Tag: Film

  • The 15 best coming-of-age films

    Few stories, cinematic or otherwise, have proved as enduring as coming of age. There are countless variations, of course: a first love or heartbreak, a reckoning with mortality, learning a truth about a parent or friend, discovering right and wrong. You get the idea. Regardless of the particulars, the best coming-of-age stories endure because growing…

  • The 15 best school-centric films

    For good or ill––or, more accurately, for good and ill––school is a foundational building block of who we become. The classroom is where we learn to read, write, and do arithmetic, of course, but the instruction does not end there. There are critical lessons to be had in the cafeteria, the locker rooms, the playground:…

  • The best movies of 2025!

    For cinephiles, 2025—much as with nearly every other facet of society—was not for the faint of heart. Netflix’s intended purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery has ominous implications for the long-term future of movie theaters. The introduction last September of a fully AI-generated actress named Tilly Norwood flipped out Hollywood for a period. New ideas continued…

  • Prince of the City (1981)

    Although Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City hit movie theaters in 1981, its deliberate pace, brooding vibe and moral ambivalence place it squarely in line with the director’s string of 1970s-era masterworks that included Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and Network. Based on a 1978 nonfiction book by Robert Daley, Prince of the City changes names and times, but it essentially…

  • If I picked the Oscars – 2024 edition

    In this exercise that no one asked for, let’s imagine for a moment that I were not only a voting member of The Academy, but the ONLY voting member of the Academy. What would my nominations look like? Who would be the winners? Admittedly, determining the Oscars would be way down on my list of…