A Man For All Seasons Makes For A Great Companion Piece To Fellow Fred Zinnemann Directorial Effort High Noon

Anyone who's read my reviews for even the briefest period of time knows it's not unusual for me to have never heard of a beloved iconic movie. But I feel like my lack of knowledge on the existence of A Man For All Seasons is a tad more common than, say, being ignorant on the existence of Ang Lee's version of Sense & Sensibility until I saw a trailer for it on a DVD copy of A Man For All Seasons. Despite scoring a Best Picture Oscar back in the mid-1960s, I've rarely heard the film discussed or even mentioned at all in cinematic-based discourse. Perhaps this is because its victory at the Oscars that year didn't beat out a movie many consider to be widely superior or because it's widely considered to be an especially dismal Best Picture choice like The Broadway Melody, Crash or Green Book, two attributes that can spur up regular conversation.

People Are Already At War With Themselves Before Any Weapons Are Fired In From Here To Eternity

Remember Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor? The internet, and also Team America: World Police, have turned that movie into such an endless punchline that it feels almost pointless to critique this motion picture once again, but for the purposes of this review, I feel it is imperative to do so. The feature film that Roger Ebert once accurately described as "...a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle" (God bless Roger Ebert) failed to make a compelling drama all about small-scale human drama that transpired before, during and after the real-life attack on Pearl Harbor for too many reasons to count. There's no single solution to all of them, but if Michael Bay and company wanted a better blueprint for how to make a drama that incorporates Pearl Harbor into its plot, maybe they should have looked to 1953's From Here To Eternity for inspiration?

The 1952 Western High Noon Is As Relevant Today As It Was In It's Initial Release

Will Kane (Gary Cooper) has been good to the town of Hadleyville, New Mexico. He's been a loyal Marshall to this town for as long he can remember, making some enemies on the criminal side of things in the process but also making even more friends as he cleaned up the town and made it a safer place for people to live. Today, he's married his sweetheart Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly) and in the process, he's retiring from his duties as the Marshall of Hadleyville, New Mexico. The wedding between these two is a time of bliss and joy for both Kane and Fowler but it's cut short by news that none other than Frank Miller (Ian McDonald) has returned to town seeking vengeance against Will Kane.