Dir. David Fincher. Starring Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Stellan Skarsgard All of us can name action movies or thrillers which don’t have all that much perspective to speak of, but have enough of a plot to remain entertaining and effective. This is Se7en, a movie which gets a lot of plot mileage out of punning… Read More The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
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. For every 2015 movie that ultimately made this list, there’s another one that I liked but which never had the energy to climb aboard. For a… Read More Top Movies of the Decade (2010-2019) — 2015
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: 80-76
Dir. Alain Resnais. Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada, Bernard Fresson Dir. Spike Jonze. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams In a sea of other people, a French actress (Riva) and a Japanese architect (Okada) fall painfully and deeply in love. That sea of other people is less the present population of Hiroshima and more… Read More Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Her (2013)
Dir. David Fincher. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer There is a sadness at the heart of The Social Network which is attractive to me because so much of it is self-inflicted. When we recall the movie, we will no doubt remember the warmly lit but definitely dour boardrooms where the depositions take place, and we… Read More The Social Network (2010)
Seeing Things Secondhand 