MovieSorter

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Oppenheimer
Really Great 66 Points 2023

J. Robert Oppenheimer is an American hero, flawed like most, resolute when it mattered. The Father of the Atomic Bomb saved countless US Marines, sailors and airmen when his work forced Imperial Japan to surrender short of an amphibious attack on Tokyo. (That would have made Iwo Jima look like …

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WikChip Image The real Einstein & Oppenheimer
Napoleon
Very Good 66 Points 2023

In Theaters Now

A movie that fits the man who made France into a triumphant titan of the early 1800s, Napoleon meets many of the moments in an epochal life from two centuries ago. Ridley Scott knows historic drama about larger-than-life figures like few other directors, and cast well with Joaquin Phoenix as hi…

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WikChip Image Emperor Napoleon crowns Empress Josep...
Devotion
Very Good 66 Points 2022

Devotion is a poorly-titled twofer: a damn good war movie about a Medal of Honor recipient and his heroic squadron, plus a powerful biopic about the Navy’s first black fighter pilot. It’s triply good for reviving these true stories about the sadly overlooked Korean War. All in all, that makes i…

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WikChip Image NAVY Fighters in the Korean War
The Social Dilemma
Great 66 Points 2020

Much of the commentary in The Social Dilemma goes to stupid extremes, yet this Netflix produced docudrama is packed with powerful insights. Vividly visualized, expounded upon and dramatized, it vivifies the effect that YouTwitFace has on people. It goes wrong when it goes political, falling pre…

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The Last Czars
Great 66 Points 2019

The Last Czars dramatizes the personal and political perils of Nicholas & Alexandra, the last Czar & Czarina of the Russian Empire. Nicholas the Bloody and his profoundly unhappy family were such wanton rulers they made the Bolsheviks look good, thereby triggering "the greatest catastrophe in h…

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WikChip Video Lovely Synopsis
Chappaquiddick
Really Great 83 Points 2018

Being a Kennedy came with compulsions, including sailing, drinking, womanizing and the presidency, those last with fatal effect. Ted Kennedy’s date with death didn’t lead to another dead Kennedy, but to the manslaughter of a loyal supporter: Mary Jo Kopechne, a name familiar to baby-boomers acros…

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WikChip Video She didn't drown. She suffocated, slo...
12 Strong
Great 83 Points 2018

12 Strong is no run-of-the-mill war movie, to be valued on its moral complexity and clever comebacks. No, 12 Strong is morally simple and often wooden, making it rather unfashionable in our morally confused era. Of course, we also live in the Islamist Era, sharing God’s Earth with a medieval …

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WikChip Video Cool details about the real Horse Sol...
The 15:17 to Paris
Very Good 83 Points 2018

Clint Eastwood’s terrorist-on-a-train film unspools like a cinéma vérité home movie. Three yokels from Sacramento – California’s middle-American capital city – get the chance to be heroes and don’t blow it.

Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos & Anthony Sadler famously play themselves as the three du…

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WikChip Video Ellen interviews 3 American heroes.
Operation Finale
Perfect 66 Points 2018

The banality of evil gets a powerful debunking in Operation Finale, an awkwardly if accurately titled docudrama about the Mossad’s 1960 capture of Final Solution logistics chief Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Little Adolf was famously said to embody “the banality of evil” as he dissembled during …

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WikChip Video The (real) Man Who Got Eichmann
First Man
Very Good 83 Points 2018

First Man is a forced march, joyless despite the profoundly joyous – if harrowing – adventure it chronicles. One disaster or near-disaster after another, and then … triumph. Some of this stems from the nearly inchoate mid-century man that was Neal Armstrong and some from his joyless marriage….

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WikChip Video How They Do It, in Hollywood