Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress Projects are a focus of this profile, both reviews as well as lists/rankings.
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Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse 1991
Francis Ford Coppola wasn't the first filmmaker to fall victim to the vagaries of hubris, and he certainly hasn't been the last. Nor is this the first or last documentary to explore what can happen when an extremely talented filmmaker who's suddenly achieved great success in his field starts to believe his press.
There are better such docs -- although only a handful -- just as there are better films -- and better Vietnam War films -- than "Apocalype Now,"…
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Martin Eden 2019
Letterboxd reviews often entertain, and do so again with this title. There are long, thoughtful examinations of what this picture has to say about Italian neorealism, the purpose of art, etc., bunched together with one-sentence toss-offs that the movie is just boring. Of course, it may be both those things. I can try to strike a middle ground?
I've not read the Jack London story on which this film was sort of based, but I long ago came to the…
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The Passion of the Christ 2004
I was a working film critic for a daily mid-metro newspaper when this film was released, and I gave it the same number of stars then that I'm giving it here. I've never had any problems justifying it. But what sealed it for me was a phone call I received from a woman who identified herself as a minister's wife (which she was, I later confirmed).
She thought my review was unfair because the only possible rating to give a…
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Gone with the Wind 1939
We, as a society, cannot address our problems with race by hiding our problems with race. This movie is a specific example of that problem, and it should not be canceled by our indignant, easily outraged culture. I'm not here to defend the film. I fully respect anyone's desire to criticize the picture, ignore it, write it off the face of their own personal earth. But it should not be canceled.
The problem with "GWTW," as I see it, isn't…
