Training Day (2001)

Training Day (2001)

[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…
The Broadway Melody (1929)

The Broadway Melody (1929)

[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…
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

[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,…
Independence Day (1996)

Independence Day (1996)

[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…
Woman of the Year (1942)

Woman of the Year (1942)

[6] Katharine Hepburn plays a journalist who bad-mouths sports in her widely-read column. Spencer Tracy plays a sportswriter who publishes a rebuttal. The two continue sparring publicly until they meet in person... and start to fall in love. Now don't…
Sophie’s Choice (1982)

Sophie’s Choice (1982)

[8] Meryl Streep snared the best actress Oscar for her disarming performance as a Polish refugee forced by a Nazi soldier into one of the cruelest scenarios a mother could imagine -- choosing which of her two children will die.…
Argo (2012)

Argo (2012)

[8] Score another point for Ben Affleck. I never much cared for him as an actor, but between this film and 2007's Gone Baby Gone, the guy has shown us some serious directing chops. Argo is the true story of…
Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

[2]

There’s precious little to keep you interested in this hideous-looking and busily boring shit-fest of a film that is both a nadir for director Tim Burton’s creative trajectory and emblematic of everything wrong with Hollywood in the early 21st century. Much muchness? Indeed. Alice in Wonderland is the cinematic equivalent of a priapism.

Frozen (2013)

Frozen (2013)

[8]

Disney’s Frozen borrows ideas from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen and follows closely in the footsteps of Tangled before it, but it’s also a bit more. For one thing, there’s an interesting sister dynamic at play here. One royal daughter, Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell), is the care-free sort, while the older daughter Elsa (Wicked‘s Idina Menzel) is born with a curse – the power to turn things into ice. After a childhood display of her magical powers nearly kills Anna, Elsa hides herself away for fear of hurting anyone. That’s all prelude. The story proper takes off when Anna inadvertently upsets Elsa on her coronation day. When the citizens of Arendelle discover their queen is a sorceress, they freak, she freaks, and a hard snow comes to fall. Elsa flees the kingdom and builds an ice castle for herself on the side of a mountain, leaving it up to little sister to later beg her for a return to warmer times.

All the President’s Men (1976)

All the President’s Men (1976)

[4] Alan J. Pakula (Sophie's Choice, The Pelican Brief) directs the big-screen story of how Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein cracked the Watergate scandal that lead to President Nixon's resignation. I love Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman…