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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)
Let the magic begin.
Filmmaker(s): Chris Columbus

Harry Potter has lived under the stairs at his aunt and uncle's house his whole life. But on his 11th birthday, he learns he's a powerful wizard—with a place waiting for him at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. As he learns to harness his newfound powers with the help of the school's kindly headmaster, Harry uncovers the truth about his parents' deaths—and about the villain who's to blame.

Hermione's Mouth a long time, we have been warned about what will happen when a couple large companies own all the news, publicity, publishing and film channels. Now, we have the results, a film product that is as moribund as Microsoft software. In both the...


Published March 12, 2025
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Ones |
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Miss Julie (1999)
Worlds apart... bound by desire.
Filmmaker(s): Mike Figgis

A footman seduces a count's daughter. Adaptation of August Strindberg's famous play.

A Man and his Mistress what love does, when yearning crosses boundaries and makes someone see another as better than they really are. Here, it ends in suicide. I'm talking about Mike Figgis' view of girlfriend Saffron. A reliably trenchant play: a competent footman; a very...


Published February 26, 2025
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
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A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
...Blanche, who wanted so much to stay a lady...
Filmmaker(s): Elia Kazan

A fading southern belle moves in with her sister in New Orleans where her ferocious brother-in-law takes stabs at her sanity.

Mass Transit vast majority of films use someone else's vocabulary, so when you can run across one that helped create that vocabulary it is cause for celebration. Usually the originality is in the vision of the filmmaker, but here it is in the manner of...


Published December 11, 2024
| Categorised as Fours, IMDB Comments |
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12 Angry Men (1957)
Life is in their hands — Death is on their minds!
Filmmaker(s): Sidney Lumet

The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other.

No Dissonance film deserves to be on anyone's list of top films. My problem is that it is so perfect, so seamlessly polished, it is hard to appreciate the individual excellences. The acting is top notch. I believe that monologue acting is quite a bit simpler...


Published December 11, 2024
| Categorised as Fours, IMDB Comments |
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The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
I told you... you know nothing about wickedness
Filmmaker(s): Orson Welles

A romantic drifter gets caught between a corrupt tycoon and his voluptuous wife.

Chinese Puzzle first mystery is to guess what Welles' original film was like. That makes this a real adventure -- to see an incomplete skeleton and using cinematic forensics, imagine the beautiful woman it once supported. If you do, you will both see and experience perhaps...


Published December 11, 2024
| Categorised as Fours, IMDB Comments |
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Rear Window (1954)
It only takes one witness to spoil the perfect crime.
Filmmaker(s): Alfred Hitchcock

A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.

Copernican Cinema just don't like Hitchcock. I admit that he ‘delivered value' in his day, but as I review his films today, I find them trite, badly dated. The style of acting he used now looks ’actorly.' His camera framing is well considered but unimaginative...


Published December 10, 2024
| Categorised as Fours, IMDB Comments |
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Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Nothing is written.
Filmmaker(s): David Lean

The story of British officer T.E. Lawrence's mission to aid the Arab tribes in their revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Lawrence becomes a flamboyant, messianic figure in the cause of Arab unity but his psychological instability threatens to undermine his achievements.

A Vision that Defines Itself man has an inner drive that makes him peculiar and intense. He goes to the desert and falls in love with it and its people. Gaining powerful sponsors, he has a grand vision that he accomplishes by inspiring and directing...


Published December 10, 2024
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The Limey (1999)
Tell them I'm coming
Filmmaker(s): Steven Soderbergh

The Limey follows Wilson, a tough English ex-con who travels to Los Angeles to avenge his daughter's death. Upon arrival, Wilson goes to task battling Valentine and an army of L.A.'s toughest criminals, hoping to find clues and piece together what happened. After surviving a near-death beating, getting thrown from a building and being chased down a dangerous mountain road, the Englishman decides to dole out some bodily harm of his own.

Proustian Out and Back deserves respect, as much for his failures (‘Brokovich,’’Traffic') as his successes (this, ‘Sight,’’Videotape'). When he experiments, it is with simultaneous layers of different kinds involving the eye, the mind, time, remembrance. Here he works on small, intimate layers, small visions of the...


Published December 9, 2024
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
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Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Extraordinary! Hypnotic! Beautiful! Masterful!
Filmmaker(s): Alain Resnais

In a strange and isolated chateau, a man becomes acquainted with a woman and insists that they have met before.

Annotated Image -- Constructed Memory of the most influential films ever made, and must be seen on that basis. You create your own life by collecting Borgean memories and adding pieces from this film will greatly enrich your viewing of later, safer films along the...


Published December 9, 2024
| Categorised as Fours, IMDB Comments |
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Short Cuts (1993)
Short Cuts raises the roof on America.
Filmmaker(s): Robert Altman

Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.

Space Jazz is uneven, and not all of his failures are interesting. But he does one thing better than anyone else. And so far as I know, he invented it. Most filmmakers start with someone else's vision, and then make it real. The better ones...


Published December 4, 2024
| Categorised as Fours, IMDB Comments |
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