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- DirectorRidley ScottStarsRussell CroweAbbie CornishAlbert FinneyA British investment broker inherits his uncle's chateau and vineyard in Provence, where he spent much of his childhood. He discovers a new laid-back lifestyle as he tries to renovate the estate to be sold.Clearly a labour of Love from Ridley Scott. This movie is like a fine wine to be savoured, with all its grace notes and layers. Lovely aftertaste. Great acting, great soundtrack that includes Nillsson, Delaney and Bonnie, and lots of Rhumba music. Improves with age and repeat viewing.
- DirectorHenry KosterStarsJames StewartWallace FordWilliam H. LynnDue to his insistence that he has an invisible six foot-tall rabbit for a best friend, a whimsical middle-aged man is thought by his family to be insane - but he may be wiser than anyone knows.Ostensibly about an invisible giant rabbit, a Pooka, Harvey is actually about Jimmy Stewart's most memorable character. Elwood P. Dowd is nobody, a genial and somewhat drunken citizen who is understanding and respectful and open to absolutely everybody. This of course drives his sister and her daughter up the wall. An unbelievably sweet man with just enough of an edge peeking out once in a while to tell you that his attitude of universal acceptance and friendship to everyone was something that he was not born with, but was a philosophy that he had to work out for himself. Corny as hell, and priceless.
- DirectorRobert MulliganStarsGregory PeckJohn MegnaFrank OvertonAtticus Finch, a widowed lawyer in Depression-era Alabama, defends a Black man against an undeserved rape charge, and tries to educate his young children against prejudice.
- DirectorDebra GranikStarsJennifer LawrenceJohn HawkesGarret DillahuntAn unflinching Ozark Mountain girl hacks through dangerous social terrain as she hunts down her drug-dealing father while trying to keep her family intact.Jennifer Lawrence's breakout role. A little film that had little budget or publicity, and was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar that year, largely on the strength of Lawrence's character and her performance. Outstanding. She is in a difficult situation and she just keeps going as things get worse. She often has nothing on her side except determination, fortitude, and courage. She is relentless.
- DirectorHal AshbyStarsRuth GordonBud CortVivian PicklesYoung, rich, and obsessed with death, Harold finds himself changed forever when he meets lively septuagenarian Maude at a funeral.Harold and Maude is a little movie about living with your heart and soul. Harold is a teenager who stages his own death(s) for fun and to bug his mother. Maude is a 79 year old who believes in living life to the fullest. They both crash funerals, which is how they meet and the story goes from there. This movie first gave me an appreciation for Cat Stevens. The characters, like the film-maker (Hal Ashby) all seem to share a certain disrespect for authority.
- DirectorPeter GreenawayStarsAnthony HigginsJanet SuzmanAnne-Louise LambertA young artist is commissioned by the wife of a wealthy landowner to make a series of drawings of the estate while her husband is away.Peter Greenaway. This film has a heart of ice and language that is almost Shakespearean in its richness and complexity. If you can follow it you will emerge from the cinema with a superior command of the language. Absolutely lush settings to contrast with the lush language of class division, privilege, ambition, arrogance, murders, mystery, greed, wealth, drawing, and sex. What more do you need to know?
- DirectorFrank CapraStarsJean ArthurJames StewartLionel BarrymoreThe son of a snobbish Wall Street banker becomes engaged to a woman from a good-natured but decidedly eccentric family not realizing that his father is trying to force her family from their home for a real estate development.Frank Capra's and Jimmy Stewart's first collaboration, and perhaps their best. Much better, in my opinion, than Wonderful Life. Lionel Barrymore leads a cast including Eddie Arnold, Jean Arthur, and Ann Miller. This is one of the best arguments for home ownership and what you can do with it ever made.
- DirectorAlain TannerStarsMyriam BoyerJean-Luc BideauMiou-MiouA look at the lives of several men and women in their 30s as they confront the slim gains of the "revolutionary" sixties.The most accessible film by Alain Tanner, one of the French New Wave directors. This Swiss film is an ensemble piece exploring many subjects but perhaps most focussed on the alumni of the 1968 revolutionary times in Europe and the western world. It also looks at social issues, and the broad issue of time and how we perceive it in different ways. Includes a lecture on the sweep of human history using a long, coiled blood sausage and a meat cleaver. And a philosophical meditation on time from the different perspectives of the engine of a train and the passenger windows. Full of treasures.
