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Year by year: My faves of the 2000s
9/11. The Iraq War. Hurricane Katrina. It was a fascinating decade in life, to say the least, and movies reflected that. 2000: 10. The Cell, director: Tarsem Singh9. American Psycho, director: Mary Harron8. High Fidelity, director: Stephen Frears7. Quills, director: Philip Kaufman6. Gladiator, director: Ridley Scott5. O Brother, Where Art Thou?, director: Joel Coen4. You…
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Holiday Inn (1942)
Holiday Inn is about as corny as it gets, but this Paramount musical conjures magic by bringing together three preeminent figures of 20th century song and dance: Irving Berlin, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Even if this 1942 picture wasn’t so much glossy fun, it would have earned a place in pop culture history for introducing…
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The Brothers Solomon (2007)
Considering the scathing reviews that greeted The Brothers Solomon upon its theatrical release, you’d think the filmmakers had been guilty of beating children and small dogs. I am happy to report that the movie I saw was guilty of nothing worse than mediocrity. Directed by Bob Odenkirk and penned by Saturday Night Live alum Will…
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Lady in the Water (2006)
Judging by the charges of rank self-indulgence that M. Night Shyamalan endured at the time for Lady in the Water, you might half-expect it to be 108 minutes of the director singing in the shower, brushing his teeth, and taking a dump while reading the Philadelphia Inquirer. The movie’s reception by critics in 2006 was…
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Year by year: My faves of the 1950s
Eisenhower. The Red Scare. Suburbia. Shopping malls. McDonald’s. Television. Rock ‘n’ roll. Beatniks. Duck and cover. Oh, and movies, especially the rise of world cinema. 1950: 10. Born Yesterday, director: George Cukor9. Born to Be Bad, director: Nicholas Ray8. Gun Crazy, Joseph H. Lewis7. The Gunfighter, director: Henry King6. Night and the City, director: Jules…
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Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
I love Moonrise Kingdom. There, I said it. End of review. OK, that’s not really the end. Pardon my rapturous take, but writer-director Wes Anderson appears to be one of very few filmmakers who can truly capture the strange world of adolescent love — its exuberance, its earnestness and its flat-out weirdness. Anderson’s best works,…
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The Lookout (2007)
In trying to recreate a sensibility from a bygone era, modern-day film noirs can seem as stiff and artificial as Botox treatment, but not The Lookout. Veteran screenwriter Scott Frank, making an impressive directorial debut here, adheres to the tenets of the genre without it feeling like a hermetically sealed tribute. The psychologically hobbled hero,…
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach
Let’s talk about movies.
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 