drama

It’s a Wonderful Life (review)

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Remember that ‘alternate ending’ of It’s a Wonderful Life that Saturday Night Live came up with years ago? George never finds out what happened to that $8,000 that nearly ruined him, and the film ends on a happy note when the townspeople pitch in to raise the money. SNL’s ending was a little darker: Someone discovers that Potter has George’s money, and so we’re treated to the spectacle of Dana Carvey as Jimmy Stewart leading a lynch mob: ‘Well, let’s get ‘im!’ Carvey’s George cries. That’s more the ending I’d like to see.

Last Night movie review: TEOTWAWKI

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But if you knew when we as a species were going to buy the farm, how would you spend your final hours? That’s the question Canadian filmmaker Don McKellar asks in Last Night, which he wrote, directed, and stars in. Sort of the flip side of movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact, Last Night focuses not on the heroes trying to save the planet from certain doom but instead peeks in at how ordinary people are facing the end of the world.

American Beauty (review)

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The Lester that American Beauty offers us at first is anything but inspirational — in fact, he may be one of the most unlikable protagonists to hit the screen in a while. A ‘horny geek boy,’ as his teenage daughter calls him, a ‘gigantic loser’ as he calls himself, Lester tells us right as the film opens that he’ll be dead in less than a year. And we don’t care.

The Sixth Sense (review)

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So while I am both a bit dismayed and smugly satisfied to report that yes, I was correct in guessing what The Sixth Sense’s big twist is (I won’t reveal it here!), I am overjoyed to report that not only is there much more to this film that just its twist, watching the film with full knowledge of its big secret adds new layers to enjoy.

Titanic (again again) (review)

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A film of immense power and eerie beauty, James Cameron’s Titanic could only have been made now, not because of its technical requirements but because the cultural attitudes of the era in which it is set have come full circle to concern us again today.

Braveheart (review)

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Braveheart has a primal, visceral power — as when Wallace, in the aftermath of a battle, stands over the carnage he’s wrought and screams in victory, nostrils flaring — that strikes straight to the heart of any warm-blooded Celt, or indeed anyone who values freedom and human dignity.

Schindler’s List (review)

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While Schindler’s List is the least Spielberg-ian and least showy of the director’s work, it demonstrates an artistry that is at times highly stylized. The film is a study in contrasts and ironies.

Unforgiven (review)

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‘It’s a hell of a thing, killin’ a man,’ says thief and killer William Munny (Clint Eastwood, who also directed) in Unforgiven. ‘You take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.’ Practically an antimovie, this revisionist Western rejects the concept of casual murder that many films revel in to examine why ‘it ain’t so easy to shoot a man.’