FILM FRENZY

Tom Hulce in Amadeus (Photo: Warner Bros.)

By Matt Brunson

(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray, 4K and DVD. Ratings are on a four-star scale.)

AMADEUS (1984). In arguably one of the greatest movie years ever (read all about it here and here), this period piece wowed the critics, conquered the Oscars, and even did solid business at the box office (an impressive #12 finish for ‘84, right under Prince’s Purple Rain and right above Clint Eastwood’s Tightrope). Director Milos Forman and scripter Peter Shaffer (adapting his own Broadway hit) admitted up front that they would take ample liberties with history, leading them to create a fictional yet grandly entertaining yarn about a rivalry between two 18th century Vienna composers, the brilliant yet immature Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce) and the stridently mediocre Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham). Visually dazzling and wonderfully acted (Jeffrey Jones steals scenes as a bemused Emperor Joseph II), this is no dusty biopic but instead brings the distant past alive in kinetic fashion … even if that past comes heavily embellished. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Actor (Hulce), this won eight, including Best Picture, Actor (Abraham), Director, and Adapted Screenplay. The soundtrack also proved to be popular, hitting #56 on the Billboard Top 200 (sandwiched that week by albums from Bronski Beat and Giuffria) and grabbing the Grammy for Best Classical Album.

The maxim “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should” was my reaction to Amadeus: The Director’s Cut, which has long been the only version available on Blu-ray. It runs 20 minutes longer than the theatrical cut (180 vs. 160), but longer doesn’t always mean better, and the added footage only serves to weaken rather than enhance the original film (see also Apocalypse Now Redux). Thankfully, this new 4K + Digital Code edition offers the theatrical version. Extras consist of two making-of featurettes, one new and one from 2002.

Movie: ★★★½

BODY PARTS (1991). Whenever the writing team of Frenchmen Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (who published under the combined name Boileau-Narcejac) got mixed up with the movies, the results were often something special. Their novel She Who Was No More became Henri-Georges Clouzet’s 1955 classic Diabolique. Their book The Living and the Dead was transformed into Alfred Hitchcock’s immortal 1958 offering Vertigo. And as screenwriters, they paired with author Jean Redon to bring his novel Eyes Without a Face to the screen in Georges Franju’s impressive 1960 movie of the same name. Still, not all of their achievements resulted in cinematic gold. Take Body Parts, a horror yarn that was adapted from their 1965 novel Choice Cuts. Continuing the cinematic tradition involving human limbs running amok (Mad Love, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, The Hand, etc.), this one stars Jeff Fahey as Bill Chrushank, a criminal psychologist who loses his right arm in an automobile accident. A doctor (Lindsay Duncan) known for cutting-edge surgery replaces the appendage with one from an unknown donor; all seems well until the arm begins acting violently of its own accord. Chrushank learns that the arm was once attached to a serial killer, and that two other men (Brad Dourif and Peter Murnik) received other parts (the left arm and both legs, respectively) from the same body. Despite noticeably lacking in tension, Body Parts at least maintains interest for the first two-thirds, after which it lapses into absurdity with weak plotting that results in a risible climax.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by director and co-writer Eric Red; interviews with Red and Murnik; and deleted gore footage.

Movie: ★★

HARD TRUTHS (2024). Marianne Jean-Baptiste earned a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination for her performance in writer-director Mike Leigh’s brilliant 1996 offering Secrets & Lies, and she should outright win the Best Actress Oscar for her smashing turn in Leigh’s latest. Alas, Jean-Baptiste was (as expected) not even nominated, meaning she’ll have to content herself with over a dozen critics’ awards (including victories from three biggies in the NY, LA, and National Society outfits). Leigh, whose films tend to seesaw between period pieces (Topsy-Turvy, Mr. Turner) and contemporary humanist works (Life Is Sweet, Another Year) turns to the latter for his latest at-bat, with Jean-Baptiste cast as a raging misanthrope angry at everything and everyone, including herself. Pansy Deacon has a dullard (David Webber) for a husband and a slacker (Tuwaine Barrett) for a son, and they receive plenty of her ire. The only person who can stand to be around her is her sister Chantelle (Michele Austin, also remarkable), a single mom with two grown daughters (Ani Nelson and Sophia Brown). Chantelle is full of love and warmth, striking a remarkable contrast with her sister, and it’s a family gathering at Chantelle’s house that leaves a tightly wound Pansy almost paralyzed with her fears and frustrations. A character as extreme and unpleasant as Pansy would normally earn no sympathy from viewers, but Jean-Baptiste is so astonishing in the part that she teases out glimpses of her latent humanity, and Leigh provides her with legitimate reasons for her perpetual malaise. I just wish the picture had a stronger conclusion — its open-endedness very much plays into Leigh’s life-goes-on filmic philosophy, but it’s much too abrupt and unfulfilling for such a piercing character study.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★★★

