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Tag: Tragedy

Tragedy is the oldest story shape: watching someone fall and understanding exactly why. These reviews and essays cover tragedy in film and fiction, and what the form still teaches about consequence and character.

A woman in dark clothing lies on a snow-covered Montreal street at night, a reversed crucifix visible around her neck.1970s

The Pyx (1973) Review

The Pyx (1973) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A Canadian film in which a woman falls from a Montreal balcony and the investigation runs backward through her last days, intercut, with Karen Black singing her own…

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Two men stand on a mountainside in 1960s Wyoming during the film's opening sequence.2000s

Brokeback Mountain (2005) Review

Brokeback Mountain (2005) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Two men herd sheep on a Wyoming mountain in 1963 and spend the next twenty years failing to have a life. Ang Lee won Best Director and the…

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Nicolas Cage in a scene from Leaving Las Vegas, looking disheveled with a drink in hand, sitting in a sparse room.1990s

Leaving Las Vegas (1995) Review

Leaving Las Vegas (1995) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A man goes to Las Vegas to drink himself to death and states the plan in the first twenty minutes. Mike Figgis shot it for around four…

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Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland, performing at a microphone in a sequined dress during the London engagement sequences.2010s

Judy (2019) Review

Judy (2019) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Renee Zellweger won Best Actress for a technically accomplished transformation inside a film that exists to contain it, covering Judy Garland's five-week London run five months before her death.

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Tom Hanks as Andrew Beckett, a lawyer in a suit, in a scene from the 1993 film Philadelphia. TITLE: Tom Hanks in1990s

Philadelphia (1993) Review

Philadelphia (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…

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Roberto Benigni in character as Guido, a man in 1940s Italy during the Holocaust narrative of Life is Beautiful. TITLE: Life1990s

Life is Beautiful (1998) Review

Life is Beautiful (1998) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Roberto Benigni made a comedy about a father convincing his son that a concentration camp is a game, won Best Actor, and produced the most divisive film…

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Timothy Hutton and Mary Tyler Moore sit at a dining table in a scene from the 1980 film about a grieving family.1980s

Ordinary People (1980) Review

Ordinary People (1980) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Robert Redford's first film as director is a carefully observed drama about a family that cannot discuss a death, and it won Best Picture and Director over Raging…

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Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson sit across from each other in a mediation room, both looking away, tension visible2010s

Marriage Story (2019) Review

Marriage Story (2019) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Two people who like each other are put through a divorce by a legal process neither of them wanted to use, in a film that opens with both…

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Austin Butler as Elvis Presley in a concert performance, wearing leather and standing in front of an audience. TITLE: Elvis2020s

Elvis (2022) Review

Elvis (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…

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Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in a 1920s Hollywood scene from Damien Chazelle's film about the transition from silent to sound2020s

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…

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