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. 90) Kate Winslet / Key film – Titanic A somewhat difficult actress to… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars: 86-90
Dir. Danny Boyle. Starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels About an hour into Steve Jobs, it’s clear that something about the movie just isn’t working well enough. The first forty minutes are remarkably tight, so direct and effective that it’s easy to forget the freewheeling Danny Boyle is behind the wheel with a roadmap… Read More Steve Jobs (2015)
Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Starring Laurence Fishburne, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet In the moment, Contagion is a rush. This is one of the virtues of its structure, one of the late legacies of the aughts fascination with multiple loosely connected story strands. (It’s like everyone in Hollywood watched Nashville on the same weekend in 1998 and spent the… Read More Contagion (2011)
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: 50-46
You can read up on the basis for this series here, and also find links to other posts in the series. Movies I’ve reviewed on this site have a link in the title which you can follow to read my full review. 10) Cloud Atlas (2012), directed by Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski, and Tom Tykwer Look,… Read More 100 Exceptional American Movies in 10 Genres: Sprawling, 10-6
Dir. Peter Jackson. Starring Melanie Lynskey, Kate Winslet, Clive Merrison Heavenly Creatures is Jackson’s breakout movie. In many ways, it’s like watching his own home movies, back when he relied not on New Line but the government of New Zealand to fund his work. In terms of chronology, at least, Jackson was closing in on… Read More Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Seeing Things Secondhand 