Tom Hanks spent the 1980s in comedies, Splash, Big and Bachelor Party, and the pivot to drama was neither obvious nor guaranteed. Philadelphia and Forrest Gump won him consecutive Best Actor awards, which only Spencer Tracy had done.
The persona that settled is competence under pressure without complaint. Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, Cast Away and Captain Phillips all put an ordinary professional in an impossible position and watch him work the problem.
Cast Away is the one that shows the range, carrying nearly an hour of screen time alone with a volleyball and no dialogue.
He has directed twice, written a book of short stories about typewriters, and become the default American narrator for historical documentary, which is a role the culture assigned him and not one he sought.
Antonio BanderasPhiladelphia (1993) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The first major studio film about AIDS, made deliberately as a courtroom drama so that a mainstream audience would watch it, and Tom Hanks won Best Actor over Daniel…
Gary SiniseForrest Gump (1994) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A technically remarkable film with a genuinely great performance at its center and a politics it has spent thirty years being argued about, which beat Pulp Fiction and…
Austin ButlerElvis (2022) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Austin Butler is genuinely extraordinary and the film around him is narrated by his manager, edited at about four cuts a second for the first hour, and structured as…
Daniel CraigRoad to Perdition (2002) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A gangster film shot like a painting, about a man teaching his son a trade while trying to keep him out of it. Conrad Hall's last work…
Daryl SabaraTom Hanks performs motion capture for six different roles including the boy, the conductor, the boy's father, the hobo, the narrator, and Santa Claus. The film's central technological achievement and its central technological problem are the same thing.
Barry Pepper
Don RicklesToy Story is the foundational achievement in feature-length computer animation. Seen all three more than five times across decades.
Greg KinnearNora Ephron had been one of the most accomplished American romantic comedy writers and directors of the late twentieth century. The play had been previously adapted as The Shop Around the Corner in 1940 starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan,…
Bill PaxtonThe film rewards repeat viewing because the substance is procedural instead of dramatic in the conventional sense. The film is adapted from Lost Moon, the 1994 memoir by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.
Bill PullmanNora Ephron's foundational early-1990s romantic comedy. An Affair to Remember homage.
Adam GoldbergSteven Spielberg's WWII masterpiece. Omaha Beach opening is the best war scene ever filmed.
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