The kind of movie I feel more obligation to like than actual enthusiasm. It’s undeniably well-made and -acted, though — the kind of prestige journalistic thriller that keeps you hooked. I think my biggest issue is that the story itself isn’t quite as rich and dangerous as the best of the genre — The Washington Post wasn’t even the paper that broke the story in question!
Category: Legacy
A lovely, bespoke little drama that uses the Mister Rogers and his show as a vessel to convey how hard it is to be a good person. Tom Hanks can do anything.
There’s really only about 40 minutes of worthy material here, the detailed reconstruction of the fateful plane almost-crash. But those 40 minutes are really damn good, so I don’t mind forgiving all the padding, which not even Tom Hanks can elevate.
Far too much of a biopic cliche and a corporate pat on the back to be truly great, but also much better than the worst version of this could have been. It helps tremendously to have Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks as leads.
Transcendent cinema: Huge and filled with spectacle and heart. Colorful, splashy, plenty campy. The Wachowskis + Tom Tykwer do not skimp on the aggressive flavor of any of the sections, so it avoids the half-assed feeling of many anthology films, though Cloud Atlas doesn’t feel like an anthology at all thanks to its intercutting between segments and its rapturous, symphonic conclusion. It’s a film that asserts that brave acts of love and kindness can reverberate through time and space. And it makes you believe it.
Fairly light for Spielberg, yet immensely entertaining as both a yarn and a character portrait. Hanks is the reason I watched it, but it’s really Leo’s movie, and it remains one of his best performances. Snappy and fun with just enough pathos. (I don’t care how true or false any of the claims are; they make a terrific film story.)
If you must build a movie around a single actor, it’s hard to imagine a better score than Tom Hanks circa 2000.
The most overrated Tom Hanks movie — I simply do not understand the enduring adoration of this one.
I was 14 when The Transporter series kicked off, which is the absolute perfect age to be enraptured by its fun-spirited but immensely dumb action shenanigans.
It’s tough to overstate how iconic Office Space: Almost 25 years later, its portrait of white-collar corporate hell remains potent and disturbingly accurate.