It is hard to add a lot of new insight to a movie that has been reviewed thousands upon thousands of times and is liked so much that it is ranked #46 in the AFI’s Top 100 List of Greatest Movies. With that said, most reviews of A Clockwork Orange were written in 1971, when the movie was released. I watched this movie for the first time in 2011, 12 years after the death of its director, Stanley Kubrick (The Shining, Full Metal Jacket). To date, this will be the oldest movie that I have reviewed.
Category Archives: Academy Award Nominees
Pollock (2000)
Ed Harris (The Abyss, The Hours) delivers the performance of his career in Pollock, the story of American artist Jackson Pollock, who revolutionized American painting in the 1940s in New York City. Harris, who also directed the movie, portrays Pollock as an emotionally and mentally unstable wreck of a human being whose personal demons were often overshadowed, or should I say overlooked, by his adept skill in abstract painting. His use of dripping and splattering wild combinations of colors was unique and new and captured the attention of some of America’s most notable artists, museum owners, and journalists.
The Reader (2008)
There are interesting comparisons between Stephen Daldry’s (The Hours, Billy Elliot) 2008 film, The Reader, and Lone Scherfig’s 2009 film, An Education. Both movies revolve centrally around the emotions a young person feels when they capture the allure of a much older member of the opposite sex whom they find to be sexually attractive. In An Education, it is Peter Sarsgaard’s character, David, who is wooing a young and impressionable Jenny (Carey Mulligan), influencing her so much that she is willing to sacrifice her future for him. In The Reader, it is 36-year-old streetcar conductor Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet – Titanic, Revolutionary Road) taking a liking to 16-year-old Michael Berg (David Kross in his debut performance). I would be interested in learning if An Education was filmed before or after Scherfig had watched The Reader.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Aside from having perhaps the worst movie title in the history of movies, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is a stunning film and one that can be appreciated by anyone willing to give it its due diligence. Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe – Gladiator, Cinderella Man) is the captain of the HMS Enterprise. This British ship protected the Pacific Ocean from Napoleon’s French forces, who sought to invade England. As directed by the Queen of England herself, his job is to intercept any attacking vessel from the French fleet.
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Blue Valentine (2010)
Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine did nothing but further enhance my opinion that 2010 has been the best year for movie releases in my lifetime. Blue Valentine was one of the few movies of 2010 that I did not see in the theatre, and I can only imagine the impact it would have had on me had I seen it on the big screen. It is a raw, emotional antithesis of the ideal life. As the movie ends, you will be grateful that what you have just seen does not parallel your life and hope it never will.