Home for the Holidays (review)

Beautifully written by W.D. Richter and directed with a sure hand by Jodie Foster, Home for the Holidays wraps all those contradictory feelings up and serves them for Thanksgiving dinner. Perhaps the most realistic holiday movie I’ve ever seen, this oddly charming, poignant, and blackly funny film is a treasure not to be missed.

The Love Letter (review)

Like a New England version of Northern Exposure, The Love Letter is full of intriguingly offbeat characters — from the nosy postmistress to the suspicious cop to Helen’s dotty grandmother (Titanic’s Gloria Stuart) to Miss Scattergoods (Geraldine McEwan), who works at the local historical society — with their own romantic secrets. Unsentimental and wonderfully modest, The Love Letter is that rare pleasure: a prickly yet succulent romantic comedy.

Titanic (again again) (review)

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.

The Silence of the Lambs (review)

The Silence of the Lambs is a psychological thriller of the highest order, and well deserving of the unusual Oscar nod for Best Picture, never before bestowed upon a film like this. Before or since, action/horror has never been done so well or so cerebrally.