If you love circuses, good for you. This Best Picture winner is way too long and has way too much circus, and when the characters actually talk to each other it’s even worse.
Category Archives: Drama
THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA (1937)
A very old-fashioned biopic (sort of) about a French writer and his fight to save an army officer wrongly accused of treason. I found myself drawn in despite myself.
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)
There are several great performances in this Southern Gothic adaptation of a famous stage play, but the whole thing is really not for me.
BRIAN’S SONG (1971)
The ultimate weepy romance, but it’s for dudes because the two leads are football players.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939)
The most Hollywood version of Emily Brontë’s weird, gothic masterpiece, which is still pretty weird and gothic if that’s what you’re into.
CLÉO DE 5 À 7 (1962)
The earliest big international hit of the great Agnés Varda follows a female singer on a nearly-real-time journey through the Left Bank of Paris as she waits on the results of a cancer test, but it’s actually about a lot of other things.
THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957)
A famous war drama that is actually about something more interesting, told on a grand scale by David Lean and bunch of great actors.
AMADEUS (1984)
A story about a normal human who is confronted with genius and it slowly drives him insane. I think I might like this movie so much because of my own psychological problems, but I definitely like it a lot.
ROMA CITTÁ APERTA (1945)
Perhaps the definitive “neorealist” film, shot in the rubble of Occupied Rome just after the Nazis had left.
INTOLERANCE (1916)
Maybe the first big blockbuster, somehow still leaving viewers flabbergasted a century later. Also one long missive about “cancel culture,,” basically.
Movie Valhalla 