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…

Advertisement

The Best Years of Our Lives

Born of William Wyler's desire to help tell the stories of the men he served with when he filmed from a bombardier during WWII, The Best Years of Our Lives is a tender, heartfelt, and honestly quite beautiful look at combat servicemen readjusting to civilian life. Telling the story of three men coming back to…

Mrs. Miniver

I remember liking this a whole lot more when I first saw it more than fifteen years ago. I hadn't thought of the film much over the ensuing years, and revisiting it as an older man, I see some of what I adored of the film at the time. However, I also see a weird…

Come and Get It

#14 in my ranking of Howard Hawks' filmography. This is Howard Hawks' first movie about getting old. I'm not sure if there will be others, but this feels like a small landmark in his filmography. It's also a movie where Hawks was fired from the production with only a couple weeks left to go and…

The Little Foxes

I remember the biggest impression I had from William Wyler's The Big Country was the effortless blocking of the frame where several subjects at several different distances from the camera were perfectly placed to create aesthetically pleasing images. I found it remarkable, and I finally spun up The Little Foxes, Wyler's earlier adaptation of Lilliam…