[7] In colonial Kenya, a Danish baroness has an ongoing affair with a big game hunter. On one hand, Sydney Pollacks’ Oscar-winning best picture is long and subdued. But on the other hand, it does a great job transporting you to another time and place. The wildlife, cinematography, and music score (another fine work from John Barry) will whisk you away whether you want whisked or …
[5] This early Oscar-winning best picture is uneven at best. Richard Dix makes for a hammy lead, while Irene Dunne is stuck playing his harpy of a wife. The film follows the two as they move west to Oklahoma at the end of the 1800s. The second half of the movie skips through so much time and character development, I felt pretty discombobulated by the …
[6] Charlton Heston headlines an ensemble cast in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth. We’re talking, of course, about the Circus — and the lives of the people who put it on. Heston plays the owner and manager of the sprawling, traveling outfit. Betty Hutton is the love interest he has no time for, while Cornel Wilde plays the hunky trapeze artist who …
[5] This early Best Picture Oscar winner is a three-hour mix of song, dance, and narrative, much like Broadway Melody before it. I was expecting a real stinker, especially when the opening credits revealed “Fashion Parades by Adrian”. But apart from being overly long and anachronistic, it wasn’t so bad. The narrative is fashioned loosely around the life of Broadway’s legendary Florenz Ziegfeld Jr (the …
[8] Director Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame) brings to life the true-life story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York who is kidnapped and sold into Southern slavery. Northup endures two different owners and many harrowing experiences before attempting to reach out for help from his friends in the North. McQueen succeeds in making very palpable the fear and danger that comes in …
[9] Birdman swoops into cineplexes offering the antidote to superhero hysteria, CGI migraines, and Hollywood’s usual hackneyed, formulaic bullshit. It’s goddamned original, a showcase for skill and craft, and a breath of fresh fucking air. Michael Keaton turns in a career-best performance as a one-time popular film actor who is risking it all to put on a Broadway play. In the span of hours leading …
[7] Paul Muni stars as Emile Zola, the famous French author whose critical writings brought the scorn of the French government, especially when he came out in support of a wrongfully-condemned army officer. The first half of this film, directed by William Dieterle (The Devil and Daniel Webster), offers a high level overview of Zola’s penniless beginnings and his breakthrough success with the novel Nana. …
[4] Around the World in 80 Days is a three-hour-long, episodic adventure that’s high on spectacle and low on story or character. I wager it played better to a 1950s audience interested in seeing a cliche-ridden “It’s a Small World”-like pastiche of world cultures. I wish leading actor David Niven had more to do in his role — it could have really helped the film …
[3] What a shitty Best Picture winner Gigi is. It’s a musical about an unhappy playboy (Louis Jourdan) and an unhappy debutante (Leslie Caron) who fall in love, but then out of love, and back in love, and out, and finally in again. Apparently neither one feels right playing by the rules of Parisian upper-crust society and doing what is expected of them, so they …
[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 …
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