Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995)
Musician Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfus) takes a temporary job as a music teacher, but, as his idol John Lennon once sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” After thirty years in this temporary job, Mr. Dreyfus is forced to retire. On his last day of school, a cadre of his former students assemble in the school auditorium for a surprise performance of his long-delayed orchestral piece.
Dreyfus’s best performance in years grounds Holland’s struggle to find meaning and purpose in his life, transforming the film into the ultimate everyman story.
Great performances from William H. Macy as the vice principal opposed to the music program, Olympia Dukakis as the sympathetic principal, Glenne Headly as Mrs. Holland, and Terrence Howard as a young student elevate the film.
Director Stephen Herek’s previous credits, including Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and The Mighty Ducks (1992), could not have prepared audiences for this inspiring film about the greatness of ordinary lives.
The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (2015)
In 2010, Andrew Jarecki directed All Good Things, a film about multimillionaire Robert Durst and his alleged involvement in the disappearance of his wife.
After Durst saw the film, he was so impressed he agreed to let Jarecki interview him. These interviews, along with interviews Jarecki conducted as background for the previous film resulted in this documentary.
During the trial for his murder of a New Orleans man, Durst admitted to cutting the man into pieces and dumping the body into the water, but claimed it was self-defense. To the astonishment of many watching the case, he was acquitted.
At the end of this chilling documentary, Jarecki confronts Durst with damning evidence linking him to another murder. A visibly frustrated Durst goes to the restroom and (unaware his microphone is still recording) appears to admit to killing several people.
Everyone who watched this fascinating look at the special protection afforded the wealthy will instantly elevate the frail, elderly, constantly blinking Durst into their pantheon of scariest people in the world.
Smoke (1995)
When Rashid (Harold Perinneau) saves the life of writer Paul (William Hurt), the two form an unlikely bond with Paul facilitating a reconciliation between Rashid and his father, Cyrus (Forest Whitaker). Meanwhile, Ruby (Stockard Channing) tells Auggie (Harvey Keitel), he has a daughter who needs his help.
Like the titular tobacco smoke, the lives of various characters drift in and out of each other’s lives via Auggie’s tobacco store in this sprawling ensemble in the vein of Altman’s Short Cuts (1993) and Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994).
The Day of the Locust (1975)
Towards the end of the Great Depression, Tod Hackett (William Atherton) moves to Hollywood and takes a job as a set designer. During his time on the studio lots, he paints scenes inspired by the movies he’s working on.
He encounters many odd characters working on the fringe of Hollywood including Abe Kusich (Billy Barty), a midget who enjoys cock-fighting, Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland), a dimwitted man who moved to California for health reasons, elderly vaudevillian Harry Greener (Burgess Meredith), and his daughter Faye (Karen Black).
The film climaxes with the premiere of a much-anticipated motion picture. During the frenzy outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater, Homer is provoked into a fight with a boy (Jackie Earle Haley) and stomps him to death, which leads to a terrifying and chaotic riot.
Featuring several fantastic performances, this is a fine examination of the decadence and depravity of early Hollywood by John Schlesinger who had already won the Academy Award for his ode to depravity, Midnight Cowboy.
In the Park (1915)
While hanging out at a park, The Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) harasses a pair of lovers and angers the police.
Without a strong narrative, the film drifts from gag to gag, bearing closer resemblance to the Marx Brothers than Chaplin’s mature work.
Some of the jokes land, some don’t, but it’s a solid effort by Chaplin to push himself and experiment with his comedy style.
Mildred Pierce (1945)
As the police question Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford) following the murder of her second husband Monte Beragon, she relates the complicated series of events which led to his death.
Separated from her husband, Mildred worked as a waitress. When her youngest daughter died from pneumonia, Mildred took solace in her work, opening a restaurant. The venture was an enormous success and spawned a chain of Mildred’s across Southern California, but her eldest daughter Veda resented her mother’s working class background.
Desperate to gain Veda’s approval, Mildred married Monte, a bankrupt playboy who could provide her the social status she desired. However, one day Mildred arrived him to find Veda and Monte in an embrace. The younger Pierce defiantly claimed Monte intended to marry her, and when he protested her assessment of their relationship, she killed him.
Based on James Cain’s hardboiled novel, this is the defining film of Joan Crawford’s career and the source of her enduring reputation. Knowing what we know now about her own experience with motherhood, her casting as the awkward mother only becomes more poignant.
Mildred is an independent woman who overcame tremendous obstacles to make her own way in the world, yet struggles to gain the respect of the only person she cares about. Resented for things she cannot control, every move Mildred makes to ameliorate these conditions is met with derision and ridicule. Her experience echoed the experiences of countless women in the post war era. Women who’d been exposed to new freedoms and responsibilities while their husbands were fighting the Nazis resented returning to their humdrum domestic lives once the war ended.
