[8] Hot off his Best Director Oscar for Birdman, Alejandro González Iñárritu delivers another astonishing directorial effort. The Revenant is shot entirely outdoors with available lighting, capturing the story of an 1820s fur trader (Leonardo DiCaprio) who is viciously mauled by a bear and left for dead by a traitorous fellow trader (Tom Hardy). DiCaprio and Hardy are both equally up to the task here, …
[5] The disgraced Ivanhoe returns from the Crusades to learn King Richard the Lionheart is imprisoned in Austria. He goes to the court of King John to plea for Richard’s ransom, but King John is pretty keen to keep the throne for himself. So Ivanhoe teams with Robin of Locksley to raise the ransom and restore Richard to the throne. As Ivanhoe, Robert Taylor leaves …
[7] Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, Talented Mr. Ripley) adapts Charles Frazier’s book about a Civil War deserter trying to get back to his lover. The film goes back and forth between the soldier’s story and the sweetheart’s story. My main issue with Cold Mountain is that these two characters, played by Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, barely know each other at all before they …
[8] Robert DeNiro directs from a script by Eric Roth this taught, engaging, mysterious, and surprisingly emotional story about the birth of the CIA. Matt Damon stars, serving as our window into a world full of secrets and deception. Damon’s reserved cool gives costars Angelina Jolie and Eddie Redmayne plenty to act against, playing the wife and son who always get second fiddle to career …
[8] It’s amazing how interesting a movie about an interview can be. Granted, the subject of the interview is the first American president ever to be removed from office, and the motivation behind the interview is to get him to admit to the American people his abuse of power. Frost/Nixon is based on a stage play by Peter Morgan and director Ron Howard (Apollo 13, …
[4] George Clooney directs, co-writes, and co-stars in this examination of famed broadcast newsman Edward R. Murrow’s attempts to thwart McCarthyism at CBS. David Strathairn brings his usual nonchalance to the role of Murrow. Clooney plays his right-hand man, Fred Friendly. McCarthyism was scary and Murrow’s victories were important, but Clooney keeps Good Night, and Good Luck so restrained, it teeters on becoming a snooze …
[8] Robert Sean Leonard, Christian Bale, and Frank Whaley play tight-knit German teenagers rebelling against the growing Nazi party by embracing a counter culture of long hair and banned U.S. swing music. But as each of the boys is pressured into joining Hitler’s Youth organization, difficult and deadly decisions are made. Swing Kids is surprisingly dark for a film hiding under a Disney-esque veneer. And …
[8] Writer/director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters) takes on the life and work of sexual research pioneer Alfred Kinsey, whose teachings and publications caused a national uproar in the late ’40s and 50s. If you think America is sexually prudish and repressed now, try to imagine what it was like back in Kinsey’s day, with most people constantly wondering, “Am I normal?” Before the work …
[4] The third-ever Academy Award for ‘Best Picture’ went to this somewhat clunky, melodramatic story spanning three decades in the lives of two British families — one upstairs aristocrats, the other downstairs servants. It may have been one of the most popular films of 1933, but it’s not one to which the passage of time has been particularly kind. Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook play …
[4] Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr star in this action-comedy about American pilots who get caught up in a government-sanctioned opium trade in Vietnam War-era Laos. Once the pilots realize they’re about to be framed by one of their commanders to appease a head-hunting politician, they have to find a way to save their reputations and their lives. Air America is kinda heady stuff …
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