Nominated for five Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor), David Mamet wrote and Sidney Lumet directed in 1982 one of the finest courtroom dramas you will ever see.
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Alex Cross is a lazy and uninspired attempt. The readers of the Patterson's crime novels will tell you, the character of Alex Cross is a ripe and rich literary character with many incredible stories and thrilling stories to tell. He deserves better than this uneven effort.
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Thief, from 1981, was the directorial debut of renowned filmmaker Michael Mann, who we have previously viewed via Manhunter earlier in the Alphabet Movie Club. Starring James Caan and Tuesday Weld and featuring the film debuts of Jim Belushi, Robert Prosky, Dennis Farina, William Peterson, Thief was Mann's first foray into the theme of "one last job" that occupies so many of his movies from Manhunter to Heat.
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Argo is a heroic story without requiring a studly action hero. Like its declassified true story, a team effort is conducted and celebrated with Argo. While this film will become "timely" by circumstance, once again, it earns its merit, attention, and appreciation without needing the boost.
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When Orson Welles called this his least favorite film of his catalog, I can see why. The Stranger, while built on a clever and timely post-Nazi regime premise for 1946, boils down to an Edward G. Robinson hero piece and a somewhat strained role for Orson Welles directing himself. It's not that either one of those angles make for a bad movie. It just doesn't make for a great one.
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In not following the status quo of most high school movie tendencies and for being more honest than angst-ridden, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is an extremely soulful and satisfying challenge for the normally fluffy or unrealistic high school setting of movies.
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Trouble with the Curve has the cliched conveniences of a romantic comedy, but offers more than that to appreciate thanks to Clint Eastwood. He's always been an actor you can't help but enjoy watching, even if it's the same growl every time lately. Just when you think his routine doesn't have range, he still surprises you with his humor and heart.
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Movies have always been considered magic on some level, to make fiction appear to come to life. Some movies, though, just flat-out have more magic than others. Steven Spielberg's E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial is one of those movies. The film has more heart, finesse, performance, and magic in single scenes than some movies have in their entire running time, and does it with an animatronic special effect as a main character.
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Writer-director David Mamet, if anything, is a student of the art of performance. Much like Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich, Mamet enjoys emulating old film styles with his eclectic work. In Redbelt from 2008, he takes a stab at the samurai genre of Akira Kurosawa. With no modern samurais in this world, he tackles to world and coiled discipline of mixed martial arts.
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One of the more thought-provoking, outrageous, and enjoyable science fiction sub genres is time travel movies. In honor of the release of the new film Looper, here's my list of the ten best time travel movies of all-time, with a few bonuses along the way.
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Time travel movies are supposed to be a somewhat confusing clash of logic and curiosity about the future and Looper lives up to that trend. That's their fun and appeal. Looper's palette for the future, while on the bleak side, is far from preposterous and completely apocalyptic. It's driving story premise, while crazy, is far less ludicrous to accept and play along with than so many other and lesser time travel movies.
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