The Empire Strikes Back (1980) ***

By far The Empire Strikes Back (1980) is my favorite film in the Star Wars collection. In the good old days, when you could drop off your 8-year-old kid and her friend at the movies without worrying whether they’d be there or tied up in the basement of some pervert when you came to pick them up, I went to see a Saturday matinee of this Sci-Fi thriller in May of 1980. Being children with good eyesight and strong , flexible necks, we sat in the very...

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Blow-Up (1966) *

(There may be spoilers, if that’s possible, in this post.) Somehow this 1966 film from famed Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni earned two Academy Award nominations: Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.  Obviously drug abuse was a huge problem for Academy voters in the mid-60s, because Blow-Up is a really bad art film gone horribly wrong.  I’m sure many a purist’s head is exploding as they read this, but I don’t care. For me,...

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Four Lions (2010) **1/2

It is difficult to believe that Four Lions (2010) is director Christopher Morris’ first feature film, because it is steady and focused. Morris is primarily known in England for his work on the mock news program The Day Today (1994), where he wrote and read some of the funniest news ever to cross the airwaves of the BBC. If you’re an American and you haven’t heard of this film don’t feel like you’ve been living under a rock. You see, this is a rather...

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Being John Malkovich (1999) ***1/2

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman was nominated for an Oscar for the ingenious script he penned for Being John Malkovich (1999). The only reason his imaginative and brilliant screenplay lost is because it was up against Alan Ball’s American Beauty (1999)—which was just a tad more brilliant. While I am not known for my unadorned adoration of “art” films, I do regard Being John Malkovich as one of the best films of the 1990s.  From the inspired and...

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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) **

  I’ve never read a John le Carré spy novel; nor am I fan of the genre at all.  That doesn’t mean that I lack an appreciation for suspense or that I oppose espionage-based thrillers.  But for me, director Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) was far from thrilling and just a tad suspenseful.  As such, I don’t know why this was one of the movies I had to see before my death.  Based on the le Carré novel of the...

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The Hole (Le Trou) 1959 **1/2

Underappreciated French director Jacques Becker died just a few weeks after filming was completed on Le Trou (The Hole). Becker is primarily known for working as an assistant director to Jean Renoir on such films as Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939), but he was a gifted director in his own right, helming such films as Casque d’or (1952) and Touchez Pas au Grisbi (1954). In a way it is fitting...

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Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) **1/2

(This is my contribution to the James Cagney Blogathon, which is organized by R.D. Finch at The Movie Projector and runs from April 8-12.) Few actors played the fast-talking, posturing gangster better than James Cagney.  He did it so well that he often found himself typecast in tough-guy roles, while seeing parts he coveted awarded to other actors who ‘fit’ the role better.  At heart he was a song-and-dance man, who began his career in...

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