[8] Writer/director Alex Garland (The Beach, Sunshine) casts Natalie Portman as a biologist who joins a team of other female scientists into a mysterious, growing dome called ‘the shimmer’. Inside they quickly learn that the phenomenon is altering the DNA of flora and fauna — including themselves. They head to the source of the mystery, a lighthouse where a meteor crashed years ago. Will they …
[8] Writer/director Alexander Payne (Election, About Schmidt) takes us on a trip through California wine country with two middle-aged college buddies in Sideways, based on a novel by Rex Pickett. Paul Giamatti plays a divorced junior high school teacher suffering from depression and anxiety whose dream of becoming a published author is about the only thing keeping him going. Thomas Haden Church is a somewhat …
[8] Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck star in this lively screwball comedy from director Howard Hawks. Cooper is working on a new encyclopedia with seven other scholars when he realizes the group is woefully uneducated in the world of contemporary slang. So he hits the streets to research and stumbles upon a wisecracking lounge singer named Sugarpuss O’Shea, played by Stanwyck. He invites her to …
[8] Naomi Watts and Laura Harring star in this dreamy David Lynch film that almost defies summary, but I’ll do my best. Watts plays a young actress fresh in Hollywood who meets Harring, a woman who just escaped a car crash and has amnesia. Trying to figure out Harring’s identity, the two uncover an unsettling mystery and fall in love. Meanwhile, Justin Theroux plays a …
[8] Julie Andrews stars as a magical nanny who swoops into a turn-of-the-century London family’s home to help two neglected children (Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber) reconnect with their busy-body parents. Mary Poppins is often regarded the best of Walt Disney’s live-action efforts, thanks to an effervescent combination of music and fantasy, and charismatic performances from Andrews and co-star Dick Van Dyke, who plays a …
[8] The Brave Little Toaster bares the title of an innocuous children’s cartoon, but there’s more to this gem than may initially meet the eye. First, know that Pixar Animation founder John Lasseter originally pitched this movie as his first computer-animated feature, an honor that later went to the similarly-themed Toy Story. Many of the top talent from The Brave Little Toaster went on to …
[8] William Wellman directs Clark Gable in this loose adaptation of Jack London’s classic novel. While the book is entirely from the point-of-view of Buck, a weathered sled dog, this film version focuses more on human characters. Gable and his comedic sidekick (Jack Oakie) are on a quest for gold in the Yukon when they stumble across a lone woman (Loretta Young) fighting off wolves. …
[8] Stanley Kramer (Inherit the Wind, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) directs an impressive roster of talent in this dramatization of four Nazi judges on trial for war crimes in occupied Germany. Spencer Tracy leads the cast as the American judge summoned to preside over the case. While considering passionate arguments from the prosecution (Richard Widmark) and defense (Maximilian Schell), he spends his evenings developing …
[8] Director James Whale (Waterloo Bridge) was given free reign by Universal Pictures to craft a sequel to his highly successful Frankenstein. The result is a more daring and stylized film considered by many to be the most remarkable in all the studio’s legacy of classic monster movies. In The Bride of Frankenstein, both Frankenstein and his monster survive their apparent deaths at the end …
[8] Two restless Mexican teenagers (Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna) take a road trip with an older woman (Maribel Verdú) who just learned her husband cheated on her. Their destination is a private beach that may or may not exist, but as with all road trip movies, it’s the journey that counts. Demons of the past are confronted, sexual discoveries are made, and new …
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