Join us for The Critic's Eye film series

See 5 modern classic movies that transcended their genres — and discuss them with longtime critic Lawrence Toppman. The film series starts May 14 at the Independent Picture House

You’re invited to discover — or rediscover — 5 modern classic movies through a critic’s eye in a film series starting May 14 at the Independent Picture House

by Lawrence Toppman

Readers usually think critics love to pan movies. When I was younger, they were right.

I wanted, metaphorically speaking, to kick a bad film in the goolies, to hold its head down in a tank of piranha fish, to plug a stick of TNT right up … you get the idea. Waste two hours of MY time, you vermin? The punishment is death!

Yet as critics get older, they prefer to share enthusiasm, not contempt. Food writers want to write about delightful restaurants, not despicable dumps. Travel writers like to explore enticing destinations, not hellholes to be shunned. It’s still fun to spew bile once in a while, but I’d rather spout praise.

That’s why I’m excited about “The Critic’s Eye,” a series I’ve developed for The Charlotte Ledger and the Independent Picture House, in partnership with CXN Advisory. The series will help viewers discover — or maybe rediscover — modern classics, movies made since 1990 that deserve a place among the all-time greats IMO. (The “H” is missing, because I’m not humble.)

Lawrence Toppman is a former Charlotte Observer film critic and a lifetime member of The Southeastern Film Critics Association.

These five pictures have been billed as movies that “transcend their genres and permanently redefined how storytelling formulas are approached.” They do indeed go beyond the conventions of martial arts movies, film noir, westerns, etc.

I can’t promise the “permanently redefined” part, because only a handful of movies — “Birth of a Nation,” “The Jazz Singer,” “Gone with the Wind,” “Bwana Devil,” “Star Wars,” a few others — have really changed the way stories get told. (Don’t look it up. The 1952 “Bwana Devil” was the first feature-length 3D film in color and the first 3D sound feature in English.)

But I can promise that, if you’ve never seen these five, they’ll make you laugh, weep and think. I hope to contribute to the last reaction through talkbacks afterward, moderated by Tim Whitmire of CXN Advisory. Here’s what we’re offering:

🎞️ “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000), May 14: This visually sumptuous masterpiece jump-started the international wuxia boom and won four Oscars, including foreign film. My dictionary defines wuxia as “a genre of Chinese fiction or cinema featuring itinerant warriors of ancient China, often depicted as capable of superhuman feats of martial arts.” That sums up a story that also has multiple layers of romance and deals with honor and sacrifice in a beautiful way.

🎞️ “Shutter Island” (2010), May 28: Call it horror, film noir, suspense, whatever you like. For me, it’s one of Martin Scorsese’s three best films. Davidson College graduate Laeta Kalogridis cleverly adapted Dennis Lehane’s fine novel about a man investigating a disappearance, which may solve a murder in his past. Leonardo DiCaprio has never given a better performance than he did as the main character, a U.S. marshal sent to an insane asylum on a remote island.

🎞️ “Being John Malkovich” (1999), June 11: Absurdist comedy may be the hardest genre to pull off, but director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman (both Oscar-nominated) nailed it here. John Cusack stars as the woebegone porn puppeteer who discovers a portal allowing people to enter the body of John Malkovich in this parody of superstar worship. The overrated “American Beauty” (yes, I said that) denied Jonze and Kaufman the Academy Awards they deserved.

🎞️ “Zodiac” (2007), June 25: David Fincher may be the most adventurous director working in the mainstream today, and this carefully observed police procedural (mostly without police) doesn’t seem long at 157 minutes. Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. play a cartoonist and reporter in San Francisco who try to identify a serial killer after cops fail to do so. The quest consumes both men, leading to the tagline “There’s more than one way to lose your life to a killer.”

🎞️ “Unforgiven” (1992), July 9: The best film Clint Eastwood has directed is also the greatest western of the last 50 years. When a prostitute hires an unschooled gunman to kill the man who disfigured her, ex-outlaw William Munny (Eastwood) comes out of retirement to help. “It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man,” says Munny. “You take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.” The exemplary cast includes Gene Hackman (who won an Oscar) and Morgan Freeman.

Want to go? The Critic’s Eye film series is presented in partnership with The Charlotte Ledger, The Independent Picture House and CXN Advisory.

• All shows will start at 7 p.m., with a talkback afterward featuring movie critic Lawrence Toppman, moderated by Tim Whitmire of CXN Advisory.

• Tickets are $8.45 and are available for purchase here. The Independent Picture House is located at 4237 Raleigh St., Charlotte. Parking is free and ample. It is also a 5-minute walk from the Sugar Creek light rail station.

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Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews about two times each month in The Charlotte Ledger.

➡️ You can read his arts reviews in The Ledger at the “Larry At-Large” page.

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CXN Advisory works with leadership teams at growth-minded organizations to align and execute on critical strategic objectives.

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