Film #146: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Surely, the recent passing of superstar Elizabeth Taylor is reason enough to check out Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Taylor’s sultry, skimpily-dressed Maggie The Cat is one of her most iconic performances, and is certainly the definitive filmed (or televised) portrayal of scribe Tennessee Williams’ cunning heroine. Still, the film version of Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning 1955 play could be better.

Film #141: The Rapture

Sharon, don't you understand what's going on? The world's a disaster. We have no power to make it better. You hate your job; you hate your life; but you want to feel special. Instead of letting me do that, you're rushing off to something that's not even there.

Here in America, at least, the Facebook pages are a-twitter over radio preacher Harold Camping's well-publicized predictions about Jesus

Film #135: Greenberg

I know, it's a generational thing--obviously a by-product of getting older. But I never thought it would happen this way. I never thought no one under 25 would know of or give a flying flip about the things I grew up with. (And here I turn into this silly curmudgeon, dammit.) When I was growing up, I totally knew about all the things my parents loved. I watched The Andy Griffith Show, Father

NYFF Review #4: Hereafter

Clint Eastwood has dealt a lot of death in his directorial efforts. In fact, out of all his titles, only The Bridges of Madison County stands as the one with not one on-screen passage in it (and even that one deals with the aftermath of its lead character's demise). So it's no great surprise that this inquisitive, always-daring filmmaker would take on a study of the afterlife with his new film

NYFF Review 1: THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Like most memorable movies, David Fincher's The Social Network hooks us with its first scene, which begins, unusually, while the studio logo is still on screen. Mark Zuckerberg (a beautifully intense Jesse Eisenberg) and his date, Erica Albright (the magnificent Rooney Mara) are ramping up to rage through Aaron Sorkin's juggernaut dialogue. Though Erica is trying to be friendly, Zuckerberg is

Film #130: Days of Heaven

A lonely Victorian house stands guard in the midst of winding wheat fields. Grays and oranges seep through the torrid air of a Chicago smelting plant. Smothering swarms of hungry grasshoppers attack a newly-birthed harvest. Nighttime bonfires spread out of control as murder swirls bloody in the Midwestern breeze. A migrant worker gleefully tap-dances away on a dusty springboard. A brother

Film #128: White Hunter Black Heart

White Hunter Black Heart may not be a movie that many people consider a classic, but I certainly do: in fact, it may be producer/ director/ actor Clint Eastwood's most overlooked film. Released in 1990, screenwriter Peter Viertel's kinetic adaptation of his roman a'clef novel chronicles his mercurial relationship with uber-macho director John Huston while on location in Africa filming (or not

Film #126: Hoosiers

In 1986's Hoosiers--by far the finest basketball film out there--Gene Hackman is the bearish, enigmatic new teacher/coach at the tiny 1950s-era high school that anchors the Indiana farm town of Hickory. With its small student body and a dwindling supply of basketball talents to match, the coach finds himself against the bleachers in shaping a winning team (even the well-cast townspeople, who're

Film #124: Tess

I prefer watching my fiction to reading it (non-fiction tomes are my reading predilection), so it takes quite a movie to whallop me into reading the book upon which it's based. But when I first saw Roman Polanski's 1980 masterpiece Tess on the big screen upon its release, I rushed out to snap up Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'ubervilles, published in 1891. It's a rush of a tale--downbeat and

Film #123: Bigger Than Life

Bigger Than Life, released in 1956, is Nicholas Ray's masterpiece starring James Mason as a milquetoast elementary school teacher named Ed Avery, struggling economically at home and at work, and newly diagnosed with a rare, dooming affliction. The cure is a hormone--cortisone--that the menacing doctors advise him to take indefinitely. Once he's out of harm's way, the physicians also warn him to

Film #122: The China Syndrome

This whole notion of life imitating art--it really doesn't happen too often. But it certainly happened in 1979, and in an unlikely, timely manner. On March 16th of that year, writer/director James Bridges (at that point most notable for giving us 1974's law school drama The Paper Chase), unleashed The China Syndrome upon American audiences. This taut, expertly-produced thriller imparted the

Film # 119: Ryan's Daughter

I had long stayed away from David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970) because it had been so thoroughly drubbed by critics upon its release. But, in watching it in its newest DVD release, I was convinced that it was nearly as fine, in its own way, as Lean's previous efforts; it was really given the shaft by snooty film writers who expected something more "important" from the Oscar-winning director who

Film #114: Vanya on 42nd Street

It's Anton Chekov's naked sadness that finally makes Louis Malle's Vanya on 42nd Street so superlative. However, the trouble with doing the play on film is that with the excitement of a live performance absent, the picture might seem dull to audience members who aren't in step with this pure-bred brand of Russian fatalism. That's why Malle's choice to record one of Andre Gregory's many

Film #112: Henry V (1989)

Kenneth Branaugh had been acting on stage, TV and screen--all mostly in Britain--just a little over five years before he captured the public eye with his masterful 1989 directorial debut Henry V. It ended up netting him two Oscar nominations, for Best Actor and Best Director (the film only ended up winning one award for its costumes). This energetic helping of Shakespearean political intrigue

Film #111: The Great Santini

Love me some Robert Duvall. He eats up the screen here, and got his first Best Actor Oscar nomination, in 1979, for his title role. He plays the gruff, unmanagable, unBEATable Lt. Bull Meecham, a 50s-era Air Force warrior-without-a-war whose stern belief in discipline is unfairly extended to his genteel Southern family (led by syrup-voiced mother Blythe Danner), Michael O'Keefe co-stars as Ben,

Film #104: JCVD

I've never sat all the way through even one Jean Claude Van Damme movie. Not one. Bloodsport, Universal Soldier, Kickboxer, Street Fighter, even John Woo's Hard Target? Sorry. Missed 'em. I despise the conversion of video games to movies, so should I why waste my time hoping each one is gonna be good? So I went into JCVD with low expectations, even though I've been told by some very

Film #102: Kramer Vs. Kramer

After a low-key credits sequence radiantly scored with Vivaldi's "Concerto in C Major for Mandolin & Strings," Kramer Vs. Kramer begins with an exquisite, madonna-like image of Joanna Kramer (Meryl Streep) as she's wishing her nearly-sleeping son Billy (Justin Henry) a good night. Trying to prolong the moment, she says "Don't let the bedbugs bite," and as she strokes his blond hair, he

Film #101: Twelve Angry Men

Studio One was an original series of stand-alone dramas that appeared on CBS for a full decade--1948 to 1958. In that time, the show gave the airwaves over to artists that would forever change the movie industry, while leaving TV and Broadway in the dust, standing lonely as mere training grounds for the movies (thus setting each up to be moviedom's bitch, a stance which is now finally fading).

Film #98: Little Women (1994)

It being Christmas Eve, 2008, I figured I'd offer up a recommendation for a holiday movie everyone should enjoy, but relatively few movie lovers ever site in this manner. Australian director Gillian Anderson delivered quite a lovely screen version of Louisa May Alcott's perennial classic Little Women in 1994, and though it's not a Christmas movie per se, it sure feels like one. In fact,

Film #95: The Brown Bunny

2003's The Brown Bunny, written and directed by the inimitable Vincent Gallo, is an even more significant achievement that his late-90s cult-hit debut Buffalo '66, which left many viewers stricken with its quiet yet demanding quirkiness. Like The Brown Bunny, it too told a lonely, needy story. But Gallo's newest and more resplendent work engraves into our subconcious the overcast feeling of a