The movies you loved as a kid sometimes turn out to be
classics (i.e. Back to the Future and
Star Wars) while others, it turns
out, were really just not very good. Ah, the undiscerning view from a child’s
perspective. When you’re a kid, a movie is good or not because it has
excitement, adventures, romance, and comedy. For some adults I guess that never
changes. Before Robert Zemeckis directed Back
to the Future, he had a big commercial success in Romancing the Stone, a sort of Raiders
of the Lost Ark knock-off starring Kathleen Turner as a dowdy romance
novelist and Michael Douglas as a roughneck who saves her in the jungles of
Colombia.
A blog mostly dedicated to cinema (including both new and old film reviews; commentary; and as the URL suggests - movie lists, although it has been lacking in this area to be honest), but on occasion touching on other areas of personal interest to me.
Thursday, November 26, 2015
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Southpaw Movie Review
Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw
is a little chaotically scripted by Kurt Sutter with plot points that are
occasionally unbelievable, nonsensical, or irrelevant, but it is Fuqua’s most
restrained directing effort I can recall and contains enough moral uplift that
it just crosses the line of what’s worth watching as a minor diversion.
Jake Gyllenhaal is impressive as Billy Hope, the light
heavyweight champion of the world. Hope (and Gyllenhaal by extension) is
physically imposing with a ripped torso and biceps. He has an anger control
problem that remains mostly confined to the ring. So that he garners our
sympathies, he’s got a beautiful wife, Maureen (Rachel McAdams), and daughter,
both of whom he adores and dotes on. Maureen doesn’t want him to keep fighting
because his style allows him to endure punch after punch until he’s angry
enough to pummel his opponent. His manager (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) wants him
to sign a three fight deal.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
The Full Monty Movie Review
I wanted to revisit The
Full Monty because in my memory, it resides in a place where thruway, but
well-made popular entertainments go to die. Every time I’ve considered its pace
among five Oscar Best Picture nominees (competing against L.A.
Confidential, Titanic, Good
Will Hunting, and As Good as It
Gets, it was the definition of “it’s an honor just to be nominated.”) Was
it also a stroke of incredible good fortune to be nominated? Was it really that
good or did it just tickle audiences the right way and have the right wards
marketing team to help it fill a niche spot in the category often reserved for
light quirky comedies that make a lot of money and get people talking? C.f. Four Weddings and a Funeral and Chocolat.
Election Movie Review
Alexander Payne’s second film was a brilliant little gem
called Election, a satirical look at
electoral process through the prism of a high school student council election.
The screenplay was adapted from Tom Perrotta’s novel by Payne and Jim Taylor
and is as true to high school life and character as it is cynically observant
of political ambition.
Reese Witherspoon achieved major breakout success playing
Tracy Flick, the little bundle of gumption and up-start attitude that comes
across as admirable in a teenager, but which has the potential to transition
into an adulthood of stepping on everyone to achieve her goals. Matthew
Broderick plays the popular history teacher, Jim McAllister, who oversees
student government elections. He teaches the students civics and about the
difference between morals and ethics – a line he would do well to consider
later in the film when he manipulates the election results and cheats on his
wife. Mr. McAllister is one of those teachers that students remember their
whole lives. He is dedicated and enthusiastic and truly a stand-up guy, even
standing beside his friend and colleague Dave Novotni after it’s discovered
he’s been having an affair with sixteen-year old Tracy (the one detail I find
sort of unbelievable in an otherwise perfect movie because girls like Tracy are
not typically sexually ambitious and aren’t targeted by men like Dave.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
From My Collection: Shakespeare in Love Movie Review
I just recently rewatched Shakespeare in Love and it was a s good, if not better than I
remember it. John Madden’s film of the fictional and comic fantasy of how the
greatest romantic tragedy in literary history came to be was my favorite film
of 1998. I saw it Christmas Day, part of a moviegoing tradition I diligently
maintained from 1997 through 2005, and then again a few weeks after. I bought
the DVD in 1999 and have watched it a few times over the years and now I have
the Blu-Ray (yes, I’m a dinosaur) so I can enjoy it in HD whenever I please. I
was one of few people to accurately predict its victory in the Best Picture
Oscar contest. In the Oscar pool I used to manage, only three people out of
about thirty made that pick over Saving
Private Ryan.
