The Whale (2022)

Before I can go any further, I need to tell you a bit of my own family history. I grew up with an amazing, loving father. He discovered he had a brain aneurysm in his temporal lobe, behind his eye when I was twelve and my brother eight years old. My father was only forty-four years old when he had his first stroke. One of … Continue reading The Whale (2022)

8. Schindler’s List (1993)

In German-occupied Poland during World War II, industrialist Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis. Schindler’s List is, arguably, the defining Holocaust film. I remember having to get a waiver signed when I was in the eighth grade, so we could watch the film once we finished our Holocaust unit. (Yes. We had a Holocaust unit.) … Continue reading 8. Schindler’s List (1993)

The Lost Daughter (2021)

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut The Lost Daughter was a film that hit me unexpectedly. I went in knowing very little about it. All I knew is that the film was adapted and directed by Gyllenhaal, and starred Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson and Jessie Buckley, and was categorized by Netflix as “cerebral, understated, intimate”. And that’s it. That’s all I had to go off of. I had no … Continue reading The Lost Daughter (2021)

23. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

An Oklahoma family driven off their farm by the poverty and hopelessness of the Dust Bowl joins the westward migration to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression. Don’t you hate it when a movie made in the 1940s is still relevant 81 years later?  The Grapes of Wrath starred Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell and Russell Simpson as members of the Joad … Continue reading 23. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

90s Flashback: The Net (1995)

Directed by Irvin Winkler, written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, and starring Sandra Bullock and Jeremy Northam, The Net is a film that is only dated by the technology displayed. The overall plot of the film has aged tremendously and it’s, dare I say it, a good movie.  For those unfamiliar with the 1995 film, Sandra Bullock plays a computer programmer named Angela Bennett. … Continue reading 90s Flashback: The Net (1995)

25. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Atticus Finch, a lawyer in the Depression-era South, defends a black man against an undeserved rape charge, and his children against prejudice. The last time I watched Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird, I was in highschool. Freshman year, I think it was. We had just finished reading the book, so naturally that was followed with the film. I remember really disliking the book, and not … Continue reading 25. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)