- DirectorMorton DaCostaStarsRobert PrestonShirley JonesBuddy HackettTraveling con artist Harold Hill targets the naïve residents of a small town in 1910s Iowa by posing as a boys' band leader to raise money before he can skip town.Robert Preston and Shirley Jones knock out a wonderful musical full of the kind of music that was popular before the jazz age. Ronnie Howard is Winthrop Paroo, a four year old with a lisp; and other great character actors make up a fine cast. Numerous songs that have become classics in their own right, including 76 Trombones. Paul McCartney, when putting on a command performance for the Queen, chose to sing a song from this film, "Till There Was You." Preston plays the ultimately loveable old scoundrel who becomes enmeshed in his own machinations to fool the town and avoid unmasking by the "old maid" librarian/piano teacher, Jones. You may prefer to fast forward through Buddy Hackett's number, Shepoopi.
- DirectorLawrence KasdanStarsWilliam HurtKathleen TurnerRichard CrennaDuring an extreme heatwave, a beautiful Florida woman and a seedy lawyer engage in an affair while plotting the murder of her rich husband.In this excellent modern film noir by Laurence Kasdan, Kathleen Turner all but burns down the theatre. William Hurt is a small town lawyer in a sultry, steamy Florida town who meets Turner in a bar one night and is intrigued. Although warned off by his buddy, the surprisingly good Ted Danson playing a dancing lawyer (!), Hurt gets deeper and deeper into the world of Matty Walker (Miss T). Also watch for Mickey Rourke doing a creditable job when he was just 29 or so.
- DirectorLindsay AndersonStarsMalcolm McDowellRalph RichardsonRachel RobertsAn ambitious coffee salesman has a series of improbable and ironic adventures that seem designed to challenge his naive idealism.Lindsay Anderson was a social activist director perhaps best known for this film which was the middle of a trilogy (with "If" and "Brittania Hospital"). Based on an idea by Malcolm McDowell, it is essentially a sort of pilgrim's progress in reverse, as a young optimistic man finds out about the world and about England. Virtually all institutions turn out to be absurd in everyday life. Excellent soundtrack/commentary by Alan Price, a founding member of the Animals. Watch for Helen Mirren as a very sexy young hippie chick travelling with the band. The first two lines of the title song are "If you have a friend on whom you think you can rely you are a lucky man./ If you have a reason to live on and not to die you are a lucky man." You get the idea. Analogies abound.
- DirectorMarcel CarnéStarsArlettyJean-Louis BarraultPierre BrasseurThe theatrical life of a beautiful courtesan in 1830s Paris and the four men who love her.
- DirectorBob FosseStarsLiza MinnelliMichael YorkHelmut GriemA female girlie club entertainer in Weimar Republic era Berlin romances two men while the Nazi Party rises to power around them.Bob Fosse at his best. Ditto for Liza Minnelli. This very arch musical is based on the musical play "Cabaret" which was based on the movie "I am a camera" which was based on the play "I am a camera" which was based on Christopher Isherwood's book "Goodbye to Berlin." Got that? The action centres around a cabaret show starring Minelli as a gamin American singer singing songs that all seem to have something to say about the political and social climate in Germany in the 1930's. Politics keeps sneaking into the lives of the ostensibly apolitical and amoral, although they all seem to feel that too much sex is never enough. Title song: "Why should you sit / alone in your room? / Come hear the music play. / Life is a cabaret old friend! / Come join the Cabaret." Minnelli is magnificent. Joel Grey was the MC. Won 8 Oscars, including Minnelli, Grey, and Fosse.
- DirectorLina WertmüllerStarsGiancarlo GianniniMariangela MelatoRiccardo SalvinoA trip into the Mediterranean sea becomes a trip into the discovery of how society's frameworks of the rich and poor are delicate and temporary.Original Title "Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Deep Blue Sea of August." This movie is intense. Lina Wertmuller is an Italian Marxist and a feminist, and she is saying a lot about a lot of things. At one point she has the sailor beating up the woman, and supports it as a natural consequence of the action leading up to it in the film. If you follow the emotional progression of the film I don't think you will walk out of the film bored, by any means.
- DirectorTerrence MalickStarsRichard GereBrooke AdamsSam ShepardA hot-tempered farm laborer convinces the woman he loves to marry their rich but dying boss so that they can have a claim to his fortune.Won a richly deserved Oscar for cinematography. This is one of those films that should be illegal to watch on a TV - you would be missing the whole point. This is an early Terence Malik, and it is beautiful, even in the tragic bits. Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepherd. The little girl who narrates has a Chicago street accent which is haunting when juxtaposed with the scenes of prairie wheatfields and the gritty life of migrant workers in the Great Depression. This movie is like a giant tone poem. Remember - to be seen in theatres only!