Saturday, October 3, 2015
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Movie Review
The whole plot of the latest Mission: Impossible film, subtitled Rogue Nation, and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who also wrote
the screenplay and is involved in one way or another in just about everything
Tom Cruise stars in these days, hinges on the usual MacGuffin device. In this
case it’s a cache of data that will give financial support to an international
crime organization known as The Syndicate. They are essentially the
anti-Impossible Mission force, comprised of agents from all over the world who
disappeared, presumed dead, over the last several years. The thing is, the data
can be accessed using fingerprint and voice ID of only one person – the Prime
Minister of Britain! I mean, there’s security and then there’s just plain
stupid and ineffective. What happens if the PM suddenly dies? What if he
resigns? What if he’s revealed to be greater than Nixon levels of corrupt?
Anyway, this is just a minor logical inconvenience o the way to a
cleverly-crafted sequence that results in the kidnapping of the Prime Minister.
And clever set pieces are the stock in trade of the Mission: Impossible series.
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Phoenix Movie Review
There’s a current movement in German cinema. I’m not sure
if it’s acquired a catchy name yet. “The Berlin School” is the closest I can
find, but that’s not descriptive in the way that “film noir, “French New Wave,”
or “Italian neo-realism” were. From my own observations it’s something like
neo-German historical realism. But that’s a little clunky. At any rate, the
movies, which tend to focus on post-war Germany or Communist Bloc East Germany,
have been making their way stateside, illuminating the ways in which a new
generation of German filmmakers and their audiences are responding to the
important historical markers that shaped Gemany and its people today.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Irrational Man Movie Review: Woody Allen's 45th Feature
Correction 10 August 2016 - I originally labeled this as Allen's 50th feature. I think I pulled that number from a crude count of his IMDb credits which include TV work and one of the three vignettes in New York Stories. This was actually his 45th theatrically released feature film as a director, including What's Up, Tiger Lily?
Abe and Jill accidentally overhear a troubling story in a diner. |
I’ve thought Woody Allen was washed up and done as a
filmmaker for almost twenty years, but then every now and then he throws a
curve ball of Vicky
Christina Barcelona or Midnight
in Paris, so I’m not about to make any big pronouncements, but Irrational Man is one that makes me
desperately hope he doesn’t close out his career now lest the stink linger
forever. That’s not really fair, I guess. No matter how bad an artist’s
latter-day sins might be, the great stuff will always maintain a redemptive
quality. Just look at Stevie Wonder.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Blackhat Movie Review
I have found myself over the years consistently
enthralled by Michael Mann’s movies. He creates stories of men entirely
dedicated to their professions, seemingly without limits. Al Pacino and Robert
De Niro faced off as detective and thief, two men who would stop at nothing
(including the loss of a relationship) in completing the mission in Heat. Daniel Day-Lewis was a
frontiersman trying to save the woman he loved in The Last of the Mohicans. Tom Cruise was a fiercely professional
hitman toying with Jamie Foxx’s cab driver in Collateral. And Foxx and Colin Farrell lived the lives of
undercover narcotics detectives in Miami
Vice. Mann sets these stories amid the allure of gorgeous
cinematography, often making well-known cities look like brand new tailored
playgrounds for men with fast cars and guns, whether it’s L.A., Miami, or Hong
Kong in his latest, Blackhat.
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Ex Machina Movie Review
It’s worth admiring a movie that attempts to tell a story
of big ideas and deal with philosophical challenges, even if the execution
isn’t what one might consider perfect. If there’s at least a modicum of kill
and effort put into the craft of the storytelling and filmmaking, any missteps
are easy to gloss over. Alex Garand’s Ex
Machina, a science-fiction thriller takes the issue of artificial
intelligence and cuts to the core of meaning behind consciousness and, by
extension, humanity.
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Kingsman: The Secret Service Movie Review
I continue to fall victim to these early-in-the-year releases
that get good reviews, forgetting every year that for the most part, these films
are not very good. It’s just that critics are desperate to grasp at something
remotely interesting in the early months on the calendar. Kingsman: The Secret Service is one of these movies. It’s all flash
and panache, giving the illusion of something stylish and innovative. This is
Matthew Vaughn’s second film adapted from a Mark Millar comic. Kick
Ass was the first and, truth be told, violence is treated equally in
both films, which tells me that Millar and Vaughn see no difference between
violence committed by and against a twelve-year old girl and English gentlemen.
