This year, I watched more new-to-me movies than I’d ever watched before in a single year. I don’t have all that much in common with Pauline Kael, but as she boasted that she never saw a movie twice, I much prefer to learn a new movie rather than experience a movie I’ve seen before. I… Read More 2022 Year-End Review: What I Learned
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: 41-50
Directed Michael Mann. Starring James Caan, Tuesday Weld, Robert Prosky The opening sequence of Thief is gorgeous in that sort of meretricious urban way. Neon lights blurring out the moon, dark asphalt streets, wet pockets in potholes, the lights of cars glowing: it’s all very yellow fog rubbing its back against the window-panes. Watching Thief, I was put… Read More Thief (1981)
Dir. Michael Mann. Starring Russell Crowe, Al Pacino, Christopher Plummer There are home goods chains with fewer lighting options than Mann makes use of in The Insider. Indoor lighting, outdoor lighting, faded out darkness, microscopic clarity, shadows, penumbras, pore-gazing well-lit closeups, the works. This is a truly omnivorous movie for lighting, and they primarily shine on… Read More The Insider (1999)
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: 90-86
Dir. Michael Mann. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe, Steven Waddington What if Michael Mann is responsible for the best journalism flick of the ’90s, the best cop movie of the ’90s, and the best western of the ’90s? I don’t know that there’s much argument that The Insider and Heat fill those first two niches, but there may be… Read More The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
Seeing Things Secondhand 