INSERTS (1975). So intimate (in more ways than one) that it could easily be turned into a play (and it eventually was), the single-set, five-actor movie Inserts was slapped with an X rating right out of the gate — that designation has since been converted into an NC-17 for “Explicit Sexuality,” meaning lots of male and female nudity and the frequent employment of words referring to genitalia. Released shortly after Jaws made Richard Dreyfuss a household name (not that his presence helped this box office bomb), the young actor stars as the so-called Boy Wonder, a once-great silent-film director who in 1930 has been reduced to making porno flicks in his own crumbling mansion. His bickering stars are the drug-addled Harlene (Veronica Cartwright) and Rex, the Wonder Dog (Stephen Davies), and the precarious balance that exists between the three is shattered when porn producer Big Mac (Bob Hoskins) and his girlfriend Candy Cake (Jessica Harper) crash the scene. Writer-director John Byrum’s storyline is alternately fascinating and flaccid (sorry), but the dialogue hums along nicely. None of the actors can be faulted — all are excellent, with Cartwright (best known for her supporting turns in the fantasy flicks Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Witches of Eastwick) phenomenal as the former silent-screen star whose inability to make the transition to talkies has turned her into a heroin addict. I had to chuckle when Hoskins’ character states that he loves the idea of freeways and plans to invest in them — years later, his Eddie Valiant in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit would dismiss freeways as “a lamebrain idea [that] could only be cooked up by a Toon.”

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★★½

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (2021). Racism, police brutality, misinformation, social inequality, oppression, and grassroots activism — given that lineup, Judas and the Black Messiah could easily have taken place today in Trump’s AmeriKKKa. Instead, it’s set at the tail end of the 1960s and culminates with the government-sanctioned assassination of Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), the tireless activist and prominent Black Panther Party member whose popularity rattled FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen). Hoping to infiltrate the organization, the FBI assigns one of its agents (Jesse Plemons) to force small-time crook Bill O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) to join the party, get close to Hampton, and report back on all his activities. If there’s a flaw in the film, it’s that there’s too much Judas and not enough Black Messiah. Stanfield excels in a tricky role, but it’s the scenes with Hampton that are particularly riveting (thanks in no small part to Kaluuya’s fiery turn), and a more expansive understanding of this man would have strengthened the film. Nevertheless, this is a stirring and important work, with issues and attitudes that continue to stubbornly refuse to exit the country. Nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Stanfield), Original Screenplay (Shaka King, who also directed, Will Berson, and brothers Kenny and Keith Lucas), and Cinematography, this deservedly earned statues for Best Supporting Actor (Kaluuya) and Best Original Song (“Fight for You,” co-written and sung by H.E.R.). It also produced a pair of soundtrack albums, one of which (Judas and the Black Messiah: The Inspired Album) hit #12 on the Billboard 200 chart.

4K extras consist of a pair of featurettes on Hampton and O’Neal.

Movie: ★★★

THE LAST MATCH (1991). The plot of The Last Match makes it sound like one of those Italian-financed cheapies that can be terribly entertaining. Instead, it’s merely terrible. Opening with the most poorly edited football game I’ve ever seen in a movie, this finds perky Susan Gaylor (Melissa Palmisano), an American vacationing in an unidentified country full of anti-American locals, being framed for drug possession and tossed into a prison run by sleazy Warden Yashin (Henry Silva). Her incarceration was a bad play, since Susan happens to be the daughter of quarterback Cliff Gaylor (Oliver Tobias). After Cliff has no luck going through the proper channels — meaning meetings with an ineffectual American consul (Charles Napier) and an ineffectual lawyer (Martin Balsam) — it’s Ernest Borgnine to the rescue! The famously masturbatory (as revealed on FOX “News”) Oscar winner is Coach, and he leads all his players in staging a rescue operation in which everyone wears their football uniforms while brandishing firearms and explosives. It sounds awesome, but except for the moment when one of the players dropkicks a grenade-stuffed pigskin into an enemy helicopter, it’s pretty wretched, given the complete inability of director Fabrizio De Angelis (billed as usual as Larry Ludman) to satisfactorily stage even one nanosecond of competent, coherent material. One of the athletes is played by former Buffalo Bills quarterback Jim Kelly, and what’s noteworthy is that he didn’t make this movie after retiring but during his best years in the NFL! Perhaps his participation in this film helps explain why the Bills were 0-4 in consecutive Super Bowls during this period.

