Category Archives: Film Reviews

Film reviews and analyses. Most recently published is in front.

Two Women (1960/1961)

Posted on December 31, 2017 by Mark DuPré

Two Women is fascinating for two reasons. One, it is the film that brought Sophia Loren her Academy Award for Best Actress, the first for a foreign-language performance. (Since then, there have been awards for Roberto Benigni for Life is … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Older Films | Tagged Angelina Jolie, Benicio Del Toro, Bicycle Thieves, Breathless, Catherine Zeta Jones, Cesare Zavattini, Charlize Theron, dubbing, Elizabeth Taylor, French New Wave, Godfather Part Two, Ingrid Bergman Grace Kelly, Jean-Paul Belmondo, La Vie en Rose, Life is Beautiful, Marion Cotillard, Miracle in Milan, Natalie Portman, neorealism, neorealist, New Wave, Penelope Cruz, Rachel Weisz, Robert De Niro, Roberto Benigni, Scarlet Johansson, Shoeshine, Sophia Loren, Traffic, Two Women, Umberto D., Vittorio de Sica, Vivien Leigh | Leave a comment

Lady Bird

Posted on December 29, 2017 by Mark DuPré

Lady Bird, for those my age, has nothing to do with a former president’s wife. It’s the story of a high school girl, beautifully acted, focusing on her relationship with boys and with her mother, also beautifully acted. In some … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Newer films | Tagged A Doll's House Part 2, Atonement, Brooklyn, Call Me By Your Name, Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird, Laurie Metcalf, Manchester by the Sea, Nicholas Hedges, Roseanne, Saoirse Ronan, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Timothée Chalamet | Leave a comment

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Posted on December 11, 2017 by Mark DuPré

The film just received a slew of Golden Globe nominations, which is always both a compliment and something producing a mild guffaw to those familiar with the Globes’ history. But in this case, it seems the nominations are mostly deserved. … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Newer films | Tagged Caleb Landry Jones, deus ex machina, Fargo, Frances McDormand, Golden Globes, In Bruges, John Hawkes, Lucas Hedges, Manchester by the Sea, Martin McDonagh, Peter Dinklage, Sam Rockwell, Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Woody Harrelson, Zeljko Ivanek | Leave a comment

Quick Hits: Blade Runner 2049 and Thor: Ragnarok

Posted on November 25, 2017 by Mark DuPré

Blade Runner 2049 Both these films—but especially Blade Runner 2049—deserve much more analysis than I provide here. But the first has been written about endlessly, and contains enough filmic (and literary) references to support a doctoral thesis. Like its predecessor, … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Newer films | Tagged Arrival, Avengers, Blade Runner 2049, Cate Blanchett, Chris Hemsworth, Denis Villeneuve, Harrison Ford, Loki, No Country for Old Men, Roger Deakins, Ryan Gosling, Skyfall, Thor: Ragnarok, Tom Hiddleston, True Grit | Leave a comment

When Knighthood was in Flower, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, and The Crowd

Posted on November 12, 2017 by Mark DuPré

My voyages back into the cinema of yesterday have brought me to a few fascinating places lately. In chronological order of their initial release, I saw: When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922), Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) and … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Older Films | Tagged Ben-Hur: a Tale of the Christ, Charlton Heston, Citizen Kane, Eleanor Boardman, Henry VIII, Intolerance, James Murray, Jean-Luc Godard, King Vidor, Mae Marsh, Marion Davies, Mary Tudor, Ramon Navarro, Susan Alexander Kane, The Big Parade, The Crowd, The Jazz Singer, The Thin Man, two-strip Technicolor, When Knighthood Was in Flower, William Powell | Leave a comment

Two from 1945: The Body Snatcher and The Picture of Dorian Gray

Posted on November 6, 2017 by Mark DuPré

In my never-ending effort to fill in the gaps of my film-viewing experience, I have been sloshing around in the silent era (another analysis on its way), but happened to have available to me two quite different offerings from 1945. … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Older Films | Tagged A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Anchors Aweigh, Angela Lansbury, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Cat People, Citizen Kane, Donna Reed, Dracula, Frankenstein, George Sanders, Henry Daniell, Hurd Hatfield, I Walked with a Zombie, Jacques Tourneur, Mildred Pierce, Nicholas Musuraca, Oscar Wilde, Peter Lawford, Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Wise, Russell Wade, Spellbound, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Body Snatcher, The Leopard Man, The Little Foxes, The Lost Weekend, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Sound of Music, Val Lewton, West Side Story | Leave a comment

Concussion

Posted on October 30, 2017 by Mark DuPré

Concussion is a two-year-old film“based on” the true story of Dr. Bennet Omalu, a Pittsburgh pathologist who investigates the brain damage in former professional football players, and that is its main strength. His findings challenge the NFL to its core, … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Newer films | Tagged Albert Brooks, Bennet Omalu, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, Concussion, CTW, Drive, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House, NFL, Peter Landesman, Pittsburgh, Will Smith | Leave a comment

Fences

Posted on October 14, 2017 by Mark DuPré

Sometimes life, responsibilities, and priorities conspire to prevent me from seeing a film I “should” see in the theater. Such was the case with Fences, which was often my number two choice to see, and never managed to make it … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Newer films | Tagged August Wilson, Broadway, Denzel Washington, Doubt, Fences, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, Pittsburgh Cycle, Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award, Tony Awards, Viola Davis | Leave a comment

Victoria and Abdul

Posted on October 9, 2017 by Mark DuPré

The greatest service this new trifle from director Stephen Frears (Philomena, The Queen) offers is to put forth a cinematic version of a hitherto unknown story of Queen Victoria’s friendly relationship with a much younger Indian man. The real story … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Newer films | Tagged Abdul Karim, Adeel Akhtar, Ali Fazal, Dame Judi Dench, Dangerous Liaisons, Eddie Izzard, Florence Foster Jenkins, Hindu, Michael Gambon, Mohammed, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Muslim, My Beautiful Laundrette, Philomena, Stephen Frears, The Grifters, The Queen, Tim Pigott-Smith, Victoria and Abdul | Leave a comment

The Lost City of Z

Posted on September 30, 2017 by Mark DuPré

Finally caught up with what many critics considered one of the great films—as well as one of the most unsung—of 2016, though it wasn’t released in the US until 2017. It was stunningly beautiful, slow but in the best sense, … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Newer films | Tagged American Sniper, Charlie Hunnam, David Lean, Fifty Shades of Grey, James Gray, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Kristen Stewart, Percy Fawcett. The Immigrant, Robert Pattison, Sienna Miller, Spider-Man: Homecoming, The Lost City of Z, Tom Holland, Twilight, We Own the Night | Leave a comment