Forrest Gump (review)

With Forrest Gump, the fable of the dimwitted but goodhearted Alabaman who was, in his own words, a ‘football star, war hero, national celebrity, and shrimp-boat captain,’ director Robert Zemeckis takes his work to a new level of maturity. His previous films are, for the most part, fun and highly entertaining, but Forrest Gump has an intricacy and depth that is more rewarding while still being enormously engaging.

Schindler’s List (review)

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.

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.

Platoon (review)

Never has the chaos and horror of battle been so in-your-face, so personal, as in writer/director Oliver Stone’s Platoon. Based on his experiences in Vietnam, this is a stark, caustic account of one man’s war.

The Deer Hunter (review)

The Deer Hunter is a lyrical, slow-to-unfold story of the devastating effects of a tour in Vietnam on three close friends. Mike (Robert DeNiro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and Steve (John Savage), steelworkers in a gray, run-down Pennsylvania town, are ordinary, blue-collar guys who’s chief amusements run to drinking and pool. Apparently much alike on the surface, each will be affected in different ways by the war.

Patton (review)

But like many men who do great things using personality traits that would be drawbacks in lesser men, Patton’s idiosyncrasies eventually turn around and bite him. He’s tolerated only as long as he gets results — and good publicity. Patton is a spectacular and unvarnished look at a man who thrives in war while also sowing the seeds of his own downfall.

From Here to Eternity (review)

No, sorry, I don’t get it. From Here to Eternity is supposed to be this great, tragic melodrama, but I just don’t see it. As far as I can tell, every dumb guy in this movie has only himself to blame for all the stupid things that happen to him.

The Best Years of Our Lives movie review: as the world war turns

In postwar 1946, three soldiers are coming home to their small midwestern city. Air Force Captain Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), a soda jerk before the war, returns to the railyard slums of his parents; Army Sergeant Al Stephenson (Frederic March), VP of a small bank, has a lovely wife (Myrna Loy) and two perfect children waiting for him in their luxury apartment; Homer Parrish (Harold Russell), a Navy grunt and a kid from a middle-class family, has lost both his hands and hides himself away in his parents’ house.