Farewell Rabaul

This is obviously meant as a companion piece of Eagle of the Pacific. Where the earlier film told the story of the Pacific War from the Japanese and leadership perspective, Farewell Rabaul tells the story of the same theater of war from the grunt perspective. Well, not quite grunt. More like lower officers, the pilots…

The Amusement Park

#1 in my ranking of George A. Romero's filmography. Presumed lost for decades, this informational film from George Romero, commissioned by the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania, is nominally a plea for help in tending to the elderly, the added bookends of the film making it explicit. However, the Society didn't know what to…

The Gospel According to Matthew

#1 in my ranking of Pier Paolo Pasolini's filmography. Pier Paolo Pasolini, noted communist, atheist, and homosexual, went out and made one of the best religious films in history because he was stuck in his hotel room in Assisi while the pope tied up traffic of the city, he got bored, and he read the…

Spotlight

#24 in my ranking of Best Picture winners at the Oscars. There's a subgenre of films about working professionals doing their jobs professionally that I admire quite a bit. They tend to be quieter, less melodramatic, and with more restrained performances that allow for subtler and deeper emotions to seep into the audience, and Spotlight…

12 Years a Slave

#26 in my ranking of Best Picture winners at the Oscars. This is a straight up horror film, and it's remarkably effective. Adapted from the memoir by Solomon Northrup, Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave is a terribly effective look at the contradictions, inherent inconsistencies of justice, and terrors of slavery. Well-anchored by every performance,…