Blu-ray extras include an interview with FX creator Roberto Ricci and a piece on slumming American actors (like Borgnine, Balsam, Napier, and Silva) in low-budget Italian films.

Movie: ★

LIFEGUARD (1976). Those who only know Sam Elliott as the mustachioed guru in films like The Big Lebowski and Roadhouse or as Bradley Cooper’s brother in A Star Is Born might be surprised to learn that he was briefly a sex symbol in seventies cinema. That was mainly due to Lifeguard, a solid drama in which Rick Carlson (Elliott) has been happy working as a lifeguard for most (if not all) of his adult life. But now in his early 30s, and with the presence of younger hires like Chris Randolph (Parker Stevenson, a year before Frank Hardy fame on TV’s The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries) accentuating the age gap, he begins to wonder if he should devote himself to something more serious and suitable for an adult male. His friend Larry (Stephen Young) offers him a lucrative job as a Porsche salesman, but he still prefers to remain on the beach, spending much of his time with a lovestruck 17-year-old fan named Wendy (Kathleen Quinlan). It isn’t until he attends his 15-year high school reunion and reconnects with his former sweetheart Cathy (Anne Archer) that he realizes he must make a commitment one way or the other. Promoted by Paramount as a goofy sex comedy (check out the original poster design which graces the cover of the new Blu-ray release), Lifeguard is instead a pensive film that weighs whether a person’s desire to be content should override an opportunity to improve, even if it means severely limiting one’s options. Rick’s relationship with Wendy is sensitively handled (even if he does rightly wonder if he should have slept with jailbait), but more scenes with Cathy would have maximized what Rick has to gain or lose.

Blu-ray extras consist of audio commentary by film podcast hosts and an image gallery.

Movie: ★★★

PERFORMANCE (1970). “The most disgusting, the most completely worthless film I have seen” (Richard Schickel). “An odious, amoral work” (Danny Peary). “The most loathsome film of all” (the typically hysterical John Simon, who probably said this about countless movies over the years). “Pretentious and repellent” (Charles Champlin). Amusingly, even some of the positive reviews described the picture as “repellent” (“Repellent but fascinating,” Steven H. Scheuer; “Fascinating yet repellent,” TLA Film and Video Guide). If ever a movie was headed for not only cult enshrinement but critical reevaluation, it was Performance, now regarded (primarily in its U.K. homeland) as one of the greatest British films of all time. It’s easy to see why it has both attracted and offended, given the take-no-prisoners approach by writer-director Donald Cammell and director-cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, the latter going on to create two of the greatest films of the 1970s in Walkabout and Don’t Look Now. Roeg would also end up directing David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth and Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing — here, it’s Mick Jagger in the spotlight, and, as with many musicians testing their skills before the camera, his attitude carries him through more than his acting. He’s Turner, a reclusive rock star who has lost his mojo and now spends his time doing drugs and having sex with his roommates (Anita Pallenberg and Michèle Breton). Into this hedonistic world crashes Chas (James Fox), an ultraviolent mob enforcer on the run. Sex and violence, identity and androgyny, commonality and perversity — these issues and more all compete for attention in a film that’s alternately, uh, fascinating and repellent.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include a making-of piece; the 1998 documentary Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance; and interviews with Fox, Jagger, and Pallenberg.

Movie: ★★½

RACING WITH THE MOON (1984). In a coastal California town in 1943, Henry “Hopper” Nash (Sean Penn) and his best friend Nicky (Nicolas Cage) have less than two months to go before they’re shipped out to take part in the war effort as Marines. During that time, the middle-class Henry hopes to build a romance with Caddie Winger (Elizabeth McGovern), a seemingly wealthy “Gatsby girl” from the other side of the tracks. Nicky, meanwhile, is already in a relationship with Sally (Suzanne Adkinson), but matters become complicated after Nicky gets her pregnant and they need to come up with the money for an abortion. Racing With the Moon is yet another coming-of-age drama filtered through the past, but what’s notable about it is how it frequently focuses on the idyllic aspects of small-town life, thus making WWII seem not like it’s raging as close as on other continents but rather on other planets. The dynamic between the two buddies is old-hat and expected — one is sweet and sensitive while the other is rowdy and reckless (San Francisco, Angels With Dirty Faces, Lethal Weapon, Rounders, and oh so many others) — but Penn and Cage breathe new life into this stereotypical coupling. John Karlen (aka the dude who let Barnabas Collins out of his coffin on TV’s Dark Shadows) delivers a fine performance as Hopper’s father, and familiar actors in small roles include Crispin Glover as a rich brat, Carol Kane as a prostitute, and Michael Madsen as a soldier shipped stateside due to the loss of his right leg (the credits state that Dana Carvey also appears, but heck if I caught him).

