Latest news with #WilliamWyler
Boston Globe
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A critic's notebook about being a film critic
On Mother's Day of a year long since passed, my mother went into labor with her firstborn after leaving the Hudson Plaza Cinema in my hometown of Jersey City. I've no idea why she went to the movies that day, but since I didn't arrive until the next morning, William Wyler's 'The Liberation of L.B. Jones' serves as our first movie only on a technicality. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Because of this coincidence, I was pre-ordained to become a film critic. Some careers are in the cards for you as soon as you take your first breath. For example, if your Black parents named you Hezekiah, Ezekiel, or Cleophus, you had to become a preacher, no questions asked. Those are the rules. Advertisement Even my mother's choice of movie holds some foreshadowing. I eventually Advertisement Actor Roscoe Lee Browne AP Photo/CBS Wyler's movie is terrible. The cast includes Roscoe Lee Browne, Lola Falana, Anthony Zerbe, and the Six Million Dollar Man himself, Lee Majors. I'll spare you the nauseating plot details, which involve racism, police brutality, interracial sex, and a lynching. It's so wretched that I had to get out into this world ASAP so I could someday warn people about bad movies! After all, I was born 2 weeks early. That's my origin story and I'm sticking to it. But I digress. If the ancestors did have a hand in my career path, it must have been one of the tricksters from African lore. According to data culled by It was pre-ordained, I tell you. Once people I meet in person shake off the surprise, based on what I look like, that I'm a film critic (and then shake off their even bigger shock that I write for a Boston outlet, based on what I look like), they always ask the same questions. I'm sure all film critics have gotten these at one time or another. So, I thought I would close out by answering some of the most common inquiries. You already know my favorite movie of all time is ' Advertisement How do you go about reviewing a movie? There is no magic here. Like everyone else, I just watch the movie. I do take notes now, because I'm old and my handwriting is just as illegible in the dark as it is when the lights are on. Since cinematography is my favorite element of a movie, I love focusing on the look of a film. And since I'm a film historian who has seen tens of thousands of movies, I've got a good handle on cinematic knowledge. Most importantly, I am a very bad actor. I can sell you a song in musical theater, but you do not want to see my Lear. So, when someone on the big screen does something I would have done, I immediately know their performance is terrible. Does being half-blind hinder your ability to review a movie? This year marks the 40th anniversary of me losing an eye. The loss happened after the early 1980s resurgence of 3-D, where I saw every 3-D movie I could. So I know that I can no longer perceive the effect fully, if at all. Other than that, sitting on the right side of a movie theater makes things very hard for me visually, so I avoid doing that. By the way, the first movie I saw in my current visual condition was 'The Goonies.' Young cast members are shown in a scene from the 1985 movie "The Goonies." From left: Josh Brolin, Ke Huy Quan, Corey Feldman. AP Photo/Warner Bros. Are there any movies that you hate but everyone else thinks are great? Well, 'The Goonies,' for starters. But '2001: A Space Odyssey' is the one I get the most flak over. 'The Shining' is another controversial choice, but I have personal reasons for disliking that movie. (And before you think I'm a Kubrick-hater, note that 'Dr. Strangelove' is number 6 on my all-time favorite movies list.) Advertisement Conversely, is there a movie you love that no one else does? I'm in the tank for the 1990 Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan fable 'Joe vs. The Volcano' and Brian DePalma's 1986 New Jersey comedy classic, 'Wise Guys.' Keir Dullea in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey." Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer What advice would you give to aspiring film critics? DO SOMETHING ELSE! I'm not being facetious here. I tell them to do something else — anything else. And then, when they look at me with sad puppy dog eyes, I relent and tell them that, above all, they must love movies. You also need to know something about movies that came out before you were born. And this is the most significant piece of advice I can give: If you want to be loved by the masses, this job is not for you. Because whether it's positive or negative, your review is going to piss somebody off. Own your opinion. Defend it with your full chest, readers be damned. Doing this might not make you popular, but if heaven has a film critic section, you've got a good shot of getting in when you die. Boston Globe film critic Odie Henderson poses for a photo with an Oscar statuette. Odie Henderson Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.