Wild Tales Movie Review (Relatos salvajes)
Damián Szifrón’s Wild
Tales is a package film comprised of six short films united by the common
theme of human nature’s propensity to resort to animal instincts of violence
and moral turpitude at the slightest hint of transgression. The original
Spanish title of this Argentine film (which was nominated for the Foreign
Language Film Oscar this year) is Relatos
salvajes which is more aptly translated as “Savage Tales.” These six
stories are not just wild, as in a little crazy and beyond the pale. They are
savage and occasionally brutal in the way wild animals have no regard for the
violence they inflict on each other.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
It Follows Movie Review
It’s long been a sort of tradition in the slasher
sub-genre of horror films that those who choose to have sex are doomed to
succumb to a horrific death. It was enough of a trope that Wes Craven’s
post-modern slasher film Scream
listed it as a surefire way for any of its characters to seal their fate. It’s
no coincidence then, that It Follows,
written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, uses sex as the precise
mechanism by which its characters attract the attention of the slow-moving, but
undeterred creature that wants to take their lives.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Inside Out Movie Review
Pixar’s latest execution of brilliance is Inside Out. It’s getting more than its
fair share of praise and accolades, most of which is justified. Is it their
best film since Up, as many have
deemed it? Probably, but then we’re really only talking about a stretch of two
films in that time, both of which were very good even if they aren’t up to the
excellent standard Pixar is renowned for. This feat of genuine creativity and
acrobatic storytelling concerns the machinations (both literal and figurative)
of Riley, who winds up being a secondary character in the story of her own
mind. She is subordinate to, and to some extent controlled by the anthropomorphic
representations of emotions in her head.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
American Sniper Movie Review
A Navy SEAL sniper sits on the roof of a building in
Iraq. In the street below is an American military convoy. His job is to
shepherd those soldiers to safety by keeping a lookout for potential threats.
In the city war zone that has been evacuated, any military-age male must be
regarded as a threat. First he scopes a man talking on a cell phone. The man
steps inside, not knowing how close he came to losing his life. Next a woman
and a boy, not more than eleven or twelve years old, arrive on the street. She
hands the boy a rocket-propelled grenade. The voice on the other end of the
soldier’s com can’t confirm visually. The call is entirely his. Men who engage
in war are fair targets. What do you do about a child who is about to kill your
comrades?
Everything I Saw in the First Half of 2015
In the first six months of 2015 I managed to watch 82 feature films, but only
79 different ones because three were repeated within the six month period.
I saw eighteen of those features in the cinema, but since February 10 I've
seen only five in the cinema.
Including the three repeats within the six month period, twenty-two of the
features films I watched were films I'd seen before.
I also watched twenty-five short films, seventeen of which I saw in the
cinema, most of those as part of the Oscar-nominated short films programs.
There were also nineteen TV episodes.
As for the writing part of all this, I posted only 32 new reviews in that time,
which is way down from last year. I do, however, have seventeen written for
larger projects coming in the future.
79 different ones because three were repeated within the six month period.
I saw eighteen of those features in the cinema, but since February 10 I've
seen only five in the cinema.
Including the three repeats within the six month period, twenty-two of the
features films I watched were films I'd seen before.
I also watched twenty-five short films, seventeen of which I saw in the
cinema, most of those as part of the Oscar-nominated short films programs.
There were also nineteen TV episodes.
As for the writing part of all this, I posted only 32 new reviews in that time,
which is way down from last year. I do, however, have seventeen written for
larger projects coming in the future.
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Four Brothers Movie Review
Maybe it’s my love of westerns that made me fall so hard
for John Singleton’s Four Brothers,
his 2005 Detroit-set revenge film and his best work since Boyz
N the Hood. I didn’t realize it then, or even the second time I watched
it, that it’s essentially a modern urban western. The lawlessness of the open
land and small towns has been replaced by the gutted and run down Motor City.
