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The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

With a current IMDb score of 9.3/10, this film has to be in the conversation for the best film of all time.  What makes it so special? Well, if that was so easy to say, then every movie ever made should be equally as good, right? I guess we just like the main characters, Andy (Tom Robbins) and Red (Morgan Freeman). We want good things for them, and when they are somehow able to defy all odds and have their happy ending, that feels awesome. The film also does a masterful job of showing that the happy ending was plausible. In both men's cases, they had to survive decades in prison, but as Red puts it, Andy was too pretty a bird to be caged. Red, too. He served 40 years for a horrible crime, but he was no longer the person who committed that crime. This is one of those movies that I remember pretty much from beginning to end. In a way, I would never need to watch it again, because I know it. But somehow I do return to it every 5 or 10 years, and every time I watch it, I'm left com...
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Alien: Covenant (2017)

Prequel, sequel, stand-alone?  I recently re-watched Prometheus (2012), but even so, I wasn't completely sure about the timeline for this one. I had to look it up, and then I learned that this one is supposed to be 10 years after Prometheus.  And yet, the colony ship didn't have a clue about the planet they decided to detour to on a lark? That seemed a little unbelievable. I get that ship in space don't get a daily newspaper, but I'm guessing they would have known about the last ship to visit, especially if no one from that ship made it off the planet.  In terms of the special effects in this one, I liked it. One of the aliens jumped scared the crap out of my wife, and the continuation of the synthetic humans storyline is cool.  Is it a little obvious about "David" at the end? Yeah, maybe, but he's a bad dude. It's neat that he had a need to create, and he didn't give a darn about humans. Why should he?  Do I feel a little "tricked" with ...
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Splendor in the Grass (1961)

A first-love sort of Romeo and Juliet story. Bud and Wilma (Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood) are high school sweethearts. His family has come into oil money, but hers is still more working class (although her father has potential money in the stock market). As it stands, however, Bud's dad doesn't consider Wilma a match for his son... at least he doesn't want his son to marry early and kill his chances at going to college.  Women are definitely cast into two categories. Nice girls and whores. Bud's own sister is a "whore" type, which is weird, because Bud's dad wants his son to sow his wild oats with all the whores he can. At the same time, his dad warns him not to let a "nice girl" catch him, or not to "go too far" with a nice girl and then end up being required to do the responsible thing.  Bud is conflicted. He can see what has become of his sister. What any of that has to do with Wilma, I'm not sure. She's the pure girl, 100%...
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Inside Daisy Clover (1965)

Daisy Clover is a 15-year-old girl being played by a 27-year-old Natalie Wood. That's a bit of a stretch, and I have to admit that I never really got past that. She's just too old for the part, and I'm not sure that it's absolutely necessary that Daisy is 15. Why can't she just as easily be 25? Does she need to be 15 so that she can be more vulnerable to the powerful forces trying to use her? She's a minor, so her estranged sister ends up being her adult guardian, signing off on all her official paperwork. That's a small detail, though, and I'm not sure it matters that much. Just let her be 25.  Because she's supposed to be 15, though, it is a lot creepier, although the film doesn't make it as Lolita creepy as it could be. Wade Lewis (Robert Redford) is never given an age, but I suppose he's supposed to be in his 20s. Redford was 29. Anyway, Lewis and Clover end up briefly married. This is sort of where the whole film goes south for me.  What...
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In Which We Serve (1942)

I like War movies, but I probably like War movies that spend more time and effort asking, "What are we fighting for?"  There's gotta be some sort of balance. I don't like War movies that go so far over the line the other way that everyone is just dying to end the war and get home. If there's a war, then let the people fighting it have a reason to fight it, and let them be into fighting it, sure. But don't give me 100% propaganda, either.  As I watched this film, I started thinking: Maybe the problem is that this is more propaganda film than war film. It was made right in the middle of World War II, and while the Allies were "winning" the war in 1942, maybe they didn't completely realize that yet.  After all, Hitler has entered Paris, and the British are being bombed and they've had to evacuate Dunkirk...  This film mentions details like that, but it's more interested in following the lives of a few men who have survived having their vesse...
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The Happy Breed (1944)

I guess you call this a family bi-op. It's under 2 hours, so it doesn't quite qualify as an epic. And the actual period of time it covers is very strange. The World Wars are there as almost bookends, but the film doesn't use them as the bookends. Rather, it uses the period of time the family spent in their flat as the beginning and ending points.  So much happens in this family in roughly a 20-year period, because that's all there is, 20 years. It honestly feels like it should be a 30- or 40-year period. It feels that way because Frank and Ethel Gibbons (Robert Newton and Celia Johnson) age much more than 20 years, and Frank is on the brink of retirement, which should put him closer to 60 than 40.  Overall, I guess I like that focus on the family rather than on world events. Of course the family is impacted by what's going on in the world around them, but the drama of their day-to-day lives is what matters most. They are aware of Hitler and the prospect of a new war...
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Blithe Spirit (1945)

Why is Charles (Rex Harrison) so blithe? I guess that's the question I never get answered. He's married to a woman for about 5 years, and she dies unexpectedly of a heart attack. Seven years later, he's married to another woman, and things seem to be fine.  Then, I guess for fun, they and another couple invite over a weird older woman for a seance. You know she's weird because she rides a bike. Anyway, she doesn't really know what she's doing, and somehow Charles's dead wife crosses over.  This starts what I guess is supposed to be a bunch of funny shenanigans, a hilarious lovers' triangle. And maybe it's serious. Maybe the dead wife is trying to kill the husband so she can have him back on the other side?  I don't know. The humor is 1940s British, but even so, it just doesn't work for me. The female ghost is green, for reasons I never figure out. And while he can't touch her, she can touch and move physical objects. She can even drive a ...
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