To see the entire list of my 100 top movies of last decade, or to find the landing page for the other years in this series, click here. My recollections of the 2017 movie season—the first one I followed with any real interest since I was blindsided with the double abominations of The Artist… Read More Top 100 Movies of the Decade (2010-2019) — 2017
Last year, my year-end review of the movies I watched still had the sheen of professional list-making on itl: I thought about it as, more or less, the fifty best movies I saw that year which I hadn’t seen before, but allowed for some leeway on that front to talk about the movies which I… Read More 2019 Year-End Review: Forty-Five Moments
For a brief introduction and a running list of movies covered in this project, click here 7) Odd Man Out (1947), directed by Carol Reed 6) Hunger (2008), directed by Steve McQueen In the course of the past couple years, I have watched a number of movies from and about Ireland. I’ve seen Ken Loach’s takes, and John Ford’s… Read More Better than BFI’s Top 100: 7-5
For a brief introduction and a running list of movies covered in this project, click here 35) The Man in the White Suit (1951), directed by Alexander Mackendrick The most successful of the British labor comedies, The Man in the White Suit does a good job of making the comedy work. This is a fairly zany movie largely… Read More Better than BFI’s Top 100: 35-31
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: 65-61
In the following talk, Tim and Matt think about the career of Paul Thomas Anderson, his movies, Phantom Thread in particular, and where he sits at what is probably the midpoint of his career. In lieu of an actual podcast, we give you this lightly edited conversation. You can find Matt’s work here. Tim: After… Read More Baumann and Burch Conversations, #2: Paul Thomas Anderson
Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Vicky Krieps, Daniel Day-Lewis, Lesley Manville Spoilers, for those averse to them. One of the interesting developments in Daniel Day-Lewis’ acting is how thin he’s gotten. The man has never been chunky, but it’s been twenty-five years since Last of the Mohicans and fifteen since Gangs of New York, two… Read More Phantom Thread (2017)
Dir. Mike Leigh. Starring Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Timothy Spall I’m not the world’s foremost Mike Leigh expert or anything, but I was amazed when he did something I’d never seen him do before in a movie: he rushed. The movie’s final confrontation is like coming downstairs, missing one, stumbling, but adjusting in the last… Read More Secrets and Lies (1996)
Dir. Mike Leigh. Starring Timothy Spall, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey It takes a great will to make a biopic which does not lead to something. Say that Topsy-Turvy is a biopic, which I don’t know that I agree with but wouldn’t argue long about, and it is a clear case of leading up to a moment. Specifically, the movie… Read More Mr. Turner (2014)
Dir. Mike Leigh. Starring Jim Broadbent, Allan Corduner, Michael Savage Some movies are perfect in the grammatical, Latin sense. Casablanca is a perfect movie. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a perfect movie. So are The Leopard, Ordet, and The Thin Red Line. (Making a list of “perfect movies” might be a potentially fatal wormhole.) These movies accomplish: at the end,… Read More Topsy-Turvy (1999)
Seeing Things Secondhand 