July 1st The place I want to start with Pompeii is its budget, because it’s a blockbuster/spectacle movie and, cynically, I have a hard time starting anywhere else with those. The numbers vary, but let’s call it $90 million in 2014 dollars. My guess is that you are watching pretty close to $90 million on… Read More Movie Diary 2023 (7/1-7/5): Please Stop Making Me Watch Clips from High Society
I’ve said it about the movie lists that I make, I’ve said it about the AFI lists and other like bodies, I’ve said it about awards shows. The value in a list or a ranking of movies is about what the people making the lists want to tell you about themselves. How do they want… Read More The 2022 Sight and Sound Critics’ List: The Story of the Poll in Ten Movies
You can find the introduction and index for this series here. Film Director Year Type It’s Always Fair Weather Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly 1955 Narrative feature The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit Nunnally Johnson 1956 Narrative feature Peyton Place Mark Robson 1957 Narrative feature Last Train from Gun Hill John Sturges 1959 Narrative feature… Read More 100 American Films to Save: Dismay (1955-1965)
For each movie in the top 100, I’ve written a question to answer. (It would get very, very boring for me to have to write some variation on “boy howdy, you’ll never believe how good this movie is” one hundred more times.) There’s no exact sentence or word count I’m holding myself to here, but… Read More Top 250 American Movies: 81-90
To see the intro to this project, as well as links to other decades, click here. 20) “S’Wonderful,” from An American in Paris (1951) The first Best Picture winner in color since Gone with the Wind, An American in Paris likewise hearkens back to what weary viewers might have seen as a simpler time. After… Read More Listen to America: The 1950s
Steven Hyden introduced his five-albums test more than a decade ago as a third way to judge a band, short of its popularity or its critical acclaim. While this one is not meant to stand on its own—for example, he’s not sure that either Bob Dylan nor the Rolling Stones had made five great albums… Read More The Five-Movies Test or: Which Director Has Had the Best Stretch of Consecutive Feature-Length Films in English?
To see my running list of the hundred greatest movie stars in American film history, click here All stars are listed with a single film which is particularly important, though not exclusively so, to understanding what makes them vital to American movies. 15) Clark Gable / Key film – Gone with the Wind There’s kind of… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars: 11-15
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
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: 25-21
Dir. Vincente Minnelli. Starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant It’s impossible to talk about An American in Paris without referencing La La Land now, and I promise that I will contain all of my vexation to this paragraph. In La La Land, the most memorable piece of the movie is Gosling and Stone’s dance at sunrise, which takes place against… Read More An American in Paris (1951)
Seeing Things Secondhand 