Shane (1953) Review
George Stevens's foundational classical Western. Alan Ladd as the title gunfighter.
Tag: Childhood (Page 8)
1990sSleepless in Seattle (1993) Review
Nora Ephron's foundational early-1990s romantic comedy. An Affair to Remember homage.
1980sTime Bandits (1981) Review
Terry Gilliam's droll British time travel fantasy. Six dwarves with stolen map of holes in time.
1980sThe Breakfast Club (1985) Review
Five teenagers, one library, one Saturday detention. John Hughes's bottle-episode masterpiece with Paul Gleason as the principal.
1980sFast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) Review
Sean Penn as Spicoli, Cameron Crowe's undercover research, Amy Heckerling's first feature. The 9 reflects what those viewings have confirmed: the film is the founding document of the modern American teen comedy and one of the most influential teen films…
1990sHome Alone 2 (1992) Review
Tim Curry at the Plaza, the Pigeon Lady, and the rare sequel that surpasses a very good original. It is the rare sequel that is better than a very good original.
1990sHome Alone (1990) Review
Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci fresh off Goodfellas, and Three Stooges traps wrapped around a John Hughes Christmas movie about loneliness. The film holds up better than it has any right to, given that it is essentially Three Stooges slapstick crossed…
2000sThe Butterfly Effect (2004) Review
The Butterfly Effect has a disturbing premise, childhood trauma so embedded in a group of people that any attempt to fix one person's damage creates worse damage elsewhere, and squanders it through arbitrarily defined mechanics, darkness deployed for shock instead…
2010sInterstellar (2014) Review
Interstellar is a bad film that has convinced a large number of people it's a profound one. The misdirection is accomplished through scale: everything is so large, so loud, so visually ambitious, so heavily scored that the emptiness at the…
2000sA.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) Review
Stanley Kubrick developed the project for years before his death; Steven Spielberg completed it as a tribute. The first act honors the premise.
ChildhoodSomething in the Basement Knows My Name
Maya was seven when something in the basement started calling her name in her mother's gentle voice. For ten years, she answered.
ChildhoodChildren Under the Volcano
The Ferrante family gathers every August at their house on Mount Etna — rebuilt three times after lava flows — until a sixteen-year-old's question at breakfast cracks them all open.