- DirectorFrançois TruffautStarsJacqueline BissetJean-Pierre LéaudFrançois TruffautA committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.Francois Truffault, a leader of the French New Wave cinema, made this film about film-making. Day for Night (aka nuit americaine, or American night) is a reversal technique, where a scene that takes place at night is shot in daylight, using various techniques such as special filters, infra-red film, post production work on the shadows and so on. There is layer upon layer of allegory in this film, as the hapless director (played by Francois Truffault) struggles to make the film within the film in the midst of crises among the actors and staff and everything else that can go wrong. This is his film for people who love film and film-making. It won the Oscar for best foreign film, as well as being nominated for other Oscars, unusual for a non-English film. Starring Jacqueline Bisset and Truffault.
Everything is made to seem what it is not; everything is inside out and upside down, and the artifice is a labour of love. - DirectorChristopher NolanStarsGuy PearceCarrie-Anne MossJoe PantolianoA man with short-term memory loss attempts to track down his wife's murderer.The man has a damaged memory, so he only remembers things for a few seconds at a time. He is searching for the man he thinks killed his wife, and struggles to leave himself clues as his research progresses. You are in a simulation of his position, as the film-maker only reveals bits and pieces of his past and essentially you learn the story backwards, as if you had his condition. A tour de force.
- DirectorPete DocterBob PetersonStarsEdward AsnerJordan NagaiJohn Ratzenberger78-year-old Carl Fredricksen travels to Paradise Falls in his house equipped with balloons, inadvertently taking a young stowaway.Up is one of a trio of films I like because of their outstanding introductions. The first five minutes or so of Up tells the story of a marriage as well as I can imagine, using cartoons and very little dialogue.
Star Trek (the reboot) also has an outstanding opening act, before the credits, that sets up the tone for the whole movie.
Idiocracy is a pretty broad comedy, but it's opening bit shows why we are all doomed. And they are neither kidding, nor wrong. - DirectorPeter MedakStarsPeter O'TooleAlastair SimArthur LoweA member of the House of Lords dies, leaving his estate to his son. Unfortunately, his son thinks he is Jesus Christ. Their other, somewhat more respectable family members plot to steal the estate from him; murder and mayhem ensue.Peter O'Toole at his satiric best. In the film, it is explained why he is God or Jesus (on alternate days) and why, to be fit to represent the people, you must embrace your inner genocidal maniac.
Warning: this film is critical of established authority and the status quo. - DirectorDavid Hugh JonesStarsRobert De NiroKathy BakerEd HarrisTwo Vietnam vets search for the strength to face up to their horrific war experiences, but their friendship begins to splinter when one becomes romantically involved with the other's sister.This is my favourite De Niro film. He plays a Vietnam vet with some unfinished business. Ed Harris is his war buddy who still has a lot of issues as well, and Kathy Baker is Ed's long-suffering sister. It's hard to describe the charm of this somewhat difficult picture, but De Niro plays an outwardly rowdy but actually very sensitive part that contrasts with and seeks to mollify Harris's wounded rage. Very fine work that feels like an adapted stage play descended from England's kitchen sink films of the early 60's.
- DirectorMichel GondryStarsJim CarreyKate WinsletTom WilkinsonWhen their relationship turns sour, a couple undergoes a medical procedure to have each other erased from their memories forever.
- DirectorJacob TierneyStarsLiane BalabanJay BaruchelTaylor BaruchelA Montreal high school student who believes he is the reincarnation of Lev Trotskiy starts a revolution against apathy among his fellow students.A teenager believes that he is Leon Trotsky, the partner of Lenin in the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. If you are at all familiar with Marxist rhetoric, you will kill yourself laughing. Colm Feore is the principle that is out to stop him; Genevieve Bujold is the School Board chair that also tries to stem the Russian Revolution in Montreal. Jay Baruchel is flawless as he seeks to organize the downtrodden lumpen proletariat (aka the students in his school, whatever school he is transferred to) in order to create the revolution.
- DirectorAlan ParkerStarsRobert ArkinsMichael AherneAngeline BallJimmy Rabbitte, an unemployed Dublin boy, decides to put together a soul band made up entirely of the Irish working class.
- DirectorPeter WeirStarsHarrison FordKelly McGillisLukas HaasWhile protecting an Amish boy - who is the sole witness to a brutal murder - and his mother, a detective is forced to seek refuge within their community when his own life is threatened.
- DirectorPhilippe de BrocaStarsAlan BatesGeneviève BujoldPierre BrasseurDuring World War I, a British private, sent ahead to a French town to scout for enemy presence, is mistaken for a King by the colorful patients of an insane asylum.AKA the King of Hearts. Alan Bates. Charming comedy about the first world war. Who is more insane; the inmates of an abandoned asylum, or the soldiers that fight outside the gates? With Genevieve Bujold.