To see my running list of the hundred greatest movie stars in American film history, click here All stars are listed with a single film which is particularly important, though not exclusively so, to understanding what makes them vital to American movies. 50) Steve McQueen / Key film – The Great Escape The “Steve McQueen… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars: 46-50
Dir. George Roy Hill. Starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross Surrounded by the Bolivian army, there is no escape for Butch (Newman) and Sundance (Redford). They know it. Half a lifetime of crimes that made the two of them celebrities in the West, and which made it too difficult for them to stay home,… Read More Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Dir. Anthony and Joe Russo. Starring Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Redford I wasn’t going to talk about Three Days of the Condor, but a little poking around and it turns out that the people who wrote the movie wanted to talk about Three Days of the Condor, so let’s talk about Three Days of the Condor. At the… Read More Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Dir. Richard Attenborough. Starring Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins, Ryan O’Neal In that subgenre of war movies which has to do with soldiers in battle, there’s a moment I always look for and rarely find. An officer, typically a name-brand actor, tells subordinates to move ahead on a position knowing that doing so will get them… Read More A Bridge Too Far (1977)
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: 40-36
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: 80-76
Dir. Robert Redford. Starring Timothy Hutton, Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore For a movie which places several of its most important scenes in therapy—a movie which is obsessive about getting Conrad (Hutton) to say what it is that’s been eating him up—it’s shocking that no one is willing to tell Beth (Moore), in plain English,… Read More Ordinary People (1980)
You can read up on the basis for this series here, and also find links to other posts in the series. Movies I’ve reviewed on this site have a link in the title which you can follow to read my full review. 10) Black Swan (2010), directed by Darren Aronofsky It is genuinely difficult… Read More 100 Exceptional American Movies in 10 Genres: Taut and Cold, 10-6
Dir. Robert Redford. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Rob Morrow, John Turturro About an hour or so into Quiz Show, I found myself…not bored, exactly, but struggling from an almost oppressive dose of formula. About an hour and five minutes into Quiz Show, I wondered if that was necessarily the movie’s fault. After all, most of the… Read More Quiz Show (1994)
Seeing Things Secondhand 