filmbriefs
Producer · Actor · 1946

Frank Marshall

5
briefs
13:00
average
65 min
in total
On film.briefs5
13:00

Paper Moon

Peter Bogdanovich · 1973

Paper Moon (1973), directed by Peter Bogdanovich, follows Moses Pray and Addie Loggins — a grifter and a sharp-witted orphan — as they travel across Depression-era Kansas and Missouri, running small scams to survive. Shot in black-and-white by László Kovács, it stars Ryan and Tatum O'Neal in performances defined by restraint and reciprocity. Adapted by Alvin Sargent from Joe David Brown’s novel, it avoids moral framing in favour of behavioural accuracy, treating fraud as labour and kinship as negotiation. Tatum O'Neal won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at age ten.

13:00

Targets

Peter Bogdanovich · 1968

Peter Bogdanovich’s 1968 debut Targets pairs Boris Karloff’s retiring horror icon Byron Orlok with Tim O’Kelly’s motiveless killer Bobby Thompson. Shot guerilla-style in Los Angeles on a shoestring budget, it uses stark cinematography, restrained editing, and deliberate juxtaposition to ask how fiction holds up against televised atrocity — all without recourse to psychology, exposition, or catharsis.

13:00

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

David Fincher · 2008

David Fincher’s 2008 romance follows Brad Pitt’s Benjamin Button, a man who ages in reverse, across eighty years of American history. Adapted from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 short story by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord, it anchors its fantastical premise in tactile realism — weathered interiors, precise period detail, and restrained performances. Though praised for its production design, makeup, and visual effects — all Oscar-winning — its emotional core rests in the quiet, asymmetrical love between Benjamin and Cate Blanchett’s Daisy. The film’s 166-minute runtime demands patience, rewarding it with sustained mood and material honesty rather than narrative surprise.

13:00

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Steven Spielberg · 1981

Steven Spielberg's 1981 adventure sends archaeologist Indiana Jones after the Ark of the Covenant, racing Nazi treasure hunters across three continents. Financed by Lucasfilm rather than a studio, built from a George Lucas story and a Lawrence Kasdan script, it swept the technical Academy Awards and became the year's biggest earner despite tracking that predicted it would be overshadowed.

13:00

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Robert Zemeckis · 1988

Robert Zemeckis's 1988 noir comedy places a toon-hating private eye in an alternate 1947 Hollywood where cartoon characters live alongside humans, tasking him with clearing Roger Rabbit of a murder. Produced by Disney and Amblin with animation supervised by Richard Williams, it required Disney to negotiate cameo rights with Warner Bros. and other studios, and became the second-highest-grossing film of 1988.