Instead of some evil landowner there’s a crime boss (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor
early in his Hollywood career and long before his star turn in 12
Years a Slave). Replacing the heroic gunslinger is a criminal and his
three brothers, in town for their mother Evelyn’s (Fionnula Flanagan) funeral
and to exact revenge for her murder in what appears to be a convenience store
robbery. Many of the western tropes are there. There are gunfights. There are
shots establishing the landscape, in this cast derelict buildings and
snow-swept (as opposed to wind) open spaces of frozen lakes.
Fat City Movie Review
From the annals of long since forgotten films comes Fat City from 1972. Every calendar year
is overloaded with movie releases that, even if modestly successful at the
time, are destined to recede into memory as the years pass. The status of
classic or cult classic is reserved fro only a handful of films each year. You
need only go back eighteen years to find a Best Picture nominee called The Full Monty, for example. It was a
small British film that found great success in the United States. But how many
people think of it now? How highly regarded is it by those who do recall it?
Now consider that film’s status with another twenty-five years of age. So The Full Monty is no Fat City, of course, if for no other
reason than the latter was directed by John Huston, a Hollywood legend. But
even his fame never elevated the film above the level of New Wave Hollywood
footnote.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Cult Classic Movie Review: Horror of Dracula
In honor of the late Christopher Lee, whose June 7 death
was reported yesterday, I took a first look at the first of his series of
iconic career-defining roles as Dracula. Lee is best known to modern audiences
as the wizard Saruman in The
Lord of the Rings and The
Hobbit trilogies or as the Sith Lord Count Dooku in Attack of the Clones. But in the 50s and
60s, he starred in many of Hammer Films’ British horror films.
His first turn as the vampire was in Dracula, which was re-titled Horror
of Dracula in the United States to avoid confusion with the Tod
Browning-directed version from 1931 starring Bela Lugosi. The Hammer Films
series was the second big iteration of attempts to bring Bram Stoker’s novel to
the screen. Universal had made the Lugosi film and a few follow-ups, but Lee
became a new generation’s face of Count Dracula for several years. Since the
late 70s pop culture has been inundated with vampire stories ranging from the
grotesqueries of John Carpenter and Stephen King to the comedy of Once Bitten starring Jim Carrey and then
finally landing at teenage soap opera thanks to Stephanie Meyer by way of Anne
Rice.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Selma Movie Review
Upon a second viewing of last year’s Selma, Ava DuVernay’s film about Martin Luther King and his leading
the protests in Selma, Alabama, that would ultimately lead to the Voting Rights
Act of 1965, I have warmed up to it more than when I first saw it. There was
some outspoken backlash bout the Academy’s failure to nominate DuVernay for an
Oscar. The same for David Oyelowo, who portrays King and carries the movie
through most of its emotional highs and lows. The paltry number of nominations
(a Best Picture nod and one for Best Song for which it won) was attributed by
some to Hollywood’s refusal to accept black stories or to afford them the same
status as stories about white people. These were rich arguments coming the year
after 12 Years a Slave won the Best
Picture Oscar. That film was about a challenging as they come. No, I think Selma was little recognized in the
awards season because it simply wasn’t as good as other movies last year.
Unless people believe in affirmative action for movie awards, I see no reason Selma and its director should have
bumped other worthy nominees from their recognition.
Monday, June 1, 2015
Avengers: Age of Ultron Movie Review
Does it really matter what anyone thinks of a movie like Avengers: Age of Ultron? These kinds of
movies don’t live and die by either critical or popular opinion. They are
guaranteed to rake in huge revenue not only at the box office, but through merchandising
tie-ins. The hype and excitement, the feeling of its being a cultural event THE
movie you must see this summer (or early spring as it opened in early May)
ensure that hordes of people will go to see it. And those multitudes have been
programmed from decades of action-packed, effects-laden event movies to believe
that all they have to do is stimulate the physical senses. As long as lots of
stuff blows up, implodes, collapses, cracks, breaks, splinters, and crunches
accompanied, of course, by appropriately deafening sound effects, then the
movie has accomplished its primary goal.
