Directed by Jon Turteltaub "Although the Jamaican bobsled team broke all the rules, the movie is content to follow them - to reprocess the story into the same formula as countless sports movies before it." - Roger Ebert I wasn't sure where to begin with this review.  First of all, I never really "review" movies or … Continue reading Cool Runnings (1993)

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky Solaris, Andrei Tarkovsky's third feature film, runs nearly three hours long and works on molding your perception of time.  Like 2017's A Ghost Story, the first half of the film tests your patience.  It moves like molasses, but the more accustomed you get to the long, silent shots, the more the payoff … Continue reading Solaris (1972)

Directed by George Lucas THX 1138 is important as a peace of film archeology.  In this early science-fiction story you can see the bones of what would become Star Wars as well as a series of political undertones reflective of the time in which the film was released and which would be seen in so many … Continue reading THX 1138 (1971)

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror is poetry in motion.  Not everyone likes poetry, and not everyone gets poetry.  I don't always get poetry, for example, but I often like the way words sound phonetically, and I like what I remember about The Mirror, even if they are just fragments in my mind. Like Terrence Malick's The … Continue reading The Mirror (1975)

Directed by Jim Sheridan The climactic fight in The Boxer takes place in an ornate ballroom, surrounded by tables of wealthy guests who applaud the two fighters tearing each other apart.  It's a strange setting that underscores the brutality and insanity of two men trying to beat each other up.  In other boxing matches, both in … Continue reading The Boxer (1997)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick Paths of Glory is a war film which turns into a courtroom drama.  Equal time is spent on the battlefield, in the general's lavish quarters and in a fanciful, Palace of Versailles-esque court.  The story is intimate, concerning the fates of three individual soldiers, but the scope is also much wider, … Continue reading Paths of Glory (1957)

Directed by Alex Garland Annihilation is one part Arrival, one part melodrama and one part 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It's a sci-fi movie which means we get a solid thirty minutes of exposition followed by the exploration of that sci-fi concept followed by a third act in which the film really gets to be what it wants to be, … Continue reading Annihilation (2018)

Directed by David Lean The Bridge on the River Kwai is a story about honor, duty and annihilation.  The plot centers on two characters who spend very little time with each other but who die together in the final scene.  Before the camera drifts away from the spectacle of an exploding bridge, a character utters, … Continue reading The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Directed by George Cukor Philadelphia Story is one of those movies I have a hard time writing about because I don't know what to say.  It's a fine movie, there are some nice performances by very famous actors, and it's occasionally funny.  That being said it's just a romantic comedy, right? What I will say … Continue reading The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh Steven Soderbergh is a strange director in that he's ostensibly an auteur, one of those artists whose name looms under the title of each of his films, but he also works so often within different genres.  Out of Sight is a fine but mostly forgettable movie about a bank robber and the … Continue reading Out of Sight (1998)