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,…
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)
[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)
[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)
[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)
[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…
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
[8]
Director Sidney Lumet showcases a true story ripped from the headlines, about two amateur bank robbers who started a media sensation that exploded further when the public learned of their unusual circumstances. Al Pacino stars as the master-mind of the heist plan that goes to hell and Charles Durning costars as the police captain who tries to manage the 24-hour siege. What’s most remarkable about this story is the robbers’ unexpected courtesy toward their hostages and law enforcement, as well as the reason Pacino’s character needs the money — to pay for his lover’s sex change. Lumet’s unadorned, fly-on-the-wall approach neither sensationalizes nor condescends to any of the material or its characters. Dog Day Afternoon is a mesmerizing mash-up of the gritty and the oddly touching, the darkly comic and the emotionally tense. Frank Pierson took home the Academy Award for his original screenplay, while the film also earned nominations for Best Picture, Director, and Editing (Dede Allen). Pacino was nominated for Best Actor and Chris Sarandon (Fright Night, The Princess Bride) was nominated for his supporting role as Pacino’s exasperated boyfriend. With John Cazale and Carol Kane.
Gravity (2013)
[6]
Gravity is so harrowing, I’m tempted to call it crisis porn. The movie stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts stranded in orbit over Earth after debris destroys their spacecraft. Director Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, A Little Princess) warns us from the get-go with some on-screen text that life in space is impossible, and then proceeds to throw everything you can imagine at Bullock and Clooney’s characters. They’ve got dwindling oxygen supplies, they’ve got the debris looping back around at them every ninety minutes, their spacesuits are running out of propulsion, and their connection to Huston has gone dark. There are the threats of burning alive, freezing to death, drowning, and slipping into coma. They see other members of their crew frozen solid, flesh exposed to the vacuum of space — one guy with a tidy hole clean through his head.
Heaven Can Wait (1978)
[5] A light, fluffy, inconsequential comedy about a man who dies and is given the opportunity to return to life in another man's body. The movie works best during it's 'fish out of water' scenes, where Warren Beatty interacts with…
The Night of the Iguana (1964)
[6] John Huston adapts Tennessee Williams' play for the big screen, and finds big stars to play the parts. Richard Burton and Ava Gardner deliver great performances as a defrocked priest and a jaded hotel owner, both on the verge…