Movie Night with Josh Barry

Movie Night Essay Ep 60 The Rainmaker

@movienight-with-Josh-BarryThe Rainmaker (1997) is a compelling legal drama directed by Francis Ford Coppola, adapting John Grisham's novel about a young lawyer battling a corrupt insurance company. Its score by Elmer Bernstein enhances the gritty Memphis setting and emotional stakes.

Movie Night Ep 59 The Rainmaker

@movienight-with-Josh-BarryRudy Baylor, a recent law grad played by Matt Damon, hustles for work in Memphis and lands at shady lawyer Bruiser Stone's firm (Mickey Rourke). He teams with paralegal Deck Shifflet (Danny DeVito), who failed the bar six times, to sue Great Benefit for denying a leukemia patient's bone marrow transplant. Rudy faces slick corporate attorney Leo Drummond (Jon Voight), navigates a judge change to the fair Tyrone Kipler (Danny Glover, uncredited), and romances abused Kelly Riker (Claire Danes). The trial exposes company fraud via a stolen manual, but bankruptcy shields punitive damages, leaving Rudy to teach law.

Movie Night Essay Ep 58 The Bridge on the River Kw

@movienight-with-Josh-BarryThe Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), directed by David Lean from Pierre Boulle's novel, follows British POWs in a Japanese camp during World War II as they are ordered to build a vital railway bridge—and the Allied commandos sent to destroy it. Starring Alec Guinness (Colonel Nicholson), William Holden (Shears), Jack Hawkins (Warden), and Sessue Hayakawa (Colonel Saito), it blends war adventure, psychological drama, and moral ambiguity into a 161‑minute epic scored by Malcolm Arnold.

Movie Night Ep 57 The Bridge on the River Kwai

@movienight-with-Josh-BarryThe Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), directed by David Lean from Pierre Boulle's novel, follows British POWs in a Japanese camp during World War II as they are ordered to build a vital railway bridge—and the Allied commandos sent to destroy it. Starring Alec Guinness (Colonel Nicholson), William Holden (Shears), Jack Hawkins (Warden), and Sessue Hayakawa (Colonel Saito), it blends war adventure, psychological drama, and moral ambiguity into a 161‑minute epic scored by Malcolm Arnold.

Movie Night Essay Ep 56 Tender Mercies

@movienight-with-Josh-BarryTender Mercies (1983), written by Horton Foote and directed by Bruce Beresford, follows a washed‑up country singer in rural Texas as he stumbles into sobriety, faith, and family with a young widow and her son. Quiet, spare, and music‑soaked, it became a critics’ favorite, earned Robert Duvall an Oscar, and stands as one of the great American character studies of the 1980s.