Away From Her

A woman has Alzheimer’s, is gradually losing it. She agrees with her husband that she needs to be in a nursing home, whose policy is that she get no visitors for 30 days. When he returns, she no longer remembers him, and has formed an attachment with a brain-damaged man.

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L’Avventura

I’m still debating whether or not to award the Italian version of our coveted “Gerry Award” to this film. Mostly it’s because I’m not sure whether to call it the Geraldo or the Guido. It’s also because Lee liked it better than I did, and I don’t know if she has a veto. We give it out to the most boring, pointless, and artsy-fartsy movies of all ... Read more »

The Aviator

I loved every minute of this long (almost 3 hour) movie. First, there are the airplanes. Scorcese re-creates the filming of Hell’s Angels, a movie that took about three years to make, including a re-shooting of all the dialogue scenes because of the ... Read more »

Avatar

I know this will sound like exaggeration, but this is simply the most stunning movie made since Thomas Edison invented the flickers. Previously, only two movies have really expanded my horizons, shown me something I had envisioned in my head, but never seen: 2001, and the first Read more »

Autumn Spring

Totally charming comedy about an old man who is refusing to grow stodgy as he ages. Highly recommended.

Australia

Baz Luhrmann has made just four films in 16 years. I haven’t seen Strictly Ballroom, but I think I should. I thought Romeo + Juliet was a very interesting experiment, most of the time. I liked Read more »

L’Auberge espagnole

You can only call this a European film. I’m not sure who produced it, but it concerns a group of young people sharing an apartment in Barcelona. There’s not much of a plot, but it’s not needed. We liked it.

Attack the Block

Shortly after they have robbed a young woman, a group of teenage thugs from a London housing project encounter a crashed spaceship with an alien inside. They promptly kill it and drag its corpse around the streets. This was a very difficult film for me. It is probably the only time Earth has been invaded in the movies where I was rooting for the aliens to rip the guts out of the “humans.” ... Read more »

Atonement

So much of how you experience a film can be tied up in what you know about it going in. I wish that wasn’t the case, but it is. I knew only the bare bones of this story: A young girl misunderstands something she sees, tells a lie, and lives are forever changed. I also knew that the part of Briony, the liar, would be played by three different actresses, including Read more »

L’Atalante

This movie is on many critics’ best of all time lists. I’d never seen it before. It is visually stunning, and obviously miles ahead of the sort of thing Hollywood was doing at the time. It happens mostly aboard a river barge with a newlywed couple and a crusty old first mate. It combines surrealism and impressionism, reminds me of Read more »