TITLES BEGINNING WITH NUMBERS
Scroll down for movie reviews beginning with a number (for example, 2001 — A Space Odyssey).
MPAA Rating is the rating given by the Motion Picture Association of America. Please note this is a voluntary rating, so some films (many times older films or obscure foreign films) are not rated.
G - General Audiences
PG - Parental Guidance Suggested
PG13 - Parental Guidance Suggested for those under 13 years of age
R - Restricted (those under 18 not admitted without parent or guardian)
NC-17 (X) - No one under 18 admitted.
USCCB Rating is the rating given by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Please note that some films are not rated simply because the Bishop’s Conference has not reviewed them.
A-I: General Patronage
A-II: Adults and Adolescents
A-III: Adults
L: Limited Adult Audience, problematic content
O: Morally Offensive
Fr. John’s Ratings
★★★★★ - Masterpiece. This film has to show aspects of cinematic excellence that are above and beyond the ordinary and even beyond the “excellent” classification. Because a true masterpiece can be determined only through its ability to endure through the passage of time, no film is even considered for this rating until at least ten years have passed from the date of its initial release.
★★★★ - Excellent
★★★ - Very Good
★★ - Fair
★ - Poor
12 Angry Men (1957) ★★★★★
Length: 96 minutes. MPAA Rating: Not rated. USCCB Rating: Not rated. Director: Sidney Lumet. Good for family viewing.
This courtroom drama follows the deliberation of an all-male jury as it seeks to determine if a young man is guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt. A wide array of American acting talent is presented here – especially noteworthy are the performances of Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, and E.G.Marshall. It is quite a challenge to make a film interesting when all the action is in an enclosed space, but director Sidney Lumet takes the jury room and turns it into an operatic venue. The audience is so immersed in the character study of these angry men that we easily overlook the fact that we are stuck in the same small room for 98 percent of the film’s running time. A great courtroom drama – an American classic.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) ★★★★★
Length: 148 minutes. MPAA Rating: G. USCCB Rating: A-II. Director: Stanley Kubrick.
Kubrick’s most famous and perhaps most mind-bending film takes place in the “future” (the year 2001), when mankind discovers a hidden obelisk on the moon which leads to an unforgettable journey near the planet Jupiter. Considered a masterpiece of visual effects, 2001 features scenes partially designed by Stanley Kubrick but mostly designed by legendary visual effects artist Douglas Trumbull. Wanting to preserve the integrity of the cinematic image in an age when optical printing would have added a lot of noise to the film, Kubrick insisted on careful exposure of spaceship models (sometimes taking an entire day) as well as on rotoscoping mattes (painstakingly slow process of directly drawing on the film by hand – one frame at a time). The result is the first film in motion picture history to present a totally realistic vision of space travel. The slow pace (sometimes crushingly slow) is deliberate and part of the realistic vision. There is no question this is more of an atheistic interpretation of how man became so intelligent – but it is interesting to note that a wise man like agnostic author Arthur C. Clarke saw some sort of outside intervention as being part of the journey of humanity. Instead of God he settles for a super-intelligent monolith-constructing alien race, but the result is somewhat the same (only somewhat) – mankind becomes endowed with intelligence, taking him beyond all other life on earth, and prompting him to reach for the stars.