\nThere is a moment in this movie where Brad Pitt\u2019s Cliff Booth<\/em>, tripping on acid, confronted with a Manson follower\u2019s gun, simply points a finger gun back. It reduces both Manson and the sixties to childish posturing, and it made my jaw drop. Leonardo DiCaprio\u2019s Rick Dalton<\/em>, an aging, obsolete Western TV star, behaves throughout like the nice, morally upright dad from a fifties sitcom. There’s a lot being said here, and you don\u2019t have to like the alternative history presented to appreciate the audacious brilliance of this film.<\/p>\n
Parasite<\/strong> The Farewell<\/strong> The Irishman<\/strong> 1917<\/strong> Long Day\u2019s Journey Into Night<\/strong> Jo Jo Rabbit<\/strong> Pain and Glory<\/strong> Ash is Purest White<\/strong> Shadow<\/strong> Uncut Gems<\/strong> Marriage Story<\/strong> Little Women<\/strong> Dol<\/span>emite Is My Name<\/strong>
\nThis film is close to perfect. It falls to second place on my list solely on the basis of a slightly hurried finale, a series of connected inevitabilities that begins a tiny bit too late, and unfolds a tiny bit too clumsily.\u00a0 ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/asmikemiller.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Oscars-David-Torcivia-CC-BY-SA-2.0.jpg\")
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\nWhy is this movie not up for every Oscar there is? It\u2019s observant and fearless, and as much a mind-fuck as The Sixth Sense, <\/i>which is to say,<\/i> it’s not really the movie you think you\u2019re watching. I’m troubled at the indignation coming from China; to me, a non-Chinese, this movie is a loving defense of the traditional, communal\u00a0 viewpoint.<\/p>\n
\nGod bless Netflix, and damn all the people voting against it whatever the superior product. This film is a miracle despite the silly, unconvincing de-aging. Watch, or better feel the way Scorsese fills every second with intention, telling the story fully for once, telling it his way. It\u2019s classic mobster cinema, gritty and gruesome and utterly pathetic, but also in perfect synthesis with this director\u2019s spiritual side, and both Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci are amazing.<\/p>\n
\nYeah, it\u2019ll keep winning awards, and yeah, that’s because it’s a deliberate masterpiece. It’s the\u00a0 kind of antiwar film that glorifies wartime heroics, and its awesome scope and unsparing horror lend the movie a questionable importance. But it tells its simple story through stick-figure characters, brave boy scouts as remote from living, speaking human beings as can be imagined. The posturing,\u00a0 stage-set, Academy-baiting perfection is embarrassing: that coincidence of the mother and the milk! The sound of singing through the trees! And who rang that very convenient church bell? Why? And of course, if you’re starving, avoid the mess tent and go sit under the lone tree with the widescreen view and gaze pensively at photographs. Did I say it was a masterpiece? It is.<\/p>\n
\nA wonderful and hypnotic movie: one man\u2019s journey into his own past, and then quite literally into a dream.<\/p>\n
\nI put off seeing this one; I was going to skip it altogether given the reviews and a brief synopsis I read online. It seemed so scattered and silly. I was astonished to feel a lump in my throat through the final third of this movie. Many movies show war though a child\u2019s eyes; this one takes place entirely in a child\u2019s fantasy world, then blows it apart.<\/a><\/p>\n
\nMemory and reconciliation, painstaking and brilliant.<\/p>\n
\nA journey through China\u2019s recent decades of expansion, criminal and otherwise. I greatly admired this movie, but speaking as a woman, when will we ever learn? It makes me crazy.<\/p>\n
\nJust amazing to view; no color except for flesh and blood, and to illuminate a delicate bamboo forest, and it’s bloody as hell in a Game of Thrones<\/em> way. Not my kind of film, but astonishingly beautiful and engrossing.<\/p>\n
\nWhat a ride! What an Adam Sandler performance! What a whole lot of people I didn\u2019t like! Even the kid is a liar!<\/p>\n
\nVery nice, but too centered on Adam Driver\u2019s experience! Plus he gets the big musical number (and it\u2019s wonderful).<\/p>\n
\nI started out really liking this version; it was fun and intelligent, but time\u2019s eroded that initial opinion. I question putting thoughts into minds that never had the chance to formulate them, because those ideas change everything, they mitigate rage, diminish curiosity and ambition, even limit possibility. Did Amy<\/em> really understand herself that way, even as an adult, or instead remain secretly frustrated and\u00a0 resentful? I realize Louisa May Alcott<\/em> held modern ideas, but did she mean Jo March<\/em> to share them? I watched Jo hug her book, and felt nothing, but the romantic ending is satisfying, but logically I should feel the reverse. Maybe Jo<\/em> wasn’t entirely Louisa<\/em>; maybe Louisa<\/em> created a separate character. I did take two new insights from this movie and some further research: first, these were privileged girls, well-connected despite their relative poverty, and at that time, that mattered. And also, I wonder why Alcott<\/em> depicted Amy<\/em> as a lesser artist, when her own sister was a genuinely gifted painter who married but never abandoned her art? Was Louisa<\/em> jealous of the sister who claimed both art and love?<\/p>\n
\nWhat a pleasant surprise: a history lesson, and a biography without any dramatic fall from grace and painful rehabilitation. Just great actors in great roles, having a quiet blast.<\/p>\n