[7] Ron Howard (Splash, A Beautiful Mind) directs this sweet story about a group of nursing home residents who discover a ‘fountain of youth’ in a nearby pool. Turns out, though, that the pool’s power is extra-terrestrial. Soon the old folks become friends with aliens and an interesting proposition is made: Would you like to leave Earth and live forever on an alien planet? Wilford …
[6] Elia Kazan makes a concerted effort to be less ‘theatrical’ and more ‘cinematic’ with Panic in the Streets, a New Orleans thriller about a policeman and a doctor searching the streets for a killer infected with pneumonic plague. Richard Widmark plays the doctor and Paul Douglas plays the cop. They’re forced to work together and begrudgingly do so for a while, but they eventually …
[8] It’s been 11 years since Toy Story 2, and the same amount of time has passed in Buzz and Woody’s world. Andy is now heading off to college and the toys’ fates are up in the air. Will they go with him? Will they go to the attic? Or worse, what if they get thrown away? The movie explores all these possibilities and ends …
[7] Ingrid Bergman won the first of her three Oscars for this psychological thriller from George Cukor. Bergman plays a woman increasingly traumatized by her husband, a thief who nearly succeeds in convincing her that she’s losing her mind. It’s easy to invest in a movie when someone’s being mean to Ingrid Bergman. I only wish that she were more empowered in the story’s third …
[7] Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly are at the top of their game in A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard’s Oscar-winning biopic about John Nash, the brilliant but haunted mathematician who overcame schizophrenia and received the Nobel Prize. These are the best performances I’ve seen from Crowe and Connelly — their relationship is the glue that holds the film together. The first two-thirds of the movie …
[6] Olivia de Havilland won her first Oscar for this sudsy soap opera about a woman who gives up her infant son and spends the rest of her life trying to reconnect with him. The melodrama may be an acquired taste, but no one can steal audience sympathy better than de Havilland. I went with it, happy ending and all. In a neat (and slightly …
[8] A movie about corporate betrayal and litigation is normally not my idea of a good time, but The Social Network turns out to be a well-made, voyeuristic look back at the birth of a now-ubiquitous product that many users can’t live without. In fact, you wouldn’t be reading this review without it. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) is a shoe-in come Oscar time …
[7] Paul Newman and Robert Redford star in this influential, genre-bending Western about two outlaws who hole up in Bolivia to hide from a pursuing ‘superposse.’ William Goldman’s celebrated screenplay would become the progenitor of countless buddy films for decades to come. Paul Newman has referred to the film as “a love story between two men.” What’s remarkable is that the camaraderie between the two …
[7] Christopher Nolan serves up a wartime survival flick about Allied soldiers stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk, France, while the German army surrounds them. The water was so shallow, warships couldn’t pick up the troops, so loading the hundreds of thousands of soldiers was simply impossible. But the battle later became known as ‘The Miracle of Dunkirk,’ as hundreds of civilian boats came to the military’s …
[4] Near the end of both Singin’ in the Rain and An American in Paris, there is a big, epic dance number that feels very out of place. It’s the only thing I don’t like about Singin’ in the Rain, and the only thing I DO like about An American in Paris. The later film is essentially a superb 20-minute dance number tacked onto an …
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