The most unexpected needle drop of the year is when AMERICAN MADE underscores a montage to a medley from HOOKED ON CLASSICS. Which seems oddly fitting considering AMERICAN MADE is like the HOOKED ON CLASSICS of GOODFELLAS homages: goofy and semi-disreputable, but so energetic and well paced I didn't much care. Doug Liman *gets* Tom Cruise is a way most of his recent collaborators don't, putting his boyish charm and insatiable eagerness to please to great use here. The movie…

Not quite a masterpiece, but undeniably the work of a master. It lacks the vitality of his previous works, but that's because it no longer feels like Kurosawa felt the need to complete this while he was still able. By now pushing eighty and suffering from poor eyesight, he also felt no pressure to bow to anyone's demands to make another epic, instead compiling eight ideas taken directly from his dreams (supposedly three more were cut for time) into the…

For a while, I was sort of annoyed by Marion's tendency to narrate the events of her own life in such an on-the-nose manner. Then it hit me that OF COURSE Marion (Gena Rowlands, masterful) would do that- she's the sort of person who would want to neatly package all of her actions with a minimum of emotional fuss, just to "set the record straight," if only to herself. Once I got over that hump, the movie as a whole…

This is exactly the kind of movie that seems like it'll be ideal for a Yesterday's Hits-style anthropological assessment in a couple of decades. Those elements that have made this so popular- the wall-to-wall CGI-based spectacle, the four-quadrant-skewing reappropriation of one of the classics of Hollywood cinema- will probably be what makes this look quaint and dated over time. Yet it also promises to be fascinating in a number of ways.

Most noticeably, this might be the first blockbuster I've…