This remake had the task of marrying together the original book by Alice Walker, the Steven Spielberg film, and the Broadway adaptation, all while keeping the soul of the story preserved. With Oprah Winfrey on board as a producer, this newest version gives an inspirational glance back to a time when Black freedom in America was still a new concept, making this an important movie for Black women to feel seen and heard. As another component behind why this version works so well, Danielle Brooks and Fantasia Barrino, two cast members from the Broadway production, reprise their respective roles. Likewise, Taraji P. Henson is here, playing the role she originally turned down on Broadway.
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With that authentic touch of theatrical pizzazz, that naturally means this film version has some phenomenal musical numbers, including one with traditional Ugandan fashions. One of the songs featured is, “She Be Mine,” which was originally written for the Broadway show but didn’t make the final cut. Ultimately, the production in the end looks great, and the cast seems to be such a closely-knit community who had their hearts in the right place. For anyone who’s been a victim of abuse, neglect, or poverty, The Color Purple is for them. It’s the sort of movie that motivates the overlooked by promoting deeply Christian themes, particularly in how God created purple flowers so that we can notice His rare sparks of beauty in nature.

Hayao Miyazaki last made a feature-length motion picture a full decade before making this one, and he ended up leaving retirement to spend seven years directing this deeply personal WWII-era epic. Since that essentially makes The Boy and the Heron an ultimatum of Miyazaki’s legacy in cinema, the animation techniques are much more advanced and up-to-date now. That includes a new installment for Studio Ghibli: Dolby Cinema, a technology that better distinguishes the highlights and lowlights of the movie’s image. Yet the skill of the animators remains tremendous, particularly when animating the heron, who appears grotesque in the most uncanny of ways.
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The entirety of the movie includes a similar contrast of beauty against darkness. The story is indeed grim, but the magical score helps keep the experience from being too overwhelming; the music complements every emotional peak of the story perfectly and even presents a wonderful new song, “Spinning Globe.” The fact that such an emotionally delicate work of animation finally got recognized by the Academy of Motion Pictures is a big deal. Not only is it the first hand-drawn animated film to win Best Animated Feature since Spirited Away twenty-one years ago, not only is it the first international film to win since then, but it’s also the first ever PG-13 movie to win in that category. Therefore, this important Oscar win is guaranteed to change the entire animation industry forever.

Forrest Gump is often known for its revolutionary use of actual archive footage, which was realized through a laborious augmentation process that at the time changed visual effects in movies. For these shots, Tom Hanks was filmed against a bluescreen, given a grain filter to match the archive footage, then put in with the necessary adjustments, such as when he had to shake John F. Kennedy’s hand. In addition, the art director had to recreate some of these locations exactly and the lips of these past figures had to be morphed to move to a recording replicated to sound like their voices.
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Yet there are more groundbreaking special effects in this ever-popular movie. That includes Lieutenant Dan’s amputated legs, which were realized by actor Gary Sinise wearing bluescreen stockings and elements painted into the frame digitally to sell the illusion. That includes the digital ball put into the ping pong matches. That includes putting Tom Hanks into the movie Birth of a Nation. That includes the crowd around the reflecting pool in Washington DC that was made with only a crowd of around a hundred people. That includes the intro shot of the feather—the longest special effects shot ever done at the time. There’s so much to this one-of-a-kind blockbuster that made it not only a dazzling spectacle but a textbook example of a universal crowd-pleaser that has something in it for everyone.

One of the secrets to A Christmas Story’s success is the characters, who all are depicted very realistically as a relatable family with emotions that fluctuate up and down like a roller coaster. They may have mixed feelings toward one another, but at the end of the day, they still love one another. Instead of a traditional story with a central conflict, the family is portrayed in a slice-of-life sort of structure that presents their chaotic mundane moments in a more sitcom fashion. It's also told from the perspective of a child, making out certain little events that to a grown-up are nothing, but to a kid are immense milestones. These include a kid saying his first curse word, having his first secret meeting, seeing a sexual object for the first time, standing up to a bully for the first time, and receiving his first defensive weapon.
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To add greater insight into the mind of this child, sequences of his imagination are visualized, all of which come off as overly theatrical just like the radio programs which inspired his daydreams. Numerous similar components, such as the nostalgic soundtrack, prove why this Yuletide classic isn’t just a goofy comedy, but a deceptively complex portrayal of early 1940s America that in turn captures the magic of Christmas morning. So because of its care and passion, this iconic holiday staple has come to impact the identity of the entire season.

PG (DLSV)
Comedy/Historic
1 hr. 33 min.

Watch it to LEARN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY.