The Independent
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
The Oscars' 10 greatest Best Picture winners, from All About Eve to Parasite
Look over the list of Best Picture winners over the years and you realise that almost every film selected is still in circulation. William Wellman's Wings, the very first winner in 1927, is readily available on DVD and Blu-Ray, as are such other early winners as Cimarron and Broadway Melody. Most of the other Best Picture winners are titles that any film lover will recognise instantly. The blind spots are obvious. The Academy never chooses foreign language titles. In recent years, it has shunned comedies. The Shape of Water may have won in 2018, but voters are generally wary about genre pictures. You don't see many sci-fi or martial arts titles on the list. There is a growing divide between what wins at the Oscars and what makes the money at the box office. Even so, the Best Picture Oscar remains one of the most reliable bellwethers for films that will have an afterlife. Find our list of the 10 best films to have ever won the trophy below. 10. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) William Wyler's film about three veterans coming home at the end of the war still has a huge emotional kick. They're from different classes and backgrounds but struggle terribly to readjust to civilian life. Some accuse the film of being pious and self-righteous but it deals frankly and very movingly with both the soldiers' problems and those of their families and friends in understanding them. It won its Best Picture Oscar in the year in which It's a Wonderful Life was also nominated. 9. An American in Paris (1951) The best MGM musicals showed extraordinary artistry. This is one of the greatest. It's not just the choreography or Gene Kelly's wildly energetic performance as the aspiring artist in postwar Paris but the use of colour and sound. The ballet sequence at the end of the film stands alongside that in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoe s as a perfect example of filmmaking in which every element balances perfectly. 8. Casablanca (1942) Producer Hal Wallis at Warner Bros had a knack for overseeing films that were both mainstream and had a social conscience. Not only did Casablanca have Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains, but it also dealt with refugees, betrayal and wartime politics. The script by Julius and Philip G Epstein provided lines of dialogue about gin joints, rounding up the usual suspects and playing 'As Time Goes By' that are still quoted today. Few other Best Picture winners are as engrained in the public consciousness as Casablanca. 7. On the Waterfront (1954) Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront can be read as the director's attempt at justifying his own craven behaviour, naming names in front of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, during the communist witch hunts. Its politics are complicated and contradictory. It is also magnificently acted. Marlon Brando gives arguably his greatest performance of all as Terry Molloy, the dockworker and pigeon fancier who could have been a contender in life and in the boxing ring if only his brother had stood by him when he needed him most. 6. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) Easy to dismiss as a jingoistic widescreen epic, David Lean's film about TE Lawrence makes astonishing viewing seen in 70mm. It also offers a probing and subtle portrayal of Lawrence (Peter O'Toole), the masochist who is both the quintessential English hero and the quintessential English outsider. 5. All About Eve (1950) Joseph L Mankiewicz's drama about a young actress on the make and the established star whose career she wants to usurp boasts some of the most caustic dialogue in any Hollywood Best Picture winner. The brilliance of Bette Davis as the star and of Anne Baxter as the seemingly ingenuous but utterly ruthless young pretender is matched by George Sanders' wonderfully acidic performance as the theatre critic, Addison DeWitt. 4. The Godfather Part II (1974) Still the greatest sequel in Hollywood history, this film emulated its predecessor The Godfather, in winning the best picture Oscar and out-stripped it in the brilliance of its craftsmanship and performances. Everything here, from Gordon Willis's cinematography to the parallel stories of Al Pacino's Michael Corleone as the crime family boss in the late Fifties and Robert De Niro as his father Vito many years before, works near perfectly. The rival Best Picture nominees in 1974 included Lenny, Chinatown and The Conversation (also directed by Francis Ford Coppola). All would have been worthy winners in other years. 3. Unforgiven (1992) The western was considered an anachronism and so was Clint Eastwood himself when Eastwood made his blood soaked masterpiece. Eastwood played Will Munny, first encountered as a farmer and family man. Gradually, we learn about his past as a gunman. 'I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another, and I'm here to kill you, Little Bill,' he tells old rival Gene Hackman. This brutal and elegiac film was always a shoo-in for its Oscar. 2. Parasite (2019) The first non-English language film to win a Best Picture Oscar was significant on many different levels. Bong Joon Ho's South Korean satire about class, wealth and family life turns in its latter stages into something close to a horror picture – and genre movies rarely win Academy Awards. This was a Cannes Palme D'Or winner, and festival favourites, loved by high-minded critics, seldom enjoy mainstream crossover success. In years gone by, Parasite might have crept on to the 'international/foreign language' nominations without being in the running for the major prizes. Its success suggested a new, more outward looking and inclusive approach from the AMPAS voters. It helped, too, of course that it made such enjoyable viewing. Funny, caustic and macabre by turns, it got under audiences' skins wherever it was shown. 1. The Apartment (1960) Only Billy Wilder could have made a romantic comedy based around infidelity, drudgery and office politics and turned it into a film as delightful as this. Academy voters are sometimes accused of self-righteousness and prudery, but thankfully that didn't stop them giving the Best Picture Oscar to The Apartment.