Blu-ray extras consist of audio commentary by director Richard Benjamin; film critic audio commentary; an archival making-of featurette; and an image gallery.

Movie: ★★★

TOM AND JERRY: THE COMPLETE CINEMASCOPE COLLECTION (1954-1958). To compete with that new-fangled invention the television set, Hollywood movie studios decided to differentiate themselves by offering their fare in eye-popping, eye-filling, widescreen presentations. But the widescreen splendor wasn’t reserved just for feature-length films, as both animated and live-action shorts were often given the special treatment as well. While Walt Disney was the first to make a cartoon in CinemaScope (1953’s Oscar-winning Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom), it didn’t take long for the Hanna-Barbera team (William and Joseph) at MGM to adopt the format. Of the 114 Hanna-Barbera Tom & Jerry cartoons made between 1940 and 1958, 23 were shot in CinemaScope, from the first ones in 1954 to the final ones in 1958. The series’ best years were coming to an end — indeed, seven T&J entries won Oscars for Best Short Subject: Cartoons and another six were nominated, but all the winners and all but one of the nominees were made before the CinemaScope era. That’s not to say the franchise didn’t continue to offer ample entertainment, even if the mayhem seldom reached the zany heights of the Looney Tunes crop or even the live-action Three Stooges shorts. Among the superior inclusions are 1954’s Oscar-nominated Touché, Pussy Cat!, one of three follow-ups to 1952’s Oscar-winning The Two Mouseketeers; 1955’s Pup on a Picnic, featuring the canines Spike and Tyke; 1956’s raucous Muscle Beach Tom; and 1956’s notorious Blue Cat Blues, which ends with Tom and Jerry both possibly committing suicide(!).

Blu-ray extras consist of three T&J-less cartoons shot in Cinemascope: 1955’s Oscar-nominated Good Will to Men and the 1957 pair of Give and Tyke and Scat Cats, the only two cartoons to showcase Spike and Tyke in starring rather than supporting roles.

Collection: ★★★

TRAPPED ASHES (2006). As a huge fan of horror anthology films like those produced by Britain’s Amicus Productions back in the 1960s and 70s (e.g. The House That Dripped Blood, Tales From the Crypt), I thought Trapped Ashes certainly sounded promising, reviving this sort of portmanteau picture with directors like Joe Dante and Ken Russell at the helm. But the finished product is a disappointment, with none of the individual tales exhibiting much of a pulse and the actors (both the old pros and the newbies) failing to make us care about the ultimate fates of their characters. Dante (Gremlins) directs the connecting portions, which finds a Hollywood studio tour guide (Henry Gibson) explaining to the guests stuck in a dilapidated house that they must tell personal horror stories in order to escape (yes, it’s as dumb as it sounds). “The Girl With Golden Breasts,” directed by Russell (The Lair of the White Worm), registers like a test run for The Substance, as an actress (Rachel Veltri) who keeps losing out on roles undergoes experimental surgery on her body, with horrific results. “Jibaku,” helmed by Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th), finds an American couple (Lara Harris and Scott Lowell) encountering a hellish spirit in Japan. “Stanley’s Girlfriend,” from Monte Hellman (Beast From Haunted Cave), is a tale recounted by a. screenwriter named Leo (John Saxon), explaining how when he was younger, he stole the sweetheart (Amelia Cooke) of Stanley Kubrick (Tygh Runyan). And “My Twin, the Worm,” courtesy of John Gaeta (the Oscar-winning co-creator of The Matrix’s groundbreaking visual effects), involves a pregnant woman (Michèle-Barbara Pelletier) whose belly contains both her unborn child and a pesky tapeworm.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include a making-of piece; longer cuts of “The Girl With Golden Breasts” and “Stanley’s Girlfriend”; and interviews with Gaeta and various cast and crew members.

