Munich (2005) Review
Munich (2005) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Spielberg's coldest film and the one that cost him most. A revenge picture in which every success makes the situation worse, and the argument is in the arithmetic.
Tag: Tragedy (Page 4)
2000sRoad 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…
2010sBoardwalk 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…
1960sShip of Fools (1965) Review
Ship of Fools (1965) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A German liner crossing from Veracruz to Bremerhaven in 1933, carrying passengers with no idea what they are sailing toward. Vivien Leigh's last film.
1970sVoyage of the Damned (1976) Review
Voyage of the Damned (1976) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The true story of the MS St. Louis, which carried 937 Jewish refugees out of Hamburg in 1939 and was refused entry everywhere it went. A…
1990sTitanic (1997) Review
Titanic (1997) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Cameron built the ship at ninety percent scale, sank it, and hung the oldest story in the world off the side of it. The door problem is real. The…
1980sAmadeus (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.
2000sEastern Promises (2007) Review
Eastern Promises (2007) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Cronenberg on the Russian mafia in London, where the body is the filing system and the tattoos are the documents. The bathhouse fight works because nobody in it…
1970sTaxi Driver (1976) Review
Taxi Driver (1976) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Schrader wrote it living in his car after a divorce, and the film never once steps outside Travis Bickle's head. The narration sounds reasonable. That is the horror.
FictionThe Hole
Two soldiers, one American and one German, fall into the same shell crater in the Ardennes when the temperature hits minus thirty-two. The cold doesn't care which side they're on, and neither can survive the night alone.
FictionThe Wall
A corporal who hangs his lantern on a dead man's hand protruding from the trench wall has stopped flinching at any of it: the rats, the men packed into the mud, the comrade who took three days to die where…
FictionIslands on the Water
On the most beautiful morning he can remember, a young fisherman sees three great vessels with white wings that were not there the night before, and little boats putting out from them toward his shore. He watches the strangers come…