The actor: Tom Hanks The character: Chesley Sullenberger The film: Sully The quote: “Birds.” In The Graduate, Walter Brooke goes up to Dustin Hoffman at a party and gives him a little advice about what field to get into. “Plastics,” he says. It’s ranked forty-second on AFI’s list, one spot above “We’ll always have Paris.”… Read More Top 100 American Movie Quotes of the 21st Century: #95
To see the intro to this project, as well as links to other decades, click here. 52) “Kid vs. Play (The Battle),” from House Party (1990) If there’s a rap battle in an earlier American narrative feature, I don’t know of it, and if there’s a more fun charismatic rap battle in a movie I… Read More Listen to America: The 1990s
To see my running list of the hundred greatest movie stars in American film history, click here We’ve reached the top 10! At this point, every star gets their own post. 8) Tom Hanks From 1993 to 2000, Tom Hanks was nominated for Best Actor four times, winning twice. He was the lead in at least… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars: 8
Dir. Brian De Palma. Starring Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, Saul Rubinek The Bonfire of the Vanities has an issue with its narration. I mean, you could make a long list of things that this movie has issues with, but the narration is what takes this picture from messy to stinky. You can smell the weakness… Read More The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken Steven Spielberg’s top six movies, per the AFI in 2007: Schindler’s List (8th) E.T. (24th) Jaws (56th) Raiders of the Lost Ark (66th) Saving Private Ryan (71st) Close Encounters of the Third Kind (64th in 1998, off the list in 2007) Steven Spielberg’s top seven movies, per Metacritic:… Read More Catch Me if You Can (2002)
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bob Odenkirk The camera moves a whole lot. It’s Steven Spielberg and Janusz Kaminski; one expects that it’s going to move elegantly. For the most part that’s even the case in this movie, I would say, typically able to move us around a newsroom or the offices… Read More The Post (2017)
Dir. Josh Cooley. Starring Tom Hanks, Annie Potts, Tony Hale Toy Story 4 is like the reverse ship of Theseus. In the original problem, the physical ship rots away and is replaced piece by piece, and the question is primarily whether the naming of the ship, or the spirit of the ship, is what makes… Read More Toy Story 4 (2019)
Tim: We begin this at 2:30 a.m. to bring the True-True to You-You.. (I want it said that Matt has edited “you all” to You-You, so that’s auspicious.) Matt: I am the Author (like Rowling) Tim: Both of us are avowed Cloud Atlas fans, both the movie and the really exceptional book it’s based on,… Read More Baumann and Burch Conversations #15: Cloud Atlas
The landing page, with rationale and links to other posts in this series, can be found here. Toy Story 3 is a movie about death. Towards the end of that picture, the toys are sliding, it seems inexorably, towards an incinerator. They have badly miscalculated the cost-benefit analyis of staying in the attic at Andy’s house, probably… Read More Disney/Pixar Rankings: 1
Dir. Penny Marshall. Starring Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Perkins, Jared Rushton Over the course of a year, three separate comedies put women at the upper echelons of late ’80s business and simultaneously ensnared them in love triangles. The world of business and work entwine each other until there is no clear separation between the profitable and… Read More Big (1988)
Seeing Things Secondhand 