[8] Christopher Nolan (Inception, Memento) co-writes and directs this emotional sci-fi adventure about a farmer (Matthew McConaughey) who leaves his family during the last generation of human life on Earth, hoping to find a new planet for the species to call home. With the help of a secret rag-tag team of NASA scientists, he makes a two-year voyage to Saturn where a wormhole makes the …
[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 …
[5] Earthquake is one of many disaster films that came out in the early ’70s — the kind where a rag-tag team of waning celebrities band together to get thrown around for a couple of hours. In this one, Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner headline as a married couple on the outs. She’s a pill popper and he’s seeing a young widow (Genevieve Bujold) on …
[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 …
[6] Steve McQueen stars as a San Francisco cop charged with protecting a mobster who is about to squeal for a US senator. When the witness is killed, McQueen works around the clock to discern the identity of the killers before the senator has his head. First off, I have to say that was one of the hardest synopses I’ve ever done. Bullitt is a …
[6] Just as Robert Zemeckis had to make Forrest Gump and Tim Burton had to make Big Fish, so did David Fincher have to make The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. All three directors are known for their visual and/or technical prowess, and all three felt the need to wring a tear-jerker out of their filmographies, maybe just to prove they could? Benjamin Button is …
[7] Ethan Hawke plays a freshman L.A. narcotics officer crash-coursing with a rogue, undercover detective played by Denzel Washington. Training Day hits the ground running and turns into a taut, character-driven thriller that throws a few twists and surprises I didn’t see coming. The power-play between the two characters is the backbone of the movie. Denzel has the more colorful role, but Hawke is required …
[4] To give credit where credit is due, The Broadway Melody was the first sound film from MGM Studios, the second-ever Best Picture Oscar winner (the first with sound), and the first film in history to feature dance numbers filmed to pre-recorded music. It was the biggest money-maker of 1929 and spawned at least four sequels over the course of the next decade. It just …
[7] I love movies. But unlike most other people who love movies, I don’t love Wes Anderson movies. To me they’re a case of too much style over too little substance. I never care about the story or the characters, and I’m usually more inclined to fall asleep than chuckle at anything. And while The Grand Budapest Hotel is probably my favorite Anderson flick so …
[7] The Irwin Allen disaster epic is alive and well in this 1996 summer blockbuster in which evil aliens threaten to destroy Earth, leaving it up to a rag-tag team of politicians, soldiers, and scientists (plus a drunken crop-duster and a pole dancer!), to save humanity. The writing and directing team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin (Stargate, Godzilla) almost strike the perfect tone for …
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