With the Oscars around the corner, I’m doing blurbs for each of this year’s Best Picture nominees in lieu of full reviews. (I don’t plan anything I do, so I’ve linked to ones with reviews already published…) I’ve ranked the films from best to worst below as a method of organization. Occasionally I’ll reference my… Read More 94th Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees, Ranked
To read my introduction to this set of rankings, go here. I’ve broken the twenty-three movies from this franchise into tiers of irregular size. I still have a fairly firm ranking in my head for each of them, but I include the tiers to give a sense of what movies roughly match each other in… Read More Infinity Saga/Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranking – Part 2
To read my introduction to this set of rankings, go here. I’ve broken the twenty-three movies from this franchise into tiers of irregular size. I still have a fairly firm ranking in my head for each of them, but I include the tiers to give a sense of what movies roughly match each other in… Read More Infinity Saga/Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranking – Part 1
Dir. Chris Columbus. Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson The great strength of Sorcerer’s Stone is that it leaned all the way into making us awestruck at the Wizarding World. The great failure of Chamber of Secrets is that it leaves aside that sense of discovery which came with its predecessor. For example, a… Read More Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Starring Lily James, Richard Madden, Cate Blanchett Pretend I sound like your mother when I say: This is just a nice movie. The story of Cinderella (James) is one that banks on the obvious cruelty that the stepmother (Blanchett) and stepsisters (Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera) throw at our innocent heroine. Some… Read More Cinderella (2015)
For a brief introduction and a running list of movies covered in this project, click here 45) Hamlet (1996), directed by Kenneth Branagh The only Shakespeare adaptation I’ve put on this list is almost certainly the longest. I’ve expressed my admiration for Olivier’s Hamlet before, which is exciting and well acted on top of having really fascinating production design… Read More Better than BFI’s Top 100: 45-41
Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Starring Kenneth Branagh, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tom Bateman Spoilers, I guess. It seems seriously unnecessary to do that for a movie based on an eighty-year-old novel with multiple adaptations, but… There are more than a dozen named characters squeezed into a fairly limited space for the bulk of this movie, and I’m not… Read More Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Dir. Christopher Nolan. Starring Fionn Whitehead, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy Spoilers follow Dunkirk is bent on undoing its emotional work through its structure. The movie is already bound, even at a week old, to reach Memento levels of discussion of its timeline. Three plots intersect over the course of the film. One focuses on a… Read More Dunkirk (2017)
Before going into straight review territory on this blog, I used to spend a lot more of my time making lists; I blame Buzzfeed for taking the joy out of the format. But recently, while I was reading Ben Lindbergh’s recent post at The Ringer about whether or not a movie should be remade, I… Read More Remakes I’m Asking For
Seeing Things Secondhand 