Dir. William Wyler. Starring Barbra Streisand, Omar Sharif, Kay Medford I will come clean about this movie: I had not seen it until recently, and worse still, I didn’t know much more about it than what you’d need to get a question right on it at trivia (“barbra streisand oscar fanny brice funny girl my… Read More Funny Girl (1968)
For a brief introduction and a running list of movies covered in this project, click here 4) Kes (1969), directed by Ken Loach Kes is the first foreign-language movie I’ve written about for this series (waits patiently for laughs). In seriousness, this is a fairly talky movie, done in Yorkshire accents so thick that I honestly wouldn’t… Read More Better than BFI’s Top 100: 4-2
One of the Grantland legacies I’m fond of, although I’m sure the idea didn’t start there, is the championship belt (RIP Grantland, long live Barnwell and Hyden). The purpose is to go year by year and create a list of who’s at the top of some field, which is a deceptively simple task, and one… Read More Anglophone Director Championship Belt, 1918-2018
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: 1
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: 45-41
Dir. Charles Sturridge. Starring Ted Danson, James Fox, Mary Steenburgen I have long been on the record that just because something shares the same title as its source material doesn’t mean, necessarily, that it must follow the source material’s lead. In practice, what that means is that film adapters should feel real freedom to edit… Read More Gulliver’s Travels (1996)
Seeing Things Secondhand 