Best Picture: # 76Original Release Date: December 17, 2003Rating: PG-13Runtime: 3 hours, 21 minutesDirector: Peter Jackson Quick Impressions:“One does not simply walk into Mordor.” Everyone knows that. Similarly, one does not simply watch The Return of the King. You can’t start there. The Lord of the Rings is one story. …
Rating: R Runtime: 2 hours, 37 minutes Director: Ridley Scott Quick Impressions: I’m sure I’ll see this movie again because right now there is no bigger fan of Lady Gaga on this earth than my twelve-year-old daughter. The only person I’ve ever in my life heard speak of Gaga as …
Rating: 2 hours, 4 minutes Runtime: PG-13 Director: Jason Reitman Quick Impressions: “Now I remember how long two hours is!” my six-year-old declared as Ghostbusters: Afterlife ended. My husband who had the dubious honor of sitting next to him looked ready for the sweet release of the impending apocalypse. Unlike …
Rating: PG-13Runtime: 1 hour, 38 minutes Director/Writer: Kenneth Branagh Quick Impressions: Two questions gnawed at me as I watched this film. 1) Is Kenneth Branagh teasing that he’s going to make a third Hercule Poirot film based on Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party? (My mom used to watch the one starring …
Rating: R Runtime: 1 hour, 57 minutes Director: Pablo Larraín Quick Impressions:We got the strangest preview package with this movie. After a few trailers played, I began to worry that we had wandered into the wrong auditorium. This sense only intensified with time. Then as the movie started and I …
Rating: R Runtime: 1 hour, 48 minutes Director: Wes Anderson Quick Impressions: I had just convinced my husband that he would secretly love to watch a film that was a conversation between two couples, in which one couple’s son had murdered the other couple’s son. This took some work on …
Best Picture: # 75 Original Release Date: December 27, 2002 Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 1 hour, 53 minutes Director: Rob Marshall Quick Impressions:As we picked up coffee after school the other day, my daughter and I came up with what we first thought was a hysterical joke. What if someone made …
Best Picture: #74 Original Release Date: December 21, 2001 Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 2 hours, 15 minutes Director: Ron Howard Quick Impressions: When A Beautiful Mind first came out, it reminded me of events in my own life and filled me with a visceral revulsion. I didn’t like the movie. It …
Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 2 hours, 35 minutes Director: Denis Villeneuve Quick Impressions: When I first heard that Denis Villeneuve was making Dune with Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, I was beside myself with joy. (Villeneuve seemed like the ideal director to do justice to Dune. And Chalamet is so perfectly …
Rating: R Runtime: 2 hours, 32 minutes Director: Ridley Scott Quick Impressions:I said I would see Dune on the biggest screen available at my first opportunity, but I lied. I considered it. In the middle of the night, I hovered over the available seats for some time. And then (after …
