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 Year: 2007
Director: Peter Askin
Cast: Documentary. Donald Sutherland, David Strathairn, Liam Neeson, Joan Allen, Christopher & Mitzi Trumbo.
Plot Outline: The life and career of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, told through interviews with friends, family and co-workers, and through readings from his works and letters.
Standouts: Dalton Trumbo is one of my heroes, plain and simple. I am attracted to stories of little people taking on large battles. Trumbo was never really a great screenwriter — he was very successful, especially in his early years, because he was fast and he was consistent. He told great stories, but he was not a great hand at dialogue. His best works were his novels, particularly Johnny Got His Gun, and his letters, which are used to great advantage here, with dramatic readings from some of Hollywood’s finest. If I have any complaints, it’s that some of the dramatic readings are too actorly. Paul Giamatti was overboard, I thought, as was Michael Douglas in spots. His letters are so well-written, though, I can hardly blame them for wanting to really sink their teeth into the material.
Based on a play by his son Christopher Trumbo, this is an affectionate and warm tribute to a man, a flawed man, who had the courage to say “Hell no.” And good for him. I hope that I am never in the position that Trumbo found himself. But if I ever am, I hope I have his courage.
 Year: 2001
Director: J.T.S. Moore
Cast: Documentary. Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens
Plot Outline: Documentary follows the early history of the Linux Operating System, and the Free Software and Open Source movements.
Standouts: Well, there sure are a boatload of hardcore nerds in this movie — and as always, I mean that in the most affectionate way. In the last couple of years I have become a faithful Linux user (my netbook, which I use almost exclusively at home, runs Ubuntu 10.04) and a dedicated advocate of Open Source. This is a nice history lesson on the background of the birth of GNU and Linux — some of it, I confess, is beyond my meager means of understanding. I still don’t really get what a “kernel” is. It’s an interesting subject matter to me, but it’s not what I would call great movie-making, necessarily.
 Year: 2009
Director: Robert D. Siegel
Cast: Patton Oswalt, Kevin Corrigan, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Gino Cafarelli, Michael Rappaport
Plot outline: Paul Aufiero is a big fan of the New York Giants. A really, really big fan. When he has a violent confrontation with his favorite player, he must decide just how big a fan he is.
Standouts: I’m a fan of Patton Oswalt’s standup, but I’d never seen him do any acting before, not including one episode of King of Queens. I thought he did a good job here — it’s a tough role but he turned in a measured and thoughtful performance. I think I might have been expecting more in the way of laughs, what with Oswalt in the lead and the former editor-in-chief of The Onion as the writer-director. It was instead a rather dark character piece. It would have been easy to paint Oswalt’s character as a loser, but I thought the script had a lot of empathy for him.
 Year: 1992
Director: Penny Marshall
Cast: Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Lori Petty, Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, David Strathairn
Plot outline: During World War II, major league baseball is suffering from lack of players and lack of attendance. The All American Girls Baseball League is formed to boost morale and ticket sales, and sisters Dottie Hinson and Kit Keller join the Rockford Peaches to play ball.
Standouts: Tom Hanks is the big draw here, he’s very enjoyable as the drunken washed-up coach. There are a lot of quotable lines and big laughs. I’m not Geena Davis’s biggest fan and I think she’s miscast solely from a baseball standpoint — she’s far too tall to be a catcher, she looks like crap at the plate, she just plain doesn’t look like a ball player. She’s supposed to be the star of the team, and I just don’t buy it. Even Madonna looks a little better on the field. Davis does fine in all the non-baseball scenes, though.
 Year: 2003
Director: Andrew Jarecki
Cast: Documentary
Plot outline: Engrossing documentary follows the story of the Friedman family, a seemingly nice, normal, middle class American family that becomes involved in a horrifying scandal.
Standouts: Andrew Jarecki had been working on a documentary about clowns working in Manhattan for children’s parties, when he met David Friedman — a very successful clown who was clearly a very screwed-up individual who couldn’t stop himself from making really shitty remarks about his mom. As Jarecki spent more time with David and looked deeper into his background, it was revealed that the Friedman family was involved in a huge child molestation scandal in the 1980s, and that David had tons of video footage of his family falling apart. The focus of the documentary, needless to say, was changed considerably, and thus “Capturing the Friedmans” was born. A fascinating, thought-provoking must-see.
 Year: 2008
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Mary Steenburgen, Richard Jenkins, Adam Scott
Plot outline: Two slacker middle-aged losers compete for attention when their respective parents marry.
Standouts: Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are very funny in this comedy, but they deserve better material. It strikes me as the kind of script that never really had more than a logline: “Two slackers become step brothers.” It’s hard to carry a 98 minute movie on that. Still, the performances are enjoyable. Richard Jenkins continues to impress me — I’ve seen and enjoyed his diverse performances in Six Feet Under and The Visitor, and here he is in a completely different role as the harried father/step-father. There are several laugh-out-loud moments. I just wish the story were stronger.
 Year: 1961
Director: Robert Wise
Cast: Richard Beymer, Natalie Wood, Rita Moreno, Russ Tamblyn, George Chakiris
Plot outline: Romeo & Juliet reimagined as a musical set between rival gangs 1950′s New York City.
Standouts: A true classic. Robert Wise’s excellent screen adaptation of Jerome Kern’s Broadway production takes West Side Story to the streets of New York City and opens the action up beautifully. There are easy jokes to be made about the gangs not being particularly tough-looking, what with the dancing and the fact that they all look 30 years old. But none of that stuff bothers me. The score and the songs are outstanding, and even though most of the cast doesn’t do their own singing (not even Rita Moreno! Betty Wand is listed on my soundtrack CD as doing all of Anita’s numbers), the dancing can’t be faked and that’s also incredible.
 Year: 2007
Director: Gabor Csupo
Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Anna Sophia Robb, Zooey Deschanel, Robert Patrick
Plot outline: Two lonely middle school outcasts form a fast friendship and rely on their imagination to escape the problems in their lives.
Standouts: Faithful and moving adaptation of Katherine Paterson’s novel, which was my favorite book when I was growing up. There are elements of this story that resonate more deeply with me now as an adult, not just the experience of loss and loneliness, but the relationship between Jess and his father. The performances of young Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb are excellent, and I was also impressed with Robert Patrick as Jess’s dad. If you watch it, keep the Kleenex handy.
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