Series: Tom Hanks

You’d be excused for watching the opening five minutes of this movie and wondering if you just stumbled into some sort of lost Brian De Palma masterpiece that was too gaudy for its time.

Rose-tinted nostalgia shouldn’t be that difficult to nail: Find a non-horrible kid actor; pipe in a soundtrack of retro jams; spin some episodic coming-of-age shenanigans with a few “that wouldn’t fly today!” twists; and bring it home with a treacly voiceover about the “good ‘ol days.” Bam! Thumbs up!

Sleepless in Seattle somehow still works despite a fundamental flaw in its script: The characters spend almost no time together!

All three of the movies in the “Andy Trilogy” (as I’ve come to call it) are outright masterpieces, but none of them are perfect, and all of them are flawed in different ways.

A delightful one-hit-wonder pseudo-biopic filled with an amazing false pop universe and uncountable period touches. A true passion project for Tom Hanks, and a true favorite of mine. I promise I will write a full review of this someday.

One of my foundational cinematic beliefs that all three movies in the “Andy Trilogy” are 5-star, Tour De Good masterpieces.

Aaron Sorkin has always played fast-and-loose with truth in the name of good drama. Typically, this is a strength of his: The Social Network and Steve Jobs are both improved by ignoring fidelity in favor of modern tech-mythology.

Today, I conclude my journey revisiting the “Andy trilogy.”

A completely unnecessary fourth Toy Story that’s still miraculously good. Despite a “creation story,” the existential, almost religious tones of Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 are excised in favor of a clearer theme of parenting. Some parts grate and drag, but the animation is stunningly beautiful, and it has some surprising narrative punch.

We did Joe Versus the Volcano wrong, and, by extension, ourselves wrong.