Tag: #FilmReviews
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Silence of the Lambs (1991)
“Hello Clarice” Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs (1991) is so good and so seminal that I cannot begin to discuss the film’s overall impact to pop culture without spoiling it. Moreover, it’s such a masterpiece that to try to speak of plot and performances that tiptoeing around potential plot spoilers would lessen my ability…
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Annie Hall (1977)
“I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.” That’s the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women. -Alvy Singer Woody Allen is a very bad person. I cannot speak about a comedy written, directed, and starring Allen from his…
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A Streetcar Named Desire (1953)
America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”-Tennessee Williams I want to start this discussion with the framing of the American Gothic–not the painting, but the genre. American Gothic is generally characterized by stories of people with puritanical ideals and imagery of punishment and guilt for their misdeeds…
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Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
Poverty is not the lack of anything, but a positive plague, virulent in itself, contagious as cholera, with filth, criminality, vice and despair as only a few of its symptoms. Bringing some of the older AFI movies into a modern context has been quite challenging. Sometimes our general world views change, sometimes the chief antagonist…
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Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
“Well now, what happened is… ahm… one of our base commanders, he had a sort of… well, he went a little funny in the head… you know… just a little… funny. And, ah… he went and did a silly thing… Well, I’ll tell you what he did. He ordered his planes… to attack your country… Ah… Well, let me finish, Dmitri…” –President…
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Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
Rest in peace, Robin Williams. I feel I need to say that on the top. Mrs. Doubtfire follows the story of a chaotic yet fun-loving father David (Williams) who loves his children more than anything on earth but has not been able to hack it in acting nor can he hold down a stable job.…
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse (2018)
“Miles, I can see exactly what you’re doing there” Animation can be some of the most liberating film you can watch. It’s only limiting agent is the imagination of its creators. In my opinion, animation had hit a stagnation point… Then Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse happened and wholly changed the animated film industry. Briefly…
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City Lights (1931)
Watching any Charlie Chaplin film is truly a delight. Admittedly, I do need to be in a specific mood to watch an hour and a half silent film, but once I’m there, I do find them charming. But I will admit, they are incredibly difficult for me to review (maybe it’s just hard to write…
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Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
“All I can say is, they did right by me – and I’m bringin’ me and a mess of flowers to their funeral.“ 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde is an interesting blend of romance and thrill. Based on the story of two depression-era heartthrob bank robbers, Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty play the titular characters Bonnie…
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Easy Rider (1969)
I pulled into Nazareth just a feelin’ ’bout a half past dead… It’s becoming a theme for these reviews that the late 1960s and the early 1970s were a very transitory period in American culture. Gone are the days of suits and ties and screwball comedies and in come the more rugged and druggy counter-cultural…
Very Unnecessary Film Reviews 