The Apartment: A Second Look

I'm going to pay Billy Wilder the highest compliment I think he would accept: The Apartment could fit in with Ernst Lubitsch's mature period. Watching this alongside The Shop Around the Corner would be a fascinating look at how essentially the same sense of comedy, drama, and romance developed over about twenty years. It's still…

Advertisement

Ben-Hur (1959)

Another MOVIE, like Gone with the Wind. Another big, earnest, incredibly well made, really well acted, and often beautiful to look at film that the Academy decided to award with Best Picture. Ben-Hur is just one of those movies that makes sense for that. It's not just great, but it's a huge entertainment that uses…

Queen and Country

#7 in my ranking of John Boorman's films. John Boorman's final film is the sequel to his earlier film, Hope and Glory, the last of his films that received serious critical and awards consideration, and the only other film of his that's explicitly autobiographical. I'd say that all of his films are somewhat autobiographical at…

The Tiger’s Tail

#12 in my ranking of John Boorman's films. I swear...John Boorman is always interesting. Here's another film of his from his later career that doesn't really work, but gosh darn it, I want to like it. I don't quite think it's good, but there's so much that just so darn interesting about it that it…

In My Country

#13 in my ranking of John Boorman's films. John Boorman continues his exploration of remote political situations by moving from an invented situation in Panama to a fictional account around the real stories told during the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end of Apartheid under the presidency of Nelson Mandela. He also…