As a movie writer and fan of facial hair, here's my second homage to Movember. This time, I'm ranking the best movie beards.
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The Sessions shows a heartfelt and honest portrayal what the idea of sexual satisfaction and conquest mean to a person, especially one that can't just go out and perform the way everyone else can. It's certainly an unorthodox path for a true story or a feel-good movie, but The Sessions succeeds in being extremely pleasing and thought-provoking.
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As a movie fan and jealous appreciator of facial hair with an overdue itch for a fun editorial idea, I wanted to pay homage to Movember by ranking the best movie mustaches.
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When I reflect on Lincoln, the top word that comes to mind is "earnest." Spielberg, his cast, and his crew set out to tell a piece of history with wholehearted purpose and never wavered. They weren't swinging for the box office fences to hit some grandiose action home run relying on gross dramatization, theatricality, or wild war battles set to a trumpeting score.
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That combination of catalyst and resonance is why I may begin to agree with many other critics that have anointed Skyfall the best James Bond film ever made. I'll say right now. It's hard to find a flaw.
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With deep creativity and homages to video games new and old, Wreck-It Ralph is a great deal of fun for all ages.
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Flight is director Robert Zemeckis's first live-action film since the brilliant Castaway twelve years ago. To see him return to this extremely high level of traditional filmmaking lets me know that he's still got it.
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Nominated for five Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor), David Mamet wrote and Sidney Lumet directed in 1982 one of the finest courtroom dramas you will ever see.
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Alex Cross is a lazy and uninspired attempt. The readers of the Patterson's crime novels will tell you, the character of Alex Cross is a ripe and rich literary character with many incredible stories and thrilling stories to tell. He deserves better than this uneven effort.
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Thief, from 1981, was the directorial debut of renowned filmmaker Michael Mann, who we have previously viewed via Manhunter earlier in the Alphabet Movie Club. Starring James Caan and Tuesday Weld and featuring the film debuts of Jim Belushi, Robert Prosky, Dennis Farina, William Peterson, Thief was Mann's first foray into the theme of "one last job" that occupies so many of his movies from Manhunter to Heat.
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Argo is a heroic story without requiring a studly action hero. Like its declassified true story, a team effort is conducted and celebrated with Argo. While this film will become "timely" by circumstance, once again, it earns its merit, attention, and appreciation without needing the boost.
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When Orson Welles called this his least favorite film of his catalog, I can see why. The Stranger, while built on a clever and timely post-Nazi regime premise for 1946, boils down to an Edward G. Robinson hero piece and a somewhat strained role for Orson Welles directing himself. It's not that either one of those angles make for a bad movie. It just doesn't make for a great one.
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