The Goods: Film Reviews
There’s definitely some diminishing returns on the Back to the Future saga, but it stays fresh and fun enough, and feels slightly more coherent as a standalone story than Part 2. It’s also a very satisfying closer to a trilogy that has, against all financial incentives, remained a trilogy.
After a fireworks-filled opening and a middle act that asks tough questions about flawed heroics, the end is a bit of a mess (burn the coda in a fire, please). Compelling work from Denzel and Zemeckis overall.
It’s tempting to defend this because I admire Zemeckis’s gusto in making blockbusters with a new technology and toolkit, but I just don’t have it in me. It truly looks like a Playstation 2 game, and the macho bluster in the the story is eye-roll-inducing. The uncanny mocap just never works for me.
A solid, moody Hitchcock riff (by which I mean it pulls beats from at least 3 Hitchcock films). Pfeiffer is excellent as the heroine. It’s about 20 minutes too long, but the climax is suspenseful enough to make up for it.
Not a typical first contact movie, and all the better for it. This sci-fi epic deeply probes the relationship between faith and science; for Jodie Foster’s Eleanor, it finds the overlap. It’s thoughtful and heartfelt, and it builds to a terrific ending.
A kooky horror screwball that escalates and escalates, featuring some all-timer body mutilation effects. A whole bucket of fun. The plot is shapeless, but that’s fine. The script is really nasty to its women and generous to its men in a cynical sort of way, which is slightly less fine.
It’s trash.
If you must build a movie around a single actor, it’s hard to imagine a better score than Tom Hanks circa 2000.
It’s one thing to be ugly. Plenty of decent movies aren’t all that great to look at.
Forrest Gump is one of the most divisive movies you’ll encounter, assuming your reading list includes critics across the political and philosophical spectrum.