|
|
 Year: 1993
Director: Harold Ramis
Cast: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott
Plot Outline: Bastard weatherman Phil Connors is forced, by some bizarre unexplained phenomenon, to relive the same day over and over again — February 2nd, Groundhog Day.
Standouts: Still one of the most inventive stories I have ever seen on film, and I continue to wonder at it each time I see it. Question for those who have seen the movie: How long do you think Phil was stuck?
Previously reviewed: 8/17/08, 2/2/07, 9/5/05.
 Year: 1938
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Ruth Donnelly, Allen Jenkins, Bobby Jordan.
Plot Outline: When Prohibition is repealed, bootlegger Remy Marko announces to his gang that they are going straight and opening a brewery. There’s only one problem — his beer, which sold great when it was the only game in town, stinks. Now Marko has to contend with the bank calling in his note, his daughter’s expensive schooling and her cop fiancee, and the four dead bodies discovered at his country estate.
Standouts: Edward G. Robinson is pretty much always enjoyable, especially in comedies like these where he spoofs his tough guy gangster image. There’s a great cast of Warner Bros. tough guys like Allen Jenkins and Edward Brophy, and Dead End Kid Bobby Jordan. The plot is a little muddled; I think they tried to throw a little too much into the mix. But it’s fast-paced and breezy, and not a bad way to spend 85 minutes.
 Year: 1981
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, Denholm Elliott.
Plot Outline: Archeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones teams up with a former flame in a race to recover the lost Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis get to it. Gee, when you put it like that, it sounds kind of dumb.
Standouts: There is nothing in this movie that’s not a standout. It’s quite simply the best work of Steven Spielberg’s long and storied career. It’s maybe a perfect movie, in fact. It’s got everything: adventure, humor, romance, Nazis, good vs. evil — all without being condescending or resorting to hideously simplistic character stereotypes. Well, true, the black trench-coated Nazi is pretty stereotypical, but Rene Belloch is a great layered villain with shades of grey about him. Indy is of course the perfect hero that makes you want to root for him, but Marion is his perfect foil — a tough gritty adventure heroine who is smart, funny, beautiful and awesome.
See it again and again, folks. It still to this day transports me back in time to summer 1981, sitting in the front row of a crowded movie theatre with my family, munching popcorn and cheering along our hero.
 Year: 2006
Director: Tarsem
Cast: Cantinca Utaru, Lee Pace
Plot Outline: (from IMDB) In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastical story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances.
Standouts: This movie was recommended to me by my co-worker Tom — who is also responsible for my seeing Pan’s Labyrinth, so now I’m doubly indebted to him. The photography is lush and vivid, and while it’s a great spectacle and feast for the eyes, at its heart this is a very simple story about the tentative friendship between two damaged and sad people. Lee Pace makes a handsome hero with sufficient vulnerabilities, but the true standout is young Cantinca Utaru, who is a complete natural in front of the camera. Most of their scenes together appear to have been improvised. There are a few visual shout-outs to one of my favorite films of the last decade, Baraka. What I loved most about this movie was that I was never sure it was going to go next. Highly recommended.
 Year: 1981
Director: Ivan Reitman
Cast: Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Warren Oates, John Candy, PJ Soles, Sean Young, John Larroquette.
Plot Outline: In one day, John Winger loses his job, his car, his girlfriend, and his apartment. Out of options, he decides there’s nothing left for him to do but join the Army. He convinces his pal Russell to join up with him, and they find themselves the ad-hoc leaders of the biggest platoon of losers in the entire Army.
Standouts: Previous review can be found here. I learned recently that one of my favorite lines in this movie, Stillman’s “Have that removed,” was improvised by John Larroquette (I learned that when he tweeted it at me on Twitter!). Also: all the times I’ve seen this movie over the years, and I didn’t recognize Joe Flaherty as one of the Czech guards until this viewing.
 Year: 2009
Director: Armando Ianucci
Cast: Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Chris Addison, Mimi Kennedy, James Gandolfini, Gina McKee.
Plot Outline: In the run-up to a war against a Middle Eastern nation, underlings in the State Departments of Great Britain and the U.S. scramble to find (or dicate) the right intelligence, discover the secret war committee, and most especially further their own careers, even if that means switching from anti-war to pro-war.
Standouts: Incisive political satire along the same lines as Wag the Dog, but with a lot more bite. And way more profanity. Honestly, the profanity in this movie is a poem; it has to be heard to be believed. There are excellent performances all around from the mostly unknown (to me, anyway) cast. The pace is breakneck and the laughs come fast and furious — for the first twenty minutes or so of the DVD I actually had to put the subtitles on to keep up with the accents and the speed. But marvelous performances all around (in particular an excellent cameo from Steve “I AM FUCKING ZEN” Coogan) and a sharp, sharp script helps make this one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.
 Year: 1936
Director: W.S. Van Dyke II
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Asta, James Stewart
Plot Outline: Picking up right where The Thin Man left off, Nick & Nora return to their San Francisco home and are immediately embroiled in another murder mystery.
Standouts: Nick & Nora hit their stride here. One small failing of the first Thin Man movie is that it really slows down any time Nick & Nora aren’t on the screen, and we have to sit through all the boring murder mystery stuff. The second in the series jettisons all but the most essential plot points and treats us to more and more scenes of Nick & Nora together. The first film showed us how Nora handles being in Nick’s world — this one shows us how Nick adapts to Nora’s (not all that well, it turns out). Nice performance from a then-little-known actor by the name of James Stewart, too.
Year:  2008
Director: Nanette Burstein
Cast: Documentary
Plot Outline: A documentary crew follows around a group of American mid-West high schoolers for their senior year, watching their joys, frustrations, successes and losses.
Standouts: As you can tell from the poster, the movie consciously gives itself some Breakfast Club touches — it begins with narration from one of the students, starting with the date and the town (Warsaw, Indiana). The students who are featured are archetypes — the popular girl, the jock, the band geek, the non-conformist, etc. The kids are all likeable (well, except one) and it’s easy to get caught up in their lives (even the unlikeable one). It brings back a ton of memories, some of them difficult ones. Very interesting. I’d love to see a follow-up in a few years.
|
|