Movie: ★★

FILM CLIPS

GRAVEYARD SHIFT (1990). As far as filmic adaptations of Stephen King properties go, I suppose the best one can say about Graveyard Shift is that it’s superior to 1995’s truly abysmal The Mangler, another movie based on a King short story and involving a monster munching mortals among mill machinery. Otherwise, this is a cheapjack horror yarn, with Brad Dourif a lone bright spot. Dourif has a supporting role as “The Exterminator,” hired to kill all the rodents that live in the basement of a textile mill lorded over by a cruel foreman (Stephen Macht). Unfortunately, no amount of pest control can eliminate the monstrous, mutated rat thingy that lives beneath the basement … a locale where this turkey also belongs.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include film historian audio commentary; interviews with director Ralph S. Singleton and Macht; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★½

SNOWPIERCER (2014). Mickey 17, the latest from Parasite‘s Oscar-winning  writer-director Joon-ho Bong, opens stateside next Friday, so the time seemed right to release one of his earlier titles in 4K. Following a global catastrophe, the planet’s remaining survivors live on a massive train that protects them from the ice age outside; what it can’t do is protect the poor huddling masses in the back from the well-to-dos in the front. That’s the gist of this brainy bruiser that offers plenty of social commentary to go along with the exciting action. The cast includes Chris Evans, Ed Harris, Octavia Spencer, and John Hurt, with Tilda Swinton particularly effective in a villainous role.

Extras include making-of pieces; interviews with Evans and Swinton; and an animated prologue.

Movie: ★★★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM: Best Picture Oscar Winners

A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001). Perhaps wary of the controversy that generally surrounds the liberal handling of factual material in film, the makers of A Beautiful Mind went out of their way to make it known beforehand that their movie was “a semi-fictional story” and “a distinctive departure from the source material.” So with that out of the way, even sticklers for historical accuracy were able to grudgingly accept this film’s unorthodox structure. Director Ron Howard has never been known for taking a radical approach to cinema ­— even his best pictures (like Apollo 13) have a buttoned-down quality about them ­— but in tackling the story of John Forbes Nash Jr., the mathematical genius who suffered from schizophrenia for most of his life but still went on to win the Nobel Prize, Howard has loosened up enough to imbue the project with a jangled-nerve approach that paradoxically allows us to feel like both observers and participants in Nash’s never-ending struggles with his own mind. Russell Crowe is superb as Nash, but almost as impressive is former teen star Jennifer Connelly, who built on 2000’s Requiem for a Dream adult breakout with a touching performance as Nash’s saintly wife, a woman who weathered her husband’s fluctuating fortunes down through the decades. The fabulous score by James Horner was one of its decade’s best, never traveling quite where we’d expect. Nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Actor and Original Score, this won four: In addition to Best Picture, it also copped Best Supporting Actress (Connelly), Director, and Adapted Screenplay (Akiva Goldsman).

Movie: ★★★½

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946). This World War II drama, filmed soon after the conflict’s end, remains perhaps the best movie ever made about the hardships endured by soldiers returning home from war. Sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March) is happy to see his wife (Myrna Loy) and kids (Teresa Wright and Michael Hall) again after all these years, but he has trouble readjusting to civilian life. Captain and bombardier Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), referenced more than once as a “glamour flyboy,” has no luck finding work but at least can spend quality time with the woman (Virginia Mayo) he married before shipping out — until he learns that they have little in common. And sailor Homer Parrish (nonprofessional actor Harold Russell), who has hooks where both hands used to be, worries that he will no longer be loved by the childhood sweetheart (Cathy O’Donnell) he planned to marry. (While Homer lost his hands in combat, Russell actually lost his as he held faulty explosives while serving as an army instructor near Fort Bragg, N.C.) A gargantuan box office hit, the film conquers its three-hour running time thanks to one outstanding vignette after another — highlights include the men’s drunken revelry at a bar, Fred’s visit to the plane graveyard, and Homer’s meltdown in the tool shed. The cinematography by Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane) is remarkable and should have nabbed the Oscar; instead, it failed to even be nominated. And speaking of the Oscars, this won seven of the eight categories in which it was nominated, including Best Actor (March), Supporting Actor (Russell), Director (William Wyler), and Screenplay (Robert E. Sherwood, adapting MacKinlay Kantor’s novel); in addition, Russell also won a second award, a special Oscar “for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives.”

