Visions of the shattered American Dream in 2 ‘Arthur Miller movies’: The subversive family dramas All My Sons and Death of a Salesman.
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Room (2015) movie review: Starring an effective Brie Larson, Lenny Abrahamson’s psychological drama provides an uncomfortable experience.
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Interstellar (2014) movie review: Christopher Nolan sci-fier is a grandiose achievement that ultimately fails to fulfill its thematic promise.
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Boyhood (2014) movie review: Richard Linklater brilliantly tackles the effects of the passage of time. Ethan Hawke and Ellar Coltrane costar.
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Mildred Pierce (1945) movie review: Oscar winner Joan Crawford is terrific as psycho Ann Blyth’s devoted mother in Michael Curtiz’s noir melo.
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Turner Classic Movies: Dysfunctional-Family Oriented Christmas Films likely to inspire gathered families + Katharine Hepburn 2x and Elizabeth Taylor 3x.
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Sundance movies: Anna Paquin and Josh Duhamel in The Romantics. As usual, the upcoming Sundance Film Festival will screen numerous world premieres; one of them is writer-director Galt Niederhoffer’s The…
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The genius of Lon Chaney and the best production values that MGM could buy make William Nigh’s ‘exotic’ Mr. Wu movie adaptation a must-see.
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The Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich Pre-Code melodrama Blonde Venus is their best joint effort and the high point of their respective careers.
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Rouben Mamoulian’s early musical Applause showed what the newfangled talking pictures could achieve. Legendary torch singer Helen Morgan stars.
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Joshua Jackson delivers a low-key, sensitive performance in the otherwise conventional family comedy-drama Aurora Borealis. Donald Sutherland costars.
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Shonali Bose’s uneven family drama Amu traces the connection between a long-ago adoption and the bloody anti-Sikh Delhi riots of 1984.
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Sorrell and Son movie: Adult themes aplenty in father-son drama starring a superlative H.B. Warner. Anna Q. Nilsson, Alice Joyce + Nils Asther costar.
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Stagy screenplay and 3 of its 4 leads hinder Fred Zinnemann’s early drug addiction drama A Hatful of Rain. Eva Marie Saint is the sole standout.
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The Oscar-nominated The Grandfather works both as a Fernando Fernán Gómez showcase and as an irresistible message movie.
Song of the Fishermen (1934) movie review: Cai Chusheng drama depicts the dehumanizing results of China’s stratified class system.
Tokyo Sonata (2008) movie review: Kiyoshi Kurosawa exposes the unraveling of Japan’s traditional social fabric in this capably acted urban drama.
Ingmar Bergman’s sumptuous big-screen swan song, the 1982 period family drama Fanny and Alexander is even more engrossing in its longer form.
Kim Basinger is excellent in Tod Williams’ dramatically uneven psychological drama The Door in the Floor. Jeff Bridges and Jon Foster costar.