Dir. Lana and Lilly Wachowski. Starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss The ’90s remain a key reference point for action films in this country, and to say “’90s action movie” is to call up larger than life scenarios and apocalyptic visions. There are significantly more ludicrous ’90s action movies than Point Break, say, but… Read More The Matrix (1999)
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)
Dir. Richard Linklater. Starring Cate Blanchett, Emma Nelson, Billy Crudup Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a truly rare thing: a movie that runs at about 105 minutes that really ought to run about 135. Anyone who’s watched an Oscar movie will know that the opposite is so much more often the experience, but like Nocturnal Animals,… Read More Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2019)
The following is part of an overview of the top 100 American narrative fiction feature films, from my perspective. For an introduction to the project and an index of other entries in the series, click here. For a list of more than 800 films which I considered for the top 450 and my eligibility qualifications, click here.… Read More Better than AFI’s Top 100: 7-5
Dir. Spike Lee. Starring Laurence Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, Spike Lee Mission College, like any university, appears to be governed both practically and socially by a set of totally arcane rules, held by a small number of gatekeepers who seem not entirely sure how best to use those rules to benefit the college, their groups, or… Read More School Daze (1988)
Seeing Things Secondhand 