Movie: ★★★★

CRASH (2005). Here’s the Oscar controversy that will seemingly forever live in infamy. Of course everyone knows how rampant homophobia (among other factors) allowed this to beat Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture, but let’s not forget that it was also the weakest of all five nominated films in ‘05 (the others in this so-so year were Good Night, and Good Luck, Capote, and Munich). Written and directed by Paul Haggis, Crash emulates such ambitious efforts as Short Cuts and Magnolia in the manner in which it uses a sprawling cast of characters to make its salient points about modern-day turmoil in America. Here, the hot-button issue is prejudice, as various Los Angelenos must cope not only with the rampant racism around them but also the bigotry that rests within themselves. Among those on the frontlines are a detective (Don Cheadle, who also co-produced) investigating a possible hate crime, a cynical cop (Matt Dillon) and his greenhorn partner (Ryan Phillippe), a progressive district attorney (Brendan Fraser) and his brittle wife (Sandra Bullock), and a Hispanic locksmith (Michael Peña) who, despite being the least prejudiced person in the film, comes closest to losing the most. Haggis has made a relevant movie that would have been even better had he eased up on the gas every once in a while: For all its relevant themes and clever plotting, the film’s overly didactic nature and moments of whopping coincidence dilute some of its impact. Among the powerhouse cast, the standouts are Hustle & Flow (also 2005) co-stars Terrence Howard as a timid TV director and Ludacris as a philosophical carjacker. Nominated for six Oscars, including Best Director and Supporting Actor (Dillon), this also won for Best Original Screenplay and Film Editing.

Movie: ★★½

SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (1998). In one of the biggest (and most absurd) upsets in Oscar history, Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture, largely through a combination of Miramax head Harvey Weinstein’s bullying, Oscar-mongering campaign and members receiving the film on DVD (conversely, Steven Spielberg felt his movie should be seen on the big screen). As a result, this period romp has taken quite the beating over the years, but while it’s no Saving Private Ryan, it remains a witty romantic comedy. Unlike most period pieces, which take themselves so seriously that any anachronistic cracks stand out, this one reveals itself as a fictional lark that takes nothing (save perhaps love and literature) seriously. Joseph Fiennes plays the young Bard, who comes down with writer’s block as he struggles to spit out a new play titled Romeo and Ethel, The Pirate’s Daughter. Eventually, he finds his muse in a free spirit named Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow); she returns his affection, but both are crushed by the fact that her hand in marriage has already been promised to the intolerable Lord Wessex (Colin Firth, once again losing a woman to a Fiennes brother; see also The English Patient). It’s rather ingenious how the script posits that many events in Will’s life worked their way into his plays, and it also takes delight in tweaking modern show biz staples such as profit sharing, cast billing, and gift-shop memorabilia. The exemplary supporting cast includes Geoffrey Rush as the befuddled theater owner, Ben Affleck as a conceited actor, and Judi Dench as a tart Queen Elizabeth. Nominated for 13 Academy Awards, including Best Director (John Madden) and Supporting Actor (Rush), this won seven, including Best Actress (Paltrow), Supporting Actress (Dench), and Original Screenplay (Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman).

Movie: ★★★½

UNFORGIVEN (1992). The great Orson Welles once stated that Clint Eastwood was the most underrated filmmaker in America, and the sobering footnote is that the Citizen Kane auteur passed away in 1985, well before Eastwood began to be taken seriously as an artist by most critics and moviegoers. Even though he had directed 15 pictures over a two-decade span (including such attention-getters as The Outlaw Josey Wales and White Hunter Black Heart), it wasn’t until he helmed Unforgiven that he moved into the front ranks of modern cinema’s finest practitioners. Working from a knockout screenplay by David Webb Peoples (Blade Runner) that originally bore the unfortunate title The Cut-Whore Killings, the actor-director-producer crafted a superb motion picture that served as a fitting final chapter in his impressive Western canon. Eastwood stars as William Munny, a reformed outlaw and grieving widower who agrees to take a shot at the reward money being offered for killing two ruffians who facially disfigured a prostitute in the town of Big Whiskey. Munny embarks on the mission alongside his former partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) and the upstart Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett), and he eventually finds himself heading toward a brutal confrontation with Big Whiskey’s sadistic sheriff, Little Bill Daggett (R.I.P. Gene Hackman). This unflinching drama definitively strips the West of its idealized romanticism and presents it as a savage hellhole in which there are no clear-cut heroes or villains, only morally ambiguous survivalists. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Actor (Eastwood) and Original Screenplay, this earned four: Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Hackman, his second Oscar following Best Actor for 1971’s The French Connection), and Film Editing.

Movie: ★★★★