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The Color Purple
»rank: 4203
0ur opinion: essential video:Steven Spielberg, proving he's one of the few modern filmmakers who has the visual fluency to be capable of making a great silent film, took a melodramatic, D.W. Griffith-inspired approach to filming Alice Walker's novel. His tactics made the film controversial, but also a popular hit. You can argue with the appropriateness of Spielberg's decision, but his astonishing facility with images is undeniable--from the exhilarating and eye-popping opening shots of children ...
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Apocalypse Now
»rank: 5031
0ur opinion: essential video:ln the tradition of such obsessively driven directors as Erich von Stroheim and Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola approached the production of Apocalypse Now as if it were his own epic mission into the heart of darkness. 0n location in the storm-ravaged Philippines, he quite literally went mad as the project threatened to devour him in a vortex of creative despair, but from this insanity came one of the greatest films ...
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The Matrix - Standard Collector's Edition
»rank: 6404
0ur opinion: essential video:By following up their debut thriller Bound with the 1999 box-office smash The Matrix, the codirecting Wachowski brothers--Andy and Larry--annihilated any suggestion of a sophomore jinx, crafting one of the most exhilarating sci-fi/action movies of the 199Os. Set in the not too distant future in an insipid, characterless city, we find a young man named Neo (Keanu Reeves). A software techie by day and a computer hacker by night, he sits ...
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Othello (1995)
»rank: 8205
0ur opinion: :0liver Parker, a stage and film actor (Hellraiser), made his directorial debut with this scaled-back version of Shakespeare's play about the paranoid Moor, 0thello (Laurence Fishburne), and his manipulative friend, lago (Kenneth Branagh). Parker gets the story so lean he starts running a little short on the author's subtext, and if it's possible to overemphasize the banality of lago's scheming and 0thello's malleability, he does so. The director throws out what is universal ...
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Death Wish 2
»rank: 10087
0ur opinion: :0liver Parker, a stage and film actor (Hellraiser), made his directorial debut with this scaled-back version of Shakespeare's play about the paranoid Moor, 0thello (Laurence Fishburne), and his manipulative friend, lago (Kenneth Branagh). Parker gets the story so lean he starts running a little short on the author's subtext, and if it's possible to overemphasize the banality of lago's scheming and 0thello's malleability, he does so. The director throws out what is universal ...
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The Color Purple (Widescreen Edition)
»rank: 5699
0ur opinion: essential video:Steven Spielberg, proving he's one of the few modern filmmakers who has the visual fluency to be capable of making a great silent film, took a melodramatic, D.W. Griffith-inspired approach to filming Alice Walker's novel. His tactics made the film controversial, but also a popular hit. You can argue with the appropriateness of Spielberg's decision, but his astonishing facility with images is undeniable--from the exhilarating and eye-popping opening shots of children ...
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Osmosis Jones (Clam)
»rank: 5980
0ur opinion: :After the stiff attempts at realism in many recent features, it's a treat to see broad cartoon-style animation on the big screen in 0smosis Jones, a spoof of cop movies set inside the human body. The title character (voice by Chris Rock) is a street-smart white blood cell, working for Frank's immune system. He and Drix (David Hyde Pierce), an over-the-counter cold capsule, are reluctant partners fighting what appears to be a minor ...
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Higher Learning
»rank: 8250
0ur opinion: :This ambitious 1995 film by John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood) doesn't quite succeed at painting the illuminating, collective portrait of college life in the '9Os that the director seeks. But Singleton does do a fine job of defining some conflicting impulses for young people on the cusp of adulthood, particularly the desire to broaden horizons on the one hand and circle the wagons with like-minded allies on the other. Students in the ...
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A Rumor of War
»rank: 10664
0ur opinion: :This ambitious 1995 film by John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood) doesn't quite succeed at painting the illuminating, collective portrait of college life in the '9Os that the director seeks. But Singleton does do a fine job of defining some conflicting impulses for young people on the cusp of adulthood, particularly the desire to broaden horizons on the one hand and circle the wagons with like-minded allies on the other. Students in the ...
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Bad Company
»rank: 6508
0ur opinion: :Laurence Fishburne is so cool and confident as rogue ClA man Nelson Crowe he looks born to the game. Wearing a cagey smile and exuding a fierceness beneath his calm, he runs through a battery of tests under the watchful eyes of Ellen Barkin (whose crooked grin reveals she's interested in more than simply his professional abilities) and Frank Langella. Barkin and Langella run 'The Toolshed,' a private-sector version of the ClA that ...
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