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Maps to the Stars Movie Review
David Cronenberg’s films have always been a bit of an
acquired taste. If you can bear sitting through stories about emotionally and
(often) physically scarred people who continue to be tortured by and torture
themselves over their trauma, and you like it all presented in the harsh cold
of the distance the filmmaker puts between his audience and the film’s
subjects, then you might keep returning to his work. His films are rarely short
of intriguing and boundary-pushing. At least it was through his first two
decades or so. It’s getting harder and harder to shock people. Once you’ve done
exploding heads, nude bathhouse knife fights, and people whose sexual fetish
involves car crashes, where is there room for turning stomachs? His recent
spate of work resides in a heightened glossy reality. He had a mainstream
renaissance with A
History of Violence and Eastern
Promises. Those two are among the most accessible pieces in his body of
work, but they still require a suspension of conventional expectations.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
While We're Young Movie Review
Whatever stage in life he’s at, Noah Baumbach has not
stopped writing characters who fret about their own lives, where they’ve been,
and where they’re headed. I get the feeling he’s a man who is always in tune
with some level of dissatisfaction with his life. One shouldn’t confuse that
with unhappiness. I think it’s probably natural to wonder about what you’ve
done, the choices you’ve made, and whether you could be doing something better
or more important. What separates Baumbach from most other people is that he’s
attuned to those feelings probably in everyone around him. That’s why he’s so
good at writing dialogue and characters that so precisely and concisely sum up
complex emotions.
Monday, April 27, 2015
Danny Collins Movie Review
There’s hardly a more heartbreaking story of a once great
acting talent becoming a washed-up caricature of bombast and overacting than Al
Pacino. He was such a marvel in the 70’s. He was good-looking with the most
expressive eyes of any actor of his generation. His delivery was subtle and
always perfect. When I look at him now, I don’t even see the same man. His sad
hangdog face obscures the depths that used to reside within. Every now and
then, as in Donnie Brasco, he has
flashes of greatness once again. Some have been giving similar accolades for
his latest, a heartfelt story of redemption called Danny Collins, written and directed by Dan Fogelman.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I Movie Review
The Hunger Games:
Mockingjay Part I has an unwieldy title thanks to the decision long ago to
divide the third book in Suzanne Collins’ trilogy into two movies. Let’s face
it, this is a business decision much more than an artistic choice. It’s a means
o doubling revenue for a single story. I feel no discussion of this series can
be complete without considering that decision.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
The Judge Movie Review
The Judge, directed
by David Dobkin from a screenplay by Nick Schenk and Bill Dubuque, is a perfect
example of soft, flat, non-challenging, placating material that is made to
appeal to a demographic of people who watch movie as a means of sedation.
Because it stars two very fine actors in Robert Duvall and Robert Downey, Jr.,
and because it’s a courtroom drama, it is easily digestible to the broadest possible
audience.
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
2018 World Cup Qualifying: Day 2
Today were the second legs of several home-and-away playoffs between the very lowest ranked teams in the Asian Confederation. The big news is that Bhutan, ranked lowest at 209th according to FIFA, defeated Sri Lanka to advance to Round 2.
India, Timor-Leste, Chinese Taipei, and Cambodia also advanced thus making Mongolia, Nepal, Macau, Brunei, and Sri Lanka the first teams officially eliminated from Russia 2018.
The second leg of the Yemen-Pakistan matchup has been postponed, to be played in a neutral location, following violence in Lahore where the match was to be played today. The first leg was also played in neutral territory due to security concerns in Yemen, who currently lead 3-1.
The six winners will be drawn into 8 groups of 5 teams each for home-and-away group play starting on 11 June.
Next up: CONCACAF begins first round play on 22 March with Barbados at home against U.S. Virgin Islands.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Qualifying for World Cup 2018 Started Today
Over in Asia, the 12 lowest ranked teams (according to the FIFA world rankings) played the first tie in a home-and-away playoff. The second legs will be played on the 17th, thus eliminating the first six teams from WC 2018.
The 12 matchups are:
India - Nepal
Yemen - Pakistan
Timor-Leste - Mongolia
Cambodia - Macau
Chinese Taipei - Brunei
Sri Lanka - Bhutan
Bhutan is the lowest-ranked team in the world at 209 and they defeated Sri Lanka away 1-0 in front of 3,500 stunned fans. 21-year old Tshering Dorji scored in the 84th minute to give his nation their first ever World Cup qualification win.
