12 Years a Slave: Land of the Unfree
Michael Fassbender and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures The historian Sue Eakin was born in Louisiana five decades after the end of the Civil War and she specialized in…
Chicago: City of Scoundrels
Catherine Zeta-Jones. Photo: Miramax Premiere once named this as one of the 20 most overrated films of all time. My take is different: Chicago is the greatest screen musical of…
Driving Miss Daisy: The Burden of an Oscar
Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy. Photo: Warner When people list the movies they feel did not deserve to win a Best Picture Oscar, this one often comes up. I agree.…
Argo: The Great Escape
Photo: Warner In my reviews of Persepolis (2007) and A Separation (2011), I wrote that those films offer a well-needed opportunity to understand Iran. Argo, however, is not that type…
Platoon: Taking the Pain
Photo: Orion After serving in Vietnam, earning a Bronze Star as well as a Purple Heart, Oliver Stone came back to the United States in 1968. Disgusted with the way…
How Green Was My Valley: The One That Beat Kane
Roddy MacDowall and Walter Pidgeon. Photo: 20th Century Fox Hollywood sure appreciated taking lessons from John Ford in all matters social realistic. He received an Academy Award for portraying the…
The King’s Speech: Royal Pains
Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. Photo: The Weinstein Company After watching this brilliant drama, I knew I had to consult YouTube for the speech King George VI made after Britain's…
The Artist: A Silent Treatment
Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo. Photo: Warner Michel Hazanavicius is obviously a man who loves the cinema. French audiences know his OSS 117 films, spoofs of the spy genre, and…
Marty: Breaking the Rut
Betsy Blair and Ernest Borgnine. Photo: MGM Paddy Chayefsky originally wrote this story as a teleplay, which was filmed in 1953 as part of The Goodyear Television Playhouse, an anthology…
Ben-Hur: The Gospel of Judah
Charlton Heston. Photo: MGM The kind of film that starts with a five-minute overture, Ben-Hur is about as classic a 1950s Hollywood blockbuster as they come. Burt Lancaster was reportedly…