Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe joined forces on the problem-plagued The Misfits. See also: The playwright’s answer to On the Waterfront.
Socially Conscious Movies
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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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The Poseidon Adventure actress Carol Lynley should also be remembered for a landmark teen pregnancy drama and for a first-rate British thriller.
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However well-intentioned, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s skillfull Detroit movie is unsatisfying as both drama and history. Will Poulter and John Boyega star.
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Julia Roberts and George Clooney deliver stellar performances in Jodie Foster’s trite and cowardly socially conscious thriller Money Monster.
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Spike Lee effectively provides a 21st-century setting to Aristophanes’ 2,400-year-old play in Chi-Raq. Teyonah Parris plays Lysistrata.
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A victim of British anti-gay bigotry, the title character in the movie Lord Montagu became a successful businessman and popular jet-setter.
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Jean Arthur. Jean Arthur films on TCM includes three Frank Capra classics of the 1930s Five Jean Arthur films will be shown this evening, Monday, Jan. 5, on Turner Classic…
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Ava DuVernay’s Martin Luther King Jr.-focused drama Selma is a reminder that Civil Rights events of the mid-1960s remain disturbingly relevant.
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In the social/family drama Song of the Fishermen, filmmaker Cai Chusheng portrays the dehumanizing results of China’s stratified class system.
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Cry, the Beloved Country with Canada Lee and Sidney Poitier. Directed by Hungarian-born Zoltan Korda (The Four Feathers, Sahara) from a screenplay by an uncredited John Howard Lawson – one…
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Nelson Mandela Movies: South African guerrilla fighter turned political prisoner turned president portrayed reverentially by American or British actors.
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With the mostly Havana-set refugee drama Una Noche, narrative feature newcomer Lucy Mulloy proves herself a capable screenwriter-director.
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Excessive self-seriousness derails the (pertinent) message of Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling’s social thriller The East. Alexander Skarsgård costars.
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A mix of science fiction and social commentary, newcomer Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral is too emotionally detached for its own good.
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A hammy Andy Griffith + Budd Schulberg’s didactic screenplay hinder Elia Kazan’s 1957 sociopolitical drama A Face in the Crowd costarring Patricia Neal.
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Paul Winfield, the canine Sounder, Kevin Hooks, Sounder Sounder probably features more extremely wide shots than any movie besides Lawrence of Arabia – and Martin Ritt’s movie is only half…
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Christmas movies on TCM: Black Christmas with Olivia Hussey. Considering the image above and the gory goings-on at its sorority house setting, perhaps “Red Christmas” would have been a more…
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Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Set in the transitional 1960s, “Fade Out, Fade In” is the next episode of the TCM miniseries Moguls &…
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Mitchell Leisen’s 1941 romantic melo Hold Back the Dawn is a good Olivia de Havilland showcase. Also in the cast: Charles Boyer and Paulette Goddard.
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s capably acted urban family drama Tokyo Sonata exposes the seemingly inexorable unraveling of Japan’s traditional social fabric.
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Sold for Marriage: Remarkably modern early silent film Though all but completely forgotten today, Christy Cabanne (at times billed as William Christy Cabanne) was a respected name in the 1910s…
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The well-intentioned America the Beautiful overextends itself while tackling the reasons for American women’s obsession with physical beauty.
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Esteban Sapir’s black-and-white, near-silent morality fantasy The Aerial / La antena is both daringly innovative and lovingly nostalgic.
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A mix of romantic sports comedy and sociopolitical drama, George Clooney’s Leatherheads is most effective in its more serious moments.
Remarkable women’s suffrage movie Mothers of Men dismisses the notion that the female right to vote would destroy American families and society.
Teresa Wright in ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’: Mammoth Blockbuster was Career Highlight as stardom slipped shortly afterwards.
Colonialism in Africa and its lasting legacy: The Wilby Conspiracy with Michael Caine, Sidney Poitier, Prunella Gee, and Rutger Hauer. Shot in Kenya with an international cast, Ralph Nelson’s South…
Neill Blomkamp’s well-intentioned Elysium is hindered by poor character development and a ‘summer blockbuster’ finale. Matt Damon stars.
Monster’s Ball 2001 with Halle Berry, Billy Bob Thornton. This brief piece is an amalgam of two comments posted in response to Alt Film Guide’s Monster’s Ball review written by…
Black Rain. Animego’s DVD release of Shohei Imamura’s Black Rain includes as a bonus feature a selection of World War II-era anti-Japanese propaganda films. Sponsored by various U.S. government bureaucracies,…
Griffith Cinema: Abraham Lincoln Biopic and the dangers of alcoholism + climactic ice-floe river rescue honoring father of American film.
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