Green Book (2018) Review
Green Book (2018) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Two excellent performances inside a road film about a Black concert pianist and his white driver on a 1962 southern tour, which beat Roma for Best Picture and…
Tag: Period Piece (Page 2)
2020sBabylon (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…
2020sAmsterdam (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…
2010sKingdom (2019-2020) Review
Kingdom (2019-2020) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A zombie series set in the Joseon dynasty where the outbreak begins because a court faction resurrected a dead king to hold power, and spreads because the starving ate…
1960sTrue Grit (1969) Review
True Grit (1969) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. John Wayne finally won an Oscar for playing a fat, drunk, one-eyed marshal who shoots men in the back, and the performance works because he is willing to…
2010sThe Magnificent Seven (2016) Review
The Magnificent Seven (2016) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Antoine Fuqua takes the same structure, casts it the way the American West really looked, and gives the villain a coherent economic argument. The last forty minutes…
1960sThe Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Review
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. John Ford spent thirty years building the Western myth and then made the film that takes it apart, shot on a soundstage in black…
1980sSilverado (1985) Review
Silverado (1985) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Lawrence Kasdan made a Western in a decade that had stopped making them, assembled four leads before any of them were famous, and built it out of every convention…
1950sRio Bravo (1959) Review
Rio Bravo (1959) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Howard Hawks made it as a direct rebuttal to High Noon, which he considered un-American because the marshal asks townspeople for help. It is a hangout film with…
2000s3:10 to Yuma (2007) Review
3:10 to Yuma (2007) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. James Mangold opens the story out, adds an hour, gives the rancher a limp and a war record, and turns a chamber piece into a journey. Ben…
1950sThe Motorcycle Diaries (2004) Review
The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Two medical students ride a failing motorcycle across South America in 1952 and one of them becomes Che Guevara afterward. The film's discipline is that it stops…
1930sO Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) Review
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The Coens claimed to be adapting the Odyssey without having read it, which is either a joke or the most useful thing anybody has said…