Category Archives: Film Reviews

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

The Post

Posted on January 29, 2018 by Mark DuPré

The Post has been called second-tier Spielberg, and that’s true. Of course, second-tier for SS means it’s more finely crafted than 95 percent of other films. But in spite of the political perspectives brought to the film by many viewers … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Newer films | Tagged All the President's Men, Ben Bagdikian, Ben Bradlee, Bob Odenkirk, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, David Cross, Jason Robards, Kitty Genovese, Matthew Rhys, Meryl Streep, National Board of Review, New York Times, Spotlight, Steven Spielberg, The Post, Tom Hanks, Tracey Letts | Leave a comment

Phantom Thread

Posted on January 23, 2018 by Mark DuPré

Phantom Thread is exquisite. That’s neither a compliment nor a criticism, but just a description. It follows the story of a 1950’s London fashion designer described early on in the film as “too fussy.” That’s one way of describing him. … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Newer films | Tagged Allison Janney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York, Inherent VIce, J. Alfred Prufrock, Judith Anderson, Laurie Metcalf, Lesley Manville, Mrs. Danvers, Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread, Pretty Woman, Radiohead, Rebecca, Reynolds Woodcock, The Master, There Will be Blood, Vicky Krieps | Leave a comment

Three by Boyer: Liliom (1934), Algiers (1938), and Love Affair (1939)

Posted on January 12, 2018 by Mark DuPré

Charles Boyer was thought of as retro and a subject of satire when I was young. He was somewhere between the worlds of my parents and grandparents, and most of us knew that he was the model for Pepé Le … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Older Films | Tagged Algiers, An Affair to Remember, Carousel, Cary Grant, Casablanca, Charles Boyer, Charles Farrell, Deborah Kerr, Ecstacy, Ekstase, Fritz Lang, Gene Lockhart, Hedy Lamarr, Hungary, Irene Dunne, James Wong Howe, Jean Gabin, June Lockhart, Liliom, Michael Curtiz, One Way Passage, Pépé le Moko, Pepé le Pew, Rita Wilson, Rogers and Hammerstein, Sleepless in Seattle, Tom Hanks, Victor Garber, Walter Wanger | Leave a comment

Darkest Hour

Posted on January 4, 2018 by Mark DuPré

What I recently wrote about the 1961 film Two Women (https://film-prof.com/2017/12/31/two-women-1960-1961/) could just as easily applied to Darkest Hour—that the main point of interest was the central performance, but that the evolution of the director’s style was also worth noting. Darkest … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Newer films | Tagged Anna Karenina, Atonement, Ben Mendelsohn, Best Actor, Christopher Nolan, Churchill's Secret, Cinderella, Clemmie Churchill, Darkest Hour, Downton Abbey, Dunkirk, Gary Oldman, Joe Wright, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Pip Torrens, Pride and Prejudice, Romola Garai, Samuel West, Stephen Dillane, The Crown, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Two Women, Winston Churchill, World War II | Leave a comment

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