Tag: one Oscar
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A Star Is Born ** (2018, Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, Sam Elliott) – Movie Review
A Star Is Born (2018) is a capable piece of film-making and some of it is entertaining but a lot of it is pretty dull, drippy and dreary, surprisingly with Lady Gaga (aka Stefani Germanotta) marginally giving a better acting performance than Bradley Cooper, so it must be a good show case for her. She can…
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Coal Miner’s Daughter **** (1980, Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, Levon Helm, Jennifer Beasley, Jessica Beasley, Phyllis Boyens, Beverly D’Angelo) – Classic Movie Review 5180
Director Michael Apted’s sterling 1980 biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter stars Sissy Spacek, who won the 1981 Best Actress Oscar and the Golden Globe for her role as backwoods girl Loretta Lynn, who becomes a legendary country-singing star. With Tom Rickman’s screenplay based on the autobiography by Loretta Lynn (with George Vecsey), this is an incisively…
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Get Out **** (2017, Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, LilRel Howery, Marcus Henderson, LilRel Howery) – Movie Review
The 28-year-old London-born Daniel Kaluuya lands a good star role as Chris, a young American black man and his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) visits her family’s mysterious estate, where he meets her plenty strange Mom and Dad, Missy (Catherine Keener) and Dean (Bradley Whitford), and peculiar brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones). Mom is a…
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Pygmalion **** (1938, Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller, Wilfrid Lawson) – Classic Movie Review 4945
Pygmalion? It was one of Shaw’s. And he won an Oscar! Directors Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard’s 1938 British version of George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion about the English speech-study professor who plots to make a lady of a common London flower girl is an accomplished, brisk and entertaining movie. Shaw’s own scenario and…
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The Big Short **** (2015, Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Melissa Leo, Hamish Linklater, John Magaro, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, Marisa Tomei, Finn Wittrock) – Movie Review
Co-writer/director Adam McKay’s dynamic and janglingly vibrating movie tells three separate but parallel true stories of the America mortgage housing crisis of 2005 like it’s a near cousin of The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s good to have that great movie as a role model but, comparison admittedly being odious, that just also means this seems…
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Champion **** (1949, Kirk Douglas, Arthur Kennedy, Marilyn Maxwell, Paul Stewart, Ruth Roman, Lola Albright) – Classic Movie Review 2365
Director Mark Robson’s ultra-gripping classic 1949 boxing drama about ruthless rising to fame in the fight game provided Kirk Douglas with his first out of three Best Actor Oscar nominations. Although in the event the movie won only the one for Best Film Editing (Harry Gerstad) out of six nominations. = The youngish, certainly young-looking…
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind ***** (1977, Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, Bob Balaban) – Classic Movie Review 306
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, sci-fi movies were considered out of date and box-office poison. It took the 70s movie brats to bring them back. Take a bow, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Released in the same year as Star Wars, Steven Spielberg’s brilliant, deservedly acclaimed, hugely admired and much…