From My Collection: Shakespeare in Love Movie Review

I just recently rewatched Shakespeare in Love and it was a s good, if not better than I remember it. John Madden’s film of the fictional and comic fantasy of how the greatest romantic tragedy in literary history came to be was my favorite film of 1998. I saw it Christmas Day, part of a moviegoing tradition I diligently maintained from 1997 through 2005, and then again a few weeks after. I bought the DVD in 1999 and have watched it a few times over the years and now I have the Blu-Ray (yes, I’m a dinosaur) so I can enjoy it in HD whenever I please. I was one of few people to accurately predict its victory in the Best Picture Oscar contest. In the Oscar pool I used to manage, only three people out of about thirty made that pick over Saving Private Ryan.

From My Collection: Good Will Hunting Movie Review

Good Will Hunting was the first in a series of roles Robin Williams took that became increasingly dark, subversive, and at times questioning the very nature of our existence. It’s easy to see patterns in retrospect and ascribe meaning to them, but I remember it being clear at the time that Williams seemed intent on making a serious mark as a dramatic actor in a range of parts in (often) independent films. The years following Good Will Hunting saw him chase his suicidal wife into limbo as his character negotiated his own afterlife in What Dreams May Come. Later he was the villain in both One Hour Photo and Insomnia. But a lot of that seems to point right back to Gus Van Sant’s 1997 film penned by the wunderkinds Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Of course the Oscar Williams finally won likely helped earn him more interesting offers and afforded him greater freedom to take risks. But without Sean Maguire, the widowed psychiatrist who helps the title character find himself, he might have continued making more of Hook and Mrs. Doubtfire.

To the Wonder Movie Review

“Weak people never bring anything to an end themselves. They wait for others to do it.”

There’s a reason I have such trouble remembering details from any of Terrence Malick’s films. He composes them with fleeting touches. There are no traditional movie scenes involving events or actions coupled with dialogue. These are the things that are easy to recall: “Remember that scene when so and so says…?” With Malick the best you get are snapshots that almost float freeform from one to another. They are like memories of a life remembered, says star Ben Affleck in one of the DVD extras. Even the one Malick film I’ve seen more than once, The Thin Red Line, stands in my memory more as a series of images in no particular order, but because there’s no real A to Z plot there’s no glue to hold it together in my mind.

Argo Movie Review

Just about everyone knows or remembers that in 1979 Iranian revolutionaries seized control of the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for the next 444 days, after which all of them went home alive. The story was on the minds of nearly everyone in the country. The incident figured heavily in the sense of national pride when the U.S. hockey team defeated Russia and won gold at the Lake Placid Olympics. My six year old brother was so disturbed by the story that he scratched Iran off a beautiful glass globe that belonged to my great grandfather.

The part I never knew, and what many people apparently never knew, was that six Americans escaped out the back door and hid at the home of the Canadian ambassador while the CIA worked out scenarios for exfiltrating them. Even less known than that was the method eventually used and the cover provided to bring them home safely. The real story was declassified in 1997 and has now been turned into a movie called Argo and directed by Ben Affleck. Chris Terrio wrote the screenplay based on a 2007 “Wired” article by Joshuah Bearman and on a book by the CIA operative Tony Mendez, who orchestrated the escape. Apollo 13 has been playing recently on AMC. What I remembered most about that movie was how great Ron Howard was at building suspense through a story whose outcome we already knew. Those three astronauts survived, but we feel the tension along with them because they don’t know what their futures hold. That’s how I felt during much of Argo.

Chasing Amy Movie Review: From My Collection

At some point in my adult life I had to come to the sad conclusion, completing my disillusionment, that Kevin Smith is a much better writer than director. In fact, he doesn’t make very good movies. Clerks succeeds because it was all of a time and place: a scrappy little independent low budget film that had some very funny bits. His follow up was not well-received by anyone, but in 1997 Chasing Amy was something of a revelation. At the time I thought it was just about the perfect romantic comedy. Watching it again now for the first time in many years I still think it’s got some wonderful dialogue, keen relationship insights and still sets the bar for the genre, but I recognize how shoddy the filmmaking is.

The Town Movie Review: Ben Affleck's Second Film as Director Shows He's Not a One-Hit Wonder

Film noir of the 1940s and 50s, with its dark subject matter, antihero protagonists, chiaroscuro lighting and often down endings, is largely regarded as an offshoot of the place of the American psyche following the harrowing years of WWII. Likewise, the resurgence of the genre, dubbed neo-noir in the 1970s (including films like Chinatown and The Long Goodbye), reflected the public’s attitude toward the downward spiral of the American empire in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam.

So one might think that today’s political climate – two wars with no end in sight, one of them started on dubious evidence, a financial crisis the likes of which no one has seen in more than 70 years – would foster a another slew of noir films. And it has – in a way. In recent years, novelists and film makers have veered toward noir subject matter, but this neo neo-noir doesn’t look a whole lot like the genuine article. This new version tends to come with happy endings and a lighter touch. Will audiences simply not accept the unhappy ending these days in spite of the great challenges we face?