Sliding Doors movie review: doors open, doors close
How would my life be different if only I’d taken the road not taken? This fun little movie favors an inevitability, a brand of destiny about who we meet and what we do…
romance
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.
Shakespeare in Love movie review (again): love, and a bit with a dog
‘Love and a bit with a dog,’ that’s all audiences want, according to Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush), owner of London’s Rose Theater. A bit of romance, a bit of comedy — isn’t that really all that movie audiences, too, are after? Shakespeare in Love has both in spades, and it’s the first film of its kind to win Best Picture since 1977’s Annie Hall.
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 English Patient (review)
Haunting and enthralling, The English Patient is a scrapbook of another world, of romance and adventure and tragedy, jumbled out of sequence.
Dances with Wolves movie review: native son
Dances with Wolves is one of the most visually and emotionally stunning movies I’ve ever seen, a glimmer of another world where less might have been lost if more people had been as open and friendly as John Dunbar. From John Barry’s stirring score to director/producer Costner’s daring presentation of a huge chunk of the movie in the beautiful Sioux Lakota language (with subtitles), this is a majestic requiem for a world that is gone.
Out of Africa (review)
Like Lawrence of Arabia, Out of Africa is a story of time and place. Just as T.E. Lawrence’s tale could only have happened in the Middle Eastern deserts of the Great War, Isak Dinesen’s would not exist without the gorgeous vistas of East Africa of almost exactly the same time.
Annie Hall (review)
Annie Hall is kinda Seinfeld: The Motion Picture. Of course, Woody Allen’s self-deprecating, nebbishy stand-up comedian was around long before Jerry Seinfeld’s show about nothing, but it’s really amazing how much they have in common.
Rocky movie review: boxer ascending a staircase
It comes as a bit of a shock to be reminded that, after so many years of movies the likes of Daylight and Oscar, that our man Sly got his start not only as the star of this superb movie but also as its screenwriter. This tender movie, on the surface about the most violent of sports, is really a Marty-esque romance about two lonely people reaching out to each other.
The Sound of Music (review)
How can you tell The Sound of Music is a fantasy? Forget that it’s based on a true story. The fantasy tip-off is this: Julie Andrews plays a nun. The radiant and sweetly sexy Andrews, not that she isn’t delightful in the role, is about as believable as a nun as, say, Mel Gibson would be as the Pope.
