. I think as soon as a woman with kids turns forty – maybe even thirty-five – she gravitates inexorably towards the Julie Andrews film, which won Best Picture a year after #33, four years after #43, and seven years… Read More Songs from Musicals: #32, “The Sound of Music,” from “The Sound of Music”
Seeing Things Secondhand 