This shook the world with its brutally realistic portrayal of the Holocaust, one that took filmmaking techniques from documentaries, including a handheld camera during more chaotic scenes. The gorgeous monochrome cinematography further contributes to the sensation of watching real archive footage of the horrific events, while the long 3+ hour runtime runs smoothly with the masterful editing. It certainly helps in the film’s authenticity that director Steven Spielberg is of Jewish background, which naturally led to a sharper recreation of the setting. Other Holocaust survivors were also there on set, including one of the producers, who spent three years in several Nazi labor camps as a child.
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The structure of this narrative is quite genius when promoting the true value of life: rather than a traditional story with a beginning, middle, and end, the stories of individual Jews at the concentration camps are used to tell the story of Oskar Schindler, who started off as a con artist intending to make money off of the war, but over time lets his mysterious character come out more clearly. While the cast does put on some pretty awful fake accents, and there are many historical inaccuracies (for instance, the real Oskar Schindler never even created this list of his), Schindler’s List is still a powerful, important story about the failure to act on injustice. Hard to believe that Spielberg made this while also managing post-production remotely for Jurassic Park!

R (DLSNV)
Drama/Historic
3 hr. 15 min.

Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to LEARN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY, SAD, and AFRAID.

This first ever “high school musical” redefined cinematic musicals with its roller coaster of an experience that anyone can sing along to. Up until the 1970s, Hollywood musicals were known for their squeaky-clean adaptations of the classics, like The Sound of Music or Mary Poppins; any more mature musicals like Cabaret or The Rocky Horror Picture Show were not designed for the masses. Grease on the other hand went against the grain by focusing on teenagers in the 1950s, with music from the culture, and numerous sexual references that could only be made in the ratings system era. The result of this daring direction entertained all the teenagers of the time who wanted something which spoke directly to them, striking that balance between mature content and wide mass appeal.
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While not a “good” movie by any stretch, this grand achievement in writing more modern music for a more modern musical film paved the way for what types of motion pictures people wanted to see. G-rated family fare like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory weren’t really “cool” anymore, just like the rest of the 1970s in Hollywood, the musical genre was growing up, and now even Broadway is willing to make more entertainment exclusively for the adults. The main takeaway isn’t just that daring content will leave an impact, but that anything with catchy songs and a nostalgic time period will more likely entertain the masses.

PG (DLS)
Musical/Historic
1 hr. 50 min.

Watch it for FUN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY.

Made to look like a single continuous shot with no edit cuts, 1917 is a unique spectacle that builds upon the techniques used in similar films, such as Birdman. As director Sam Mendes follows these two soldiers, the sound design and natural lighting work together to sell the illusion of a continuous take. To get through these treacherous locations, which were scattered all across the United Kingdom, the camera crew had to rely on many forms of transportation from trucks to cranes to Steadicams. The camera would even be unhooked from one crane and then hooked onto another while the film’s still rolling.
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This was no easy task for the set designers either, as models for every set had to be built to plan out the blocking and figure out how to work around the filming equipment. They had to know based on the length of every scene exactly how long each set should be, which meant in total 5,200 feet of trenches were built. When it came to actually filming these ambitious scenes, there were some days when the weather would shut down production because every shot had to look consistent—even a tiny bit of sunlight could be catastrophic. While other films have utilized this gimmick, no other has done it at this scale, and it’s guaranteed that more filmmakers from here on out will pick up on Mendes’ innovative techniques.

R (LV​)
Action/Historic
1 hr. 59 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
​Watch it to feel SAD and AFRAID.

It demanded an immense amount of technology to create… to fit a vision that had never been done before in cinema, yet Titanic defied all odds to become the most successful movie ever made, pushing the medium forward with its use of old and new visual effects tricks. For the ship itself, a 775-foot-long replica of the exterior was built and broken into three segments that could be tilted at different angles. Some of the elements in the replica were actually made of rubber for the scenes where people were falling during the ship’s destruction, and if it couldn’t be made of rubber without looking totally fake, human dummies were used for padding instead.

​There also were several miniatures of the ship, and for the extreme-wide shots, mocap actors created some people to populate the decks, making this one of the first movies ever to use this technology. But besides just the immense innovation of digital effects, this movie formulated genius approaches to old-school effects too, such as breath created practically by actors against a black background and then added in post-production to make the actors look like they were out in the cold. So while the movie’s love story is groanworthy, the main character is a selfish brat, the message is preachy, and the historical accuracies are numerous, James Cameron’s ultra-smash-hit motion picture deserves its reputation for making blockbusters today so extravagant.

PG-13 (DLSNV)
Historic/Romance
3 hr. 14 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY, SAD, and AFRAID.