Babylon (2022) Review
Babylon (2022) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. It does not belong on a page called Modern Movie Slop and I am reviewing it here because that is where it was ranked. It is a three-hour failure…
Genre: Period Piece
Costume is not character. The period piece earns its budget when the era changes what people are able to say to each other, and wastes it when the past is only set dressing. Eight reviews, Amadeus and Boardwalk Empire among them.
ComedyAmsterdam (2022) Review
Amsterdam (2022) rates 4 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. David O. Russell assembled one of the largest casts of the decade to tell a true story about a 1933 plot against the American government, and buried it under…
CrimeGodfather of Harlem (2019-2025) Review
Godfather of Harlem (2019-2025) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A mafia series where you can state the protagonist's motivation in one sentence, which almost none of them manage. Bumpy Johnson wants his neighborhood back, and the…
DramaCarol (2015) Review
Carol (2015) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Two women fall in love in 1952 and the film says almost none of it out loud. Todd Haynes shot it on Super 16 for under twelve million dollars…
DramaAtonement (2007) Review
Atonement (2007) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A thirteen-year-old tells a lie and two lives end. The last ten minutes do not reveal a fact, they change what kind of object you have been watching.
CrimeRoad to Perdition (2002) Review
Road 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…
CrimeBoardwalk Empire (2010-2014) Review
Boardwalk Empire (2010-2014) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The first three seasons are in my top ten of anything ever put on a screen. Then it degrades, badly. Watch to the end of season three and…
BiopicAmadeus (1984) Review
Amadeus (1984) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Not a biography and not trying to be. A film about a competent man given exactly enough talent to hear genius in somebody else and never produce it himself.