Cleopatra (1963) Review
Cleopatra (1963) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. It was budgeted at around two million dollars and cost forty-four, was the highest grossing film of its year and still did not break even, and Fox sold off…
Tag: Period Piece (Page 3)
2000sAlexander (2004) Review
Alexander (2004) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Oliver Stone spent a hundred and fifty-five million dollars on a life that has no shape, released it, and then recut it three separate times across ten years trying…
1940sPan’s Labyrinth (2006) Review
Pan's Labyrinth (2006) rates 10 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Del Toro built two worlds with identical rules and let a child move between them, and the fascist captain is more frightening than anything in the labyrinth. It…
1930sThe Natural (1984) Review
The Natural (1984) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Levinson took a bleak 1952 novel about a man who takes the bribe and inverted its ending completely, which is either the film's great betrayal or the reason…
1940sThe Notebook (2004) Review
The Notebook (2004) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The young romance is a competent, conventional and occasionally irritating class melodrama. The framing story, an old man reading to a woman with dementia who does not know…
1940sThe Pianist (2002) Review
The Pianist (2002) rates 10 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Polanski survived the Krakow Ghetto as a child and spent sixty years declining to film the Holocaust before he made this. It won the Palme d'Or and three…
1950sIndiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) Review
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) rates 4 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A hundred and eighty-five million dollars, seven hundred and ninety million back, and it is still the film that damaged the…
1940sInglourious Basterds (2009) Review
Inglourious Basterds (2009) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Tarantino wrote it in 1998, could not solve the ending, made Kill Bill instead, and came back a decade later. The opening scene is a twenty-five minute conversation…
1980sHeaven’s Gate (1980) Review
Heaven's Gate (1980) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Cimino shot two hundred and twenty hours of film for forty-four million dollars, took three and a half million at the box office, and ended the era that…
1960sGodfather 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…
1950sCarol (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…
1970sCarlito’s Way (1993) Review
Carlito's Way (1993) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. De Palma tells you Carlito dies in the first ninety seconds and then makes you hope for two and a half hours that he will not. Sean Penn…