For a brief introduction and a running list of movies covered in this project, click here 10) Don’t Look Now (1973), directed by Nicolas Roeg As a mystery in English, I’m not sure there’s another picture that compares to Don’t Look Now until Mulholland Drive, and even then those two movies take such different approaches to solving mysteries that… Read More Better than BFI’s Top 100: 10-8
For a brief introduction and a running list of movies covered in this project, click here 25) Black Narcissus (1947), directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger Leonardo DiCaprio (Howard), Cate Blanchett (Kate), Jude Law (Errol), and Adam Scott (Johnny) are all sitting at a table together. Two of them are a little teed off about… Read More Better than BFI’s Top 100: 25-21
For a brief introduction and a running list of movies covered in this project, click here 35) The Man in the White Suit (1951), directed by Alexander Mackendrick The most successful of the British labor comedies, The Man in the White Suit does a good job of making the comedy work. This is a fairly zany movie largely… Read More Better than BFI’s Top 100: 35-31
One of the Grantland legacies I’m fond of, although I’m sure the idea didn’t start there, is the championship belt (RIP Grantland, long live Barnwell and Hyden). The purpose is to go year by year and create a list of who’s at the top of some field, which is a deceptively simple task, and one… Read More Anglophone Director Championship Belt, 1918-2018
I’m joining in the spirit of the year-in-review post, even though the way I watch movies isn’t really conducive to the kind of list that one usually sees at the end of the year. (Incidentally, if you happen to be a recent music aficionado, friend of the blog Matt will have his year-end list of… Read More 2018 Year-End Review: Fifty Movies
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: 30-26
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: 70-66
Dir. Roman Polanski. Starring Natassja Kinski, Peter Firth, Leigh Lawson Dir. Delbert Mann. Starring David Niven, Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth Two scenes from Tess, one of the great movies of the 1970s, made me wonder what the movie would have been like in another director’s hands. When Angel (Firth) returns from Brazil, with a shaggier beard… Read More Tess (1979) and Separate Tables (1958)
Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr, Anton Walbrook The scene that made me love Powell and Pressburger is relatively unimportant in this film. Clive Candy (Livesey) has gone to Germany to publicly denounce an avid German nationalist and a true scoundrel named Kaunitz (David Ward). Unsurprisingly, the hotheaded officer with… Read More The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, David Farrar Once again, I find myself a little lost for words trying to talk about a Powell and Pressburger movie, so once again I’ll go to a shot and try to work backwards. There are fewer famous images in Black Narcissus than in… Read More Black Narcissus (1947)
Seeing Things Secondhand 