With a script polished by William Faulkner, this prescient film anticipated the wave of feminism which would sweep through America in the following decades.
The Age of Adaline (2015)
In the early twentieth century, widowed mother Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively) crashed her car into a frozen lake. Fortunately, a lightning strike revived her heart. She survived the wreck, but is now unable to age.
Recognizing the unwanted attention her condition will likely bring, Adaline periodically changes her name and address to keep from arousing suspicion. Several decades later, her elderly daughter Flemming (Ellen Burstyn) now pretends to be her mother.
Adaline, now calling herself Jenny, is reluctant to begin a relationship, but her feelings for coworker Ellis Jones and Flemming’s prodding compel her to try. After briefly dating, she accompanies Jones to meet his parents, where she discovers his father William (Harrison Ford) is her former lover.
Despite some missteps, this a nice film about the possibilities of love and life, and what it means to be mortal.
In the twilight of her career, Ellen Burstyn is experiencing a personal renaissance, producing exceptional work here, and in Interstellar, and in Louie. While Ford proves with the right material, he can be more than Indiana Jones or Han Solo.
Critical opinion on the film was mixed, but put me in Jaden Smith’s camp; this is an excellent film.
The Revenant (2015)
During a fur hunting expedition, Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is mauled by a mother bear protecting her cubs. His party tries to bring him with them to their encampment, but their leader is convinced he won’t survive the journey and asks a small party, including Glass’s son, to stay behind, wait for Glass to die, and give him a proper burial.
One of the men entrusted with the task, John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), kills Glass’s son and convinces everyone else to abandon their responsibility because of the threat of eminent attack by Native Americans.
Glass, an apparent 18th century MacGyver, survives and slowly makes his way back to the base to extract his revenge, crawling 200 miles over a six-week period to reach his destination.
Much has already been written about the infamous mauling scene. It’s as intense a scene as I’ve seen in a while, and Glass lasts longer against the bear than Ronda Rousey against Holly Holm.
The rest of the film is a probing tale about the depths people will go for revenge and the limits of vengeance to provide closure, but the most striking aspect is the cinematography. This is to snow-covered forests what Lawrence of Arabia was to the desert.
Between this, Ex Machina, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Domhnall Gleeson has had a helluva year. He’s excellent as Andrew Henry, the leader of the expedition.
Leo may not win the elusive Oscar for his work in the film, but it will be one of the first roles mentioned in his obituary. It’s a demanding physical performance and an astounding transformation for an actor frequently thought to be a matinee idol.
I slightly prefer Iñárritu’s previous film (and Best Picture winner) Birdman, but this is an impressive achievement.
The Departed (2006)
Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is a mob informant working for the Massachusetts State Police. Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an undercover policeman who’s infiltrated the Irish mafia. Both men work with mobster Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), although neither of them are aware he’s an FBI informant.
Martin Scorsese’s Best Picture winner, a sleek, compact adaptation of the Hong Kong trilogy Infernal Affairs, embellished with details from the notorious case of Whitey Bulger, is a refreshing view of organized crime outside of the typical Italian America lens.
Nicholson is a tad over the top, but this was (unbeknownst at the time) his last hurrah. Two years later, he effectively retired from filmmaking.
To his credit, Scorsese doesn’t allow the competing loyalties and narrative threads to overwhelm the film. And while the nihilistic end ties together a little too neatly, he commendably refuses to give in to the temptation to provide a happy ending. Taking down the vilest aspects of humanity, is not easy, and requires sacrifice.
The Mission (1986)
In the mid eighteenth century, Jesuit missionary Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons) carefully builds a viable mission ministering to the native Guariní on the present day border between Argentina and Paraguay. He’s joined in his mission by Father Fielding (Liam Neeson) and former slaver Rodrigo Mendoza (Robert De Niro), who killed the lover of his fiancee before coming to Father Gabriel for absolution.
After the Treaty of Madrid transfers the mission from Spanish to Portuguese control, there’s a sharp disagreement between the new owners who would rather enslave the Guarini people and the priests who want to minister to them.
Mendoza reverts to violence, while Gabriel steadfastly refuses to endorse an armed confrontation.
Many of Scorscese’s films explore his conflicted feelings about the faith of his youth. A realist and a Catholic, he wants to believe in a transcendent God, but struggles justifying this faith in a profoundly fallen world.
Unafraid to ask tough questions, the ending frames the central question: is faith a struggle because this is the way the world was created, or have we made it this way by refusing to honor and respect each other?
Apollo 10 1/2 (2022)
Using many of the techniques from his previous films Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006), Richard Linklater creates a story about the Apollo lunar landing which is both a dramatization of the event and a retelling of what it’s like to be a child watching history.
It’s easy to be jaded fifty years later, but Linklater reminds how marvelous things can (and should) be if we’re willing to let go of our cynicism.