Visions of the shattered American Dream in 2 ‘Arthur Miller movies’: The subversive family dramas All My Sons and Death of a Salesman.
-
Despite its many and notable qualities, Lenny Abrahamson’s movie Room is a less-than-pleasant experience. Brie Larson stars.
-
Though it fails to fulfill its thematic promise, Christopher Nolan’s ambitious sci-fier Interstellar is an undeniably grandiose achievement.
-
Richard Linklater’s Boyhood movie brilliantly tackles the effects of the passage of time. Cast: Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette and Ellar Coltrane.
-
Best Actress Oscar winner Joan Crawford is terrific as the devoted mother of psycho daughter Ann Blyth in Michael Curtiz’s 1945 noir Mildred Pierce.
-
Turner Classic Movies: Dysfunctional-Family-Oriented Christmas Films + Katharine Hepburn Double Dose
Turner Classic Movies presents Katharine Hepburn in Little Women 1933: Up to the Christmas Day viewer to decide whether George Cukor’s Best Picture Academy Award nominee is immensely moving or…
-
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…
-
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.
-
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.
-
Rouben Mamoulian’s early musical Applause showed what the newfangled talking pictures could achieve. Legendary torch singer Helen Morgan stars.
-
Joshua Jackson delivers a low-key, sensitive performance in the otherwise conventional family comedy-drama Aurora Borealis. Donald Sutherland costars.
-
Shonali Bose’s uneven family drama Amu traces the connection between a long-ago adoption and the bloody anti-Sikh Delhi riots of 1984.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The Oscar-nominated The Grandfather works both as a Fernando Fernán Gómez showcase and as an irresistible message movie.
In the social/family drama Song of the Fishermen, filmmaker Cai Chusheng portrays the dehumanizing results of China’s stratified class system.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s capably acted urban family drama Tokyo Sonata exposes the seemingly inexorable unraveling of Japan’s traditional social fabric.
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.