Oppenheimer: Destroyer of Worlds
Cillian Murphy. Photo: Universal There’s a sex scene in this film that generated negative buzz, where Oppenheimer’s girlfriend tells him to read a Sanskrit passage aloud while she’s riding him.…
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Laundromat owner Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) is being audited by the IRS when she finds out that she and her family exist in many different parallel universes. A surprise hit…
Midnight Cowboy: A Buck in New York
Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. Photo: United Artists When John Schlesinger went to Hollywood in the late 1960s, he had already made a career for himself as a thoroughly British…
Dances With Wolves: Finding Your Tribe
Kevin Costner. Photo: Orion Pictures If Dances With Wolves had been released today, poisonous social media activism and cable news outlets would have made it part of the culture war,…
Cavalcade: 20th Century Blues
Herbert Mundin, Diana Wynyard, Clive Brook and Una O’Connor. Photo: Fox Film The fact that Cavalcade is one of the lowest rated Best Picture winners on IMDb is not really…
Ordinary People: Absent Mother
Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton. Photo: Paramount Judith Guest gave up her teaching job to focus on writing her first novel, the one that would become ”Ordinary People”, trying…
Oliver: Picking a Pocket or Two
Mark Lester. Photo: Columbia In a list I made a few years ago, I considered naming this movie the worst Best Picture winner of the 1960s. Because of the quality…
CODA
In Gloucester, Massachusetts, teenager Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) is torn between helping her deaf family manage their fishing business and maybe having a career as a singer. A remake of…
Hamlet: Besting Henry V
Laurence Olivier. Photo: Rank Film As Ethel Barrymore opened the envelope at the 1949 Oscars and learned that Hamlet had been selected by her peers as Best Picture of the…
Nomadland: Life of a Vandweller
Frances McDormand. Photo: Searchlight Pictures Watching this movie reminded me of a younger relative of mine. I haven’t met him for many years; he’s spent most of his time on…