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
Dir. Terrence Malick. Starring August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, Tobias Moretti Spoilers, yes, but I also don’t know that if you know anything about this movie that it could be spoiled. After all the hubbub that led to Abraham Lincoln’s ascension to the presidency—the brokered convention that put Lincoln on the Republican ticket, the broken Democratic… Read More A Hidden Life (2019)
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: 60-56
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
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. 5) The Great Escape (1963), directed by John Sturges It all goes bad so… Read More 100 Exceptional American Movies in 10 Genres: Veterans of Foreign Wars, 5-1
Dir. Terrence Malick. Starring Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard The single most annoying artistic choice among mainstream directors in the past decade or so has got to be the orange and blue color contrast that is just everywhere, in movies as diverse as Transformers and, as the author of that link brilliantly points out,… Read More Days of Heaven (1978)
Dir. Terrence Malick. Starring Jim Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, Nick Nolte In his essay on The Thin Red Line for the Criterion Collection, David Sterritt calls it “arguably the greatest war film ever made.” I’m not sure I would go that far, seeing as Grand Illusion still exists, but I have a hard time thinking of… Read More The Thin Red Line (1998)
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 use to read my full review. 5) Election (1999), directed by Alexander Payne. I’ve written this a thousand times,… Read More 100 Exceptional American Movies in 10 Genres: Young Adult, 5-1
Dir. Terrence Malick. Starring Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Ramon Bieri Picture links back here I’m not sure I’ve ever reacted to the end of a movie before like I did with Badlands; I’ve never been given a clearer, more concrete grip on character motivation and thought it obliterated the movie’s feel. (The last movie I… Read More Badlands (1973)
(For an introduction to the project and an index of other entries in the series, click here. For a list of more than 800 films which I considered for the top 450 and my eligibility qualifications, click here. And for a way to vote on what you think the top 100 American narrative fiction feature films are, click here.… Read More Better than AFI’s Top 100: Un Certain Regard
Seeing Things Secondhand 