MovieSorter

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The Fisher King
Great 66 Points 1991

Time hasn’t been kind to The Fisher King, a bum’s view of New York during the doleful Dinkins years. Terry Gilliam’s film of Richard LaGravenese’s screenplay is a dystopian tour through NYC in its Hobbesian pre-Giuliani days. Yes, it’s still a great movie, albeit its whine doesn’t stand the tes…

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WikChip Video Robin Williams & Amanda Plummer kiss
Cop Land
Great 66 Points 1997

De Niro, Keitel, Liotta, Berg and Stallone – with a helluva cast behind `em – turned Cop Land into a cauldron of cinematic testosterone. A strong sense of place and vivid filmmaking on both sides of the Hudson made it well worth a view. Genre requirements and trite political poison limited it…

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WikChip Image Stallone & Sciorra
Margin Call
Great 83 Points 2011

Wall Street gets stripped bare in this brilliantly depressing takedown of überleveraged trading houses, what used to be known as Investment Banks. An acting tour de force about the fall of a Lehman-like firm, Margin Call plays like a Wall Street Glengarry Glen Ross

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WikChip Image Stanley Tucci's dissed risk manager
Annie Hall
Great 66 Points 1977

It hasn’t aged well, this Seventies icon. Maybe because Woody Allen self-parodied himself in real life, or Left Wing Manhattan neurotics are no longer exotic characters, or topical gags don’t have much shelf life. “La-dee-da, la-dee-da.” Sure it’s still a benchmark movie. The Academy doesn’t …

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WikChip Video Trailer for a Best Picture winner
Jimi Hendrix: H...
Great 66 Points 2013

“Are you experienced?” Rock fans of a certain age recognize that bold question as cover for “Do you dig Jimi Hendrix?” Ya dig. For those of us in that cohort and for rock and blues fans of all ages, Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train a Comin’ is a 90 minute documentary well worth viewing, turned up …

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WikChip Video Hendrix ⏩ Wild Thing ⏩ Monterey Pop
The Immigrant
Great 83 Points 2014

Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner form a tortured romantic triangle at the heart of The Immigrant, a touching period drama. Cotillard, the immigrant of the title, enters America with her sister through Ellis Island. Traumatized back in Poland, she gets beset with new problems…

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WikChip Image Why so sad? She has her reasons.
Scent of a Woman
Great 66 Points 1992

One of the more charming scenes in movie history and Al Pacino’s roaring performance mark Scent of a Woman as a great movie. The super-charming scene is, of course, the serendipitous tango that Pacino performs with a winsome Gabrielle Anwar. Sneaking up out of nowhere, it seduces the audience…

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WikChip Video "If you're tangled up, just tango on."
Funny Face
Great 66 Points 1957

Audrey Hepburn is the spoon-full-of-sugar who makes the cultural imperialism go down in Funny Face. Stanley Donen’s musical – done Broadway style – is an intoxicating Vogue-tini, a Size 0 fashion fantasy.

Richard Avedon famously created the opening titles, which are perfectly high fashion. …

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WikChip Image Avedon's timeless portrait of Hepburn
Gone Girl
Great 66 Points 2014

Gone Girl stirs the pot, no doubt about that. Premiering amidst the NFL-stoked domestic violence uproar, this sordid thriller about a wife’s murder is akin to throwing gas on a fire. But never mind all that societal stuff, is it a good movie? Yes, a great one, albeit far from perfect.

The es…

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WikChip Image Smile! Oops, maybe not.
Elegy
Great 66 Points 2008

Ben Kingsley gets in much deeper than planned after seducing a much younger Penélope Cruz in Elegy. Isabel Coixet’s movie comes by its sexual fixations via pedigree: Phillip Roth’s novel The Dying Animal. Think of it as Portnoy’s Complaint, the When I’m 64 rendition – "Will you still nee…

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WikChip Video Ben Kingsley seduces Penélope Cruz