Dir. David Lean. Starring Ann Todd, Ralph Richardson, Nigel Patrick Dir. Christopher Nolan. Starring John David Washington, Elizabeth Debicki, Robert Pattinson In two bloated ages of blockbuster filmmaking, David Lean and Christopher Nolan are curious rejoinders to their times. Lean, while not immune to the bloat of the 1950s and 1960s, made films which more… Read More The Sound Barrier (1952) and Tenet (2020)
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
Dir. James Ivory. Starring Helena Bonham Carter, Maggie Smith, Julian Sands There’s a neatness in A Room with a View that is a little offputting. The Edwardian neatness makes sense within its context, but in the film’s rush to create an opposition to that neatness, created almost entirely with looks to Wordsworth’s Nature, the movie… Read More A Room with a View (1985)
Dir. Martin Rosen. Starring John Hurt, Michael Graham Cox, Richard Briers In the late ’70s and early ’80s, there was a beautiful trend in animation which has by and large been abandoned by major studios. Characters would be rendered in a cartoonish, borderline cutesy style, but backgrounds and establishing shots would be rendered in these… Read More Watership Down (1978)
Dir. Patrick Garland. Starring Claire Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, Anna Massey For all of the hype about the end of A Doll’s House (which I rather prefer translated as “A Doll House” but which is not terribly important to what I’m saying here), one forgets that it reads rather like the second draft of a dramatic encounter on The… Read More A Doll’s House (1973)
Seeing Things Secondhand 