Macau and Mongolia will have challenging three-goal deficits to overcome in their second legs. The other teams are all still very much alive.
CONCACAF qualifying will begin on 23 March.
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
St. Vincent Movie Review
Bill Murray has had a late stage career renaissance
playing curmudgeonly irritated men whose bitterness and sarcasm masks some deep
loss within. It started with Rushmore
and found one of its greatest expressions in Lost in Translation. It reaches a nadir in Theodore Melfi’s St. Vincent which has Murray playing the
title character who is anything but a saint.
Vincent is a rude misanthropic angry man with a
ramshackle house that’s falling apart, a car that isn’t doing much better, a
healthy drinking problem, and a penchant for gambling as a means of increasing
his debs and chances of getting broken kneecaps from his loan shark Zucko
(Terrence Howard). Oh, and his best friend is Daka, a pregnant prostitute
stripper (Naomi Watts, sporting a cartoonish Russian accent) whose employment
options are limited to men who find her belly a turn-on.
A Walk Among the Tombstones Movie Review
Played in all earnestness as a tribute to the private
investigator sub-genre of crime fiction, Scott Frank’s adaptation (which he
also directed) of Lawrence Block’s A Walk
Among the Tombstones is about as grim and nihilistic a treatment as you’re
likely to see in a mainstream movie. The character Matt Scudder featured in
more than a dozen of Block’s books and some of those have been adapted to the
screen before. But Frank, who is no stranger to pulp fiction and mystery
stories involving a tough PI (Frank wrote the screenplay adaptations of both Get Shorty and Out
of Sight), doesn’t bother trying to reinvent the genre or to put a new
spin on it. A Walk Among the Tombstones
is effective classic mystery storytelling. It’s more hard-edged and just plain
evil than any adaptation of Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade ever was, but the
hallmarks are there.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Classic Movie Review: Lady and the Tramp
One of the Disney animated classics that I fondly
remember from childhood is Lady and the
Tramp. It ws re-released to theaters when I was a kid (before widespread
home video releases and before Disney put them out on VHS). It felt more
monumental to me then than it does now. At only 76 minutes, it is briskly paced
and spare. There’s really not much story to tell and the big romance between
Lady (voiced by Barbara Luddy) and the street mutt Tramp (Larry Roberts) is
developed in one brief sequence when Lady is lost away from home and Tramp
saves her from some unsavory dogs and takes her on a date to an Italian
restaurant for the iconic spaghetti-eating scene, which is now one of the most
indelibly romantic moments in cinema history.
Saturday, February 21, 2015
87th Academy Awards: Oscar Predictions
Here we go with my quick rundown of what I think will win tomorrow night. As usual, I expect to get all 24 categories correct.
Picture
A genuinely tough call this year. It's a tight race between Boyhood and Birdman, with American Sniper perhaps a not-too-distant third given its popular success. But really it will be one of the first two. I feel almost like it's a toss-up even as to whether they will split Director and Picture or sweep.
My final answer is...
Birdman. (I actually typed Boyhood first and changed my mind, that's how indecisive I am). Ultimately perhaps it comes down to the fact that Birdman is about a tortured actor who sees himself as a true artist looking for critical approval. And actors make up the largest contingent of the Academy.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Tangerines Movie Review
Update 21 April 2015: This film was released commercially in the United States on 17 April 2015.
This film has not yet been released commercially in the United States.
Anti-war movies so often fail at being effectively
anti-war because any depiction of fighting, violence, brutality, or death
inherently glorifies it by making it sensational. One of the best anti-war
movies I can recall is Danis Tanovic’s Oscar-winning No Man’s Land which featured virtually no fighting at all but was
about two wounded soldiers from opposing sides in the Bosnian War stuck in the
tract of land between the lines. It was about the absurdity and ineffectiveness
of war and the need for human understanding in conflict. No Man’s Land was the movie I thought of most often during Tangerines, one of this year’s nominees
for the award that Tanovic’s film won.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Top Ten of 2014
I guess I'm just about ready to call my best movies of 2014. It's far beyond the end of last year, but I'm only just now in a place where I feel comfortable enough that I've seen most of the movies that would be likely to make my list.
This is one of the strangest top ten lists I've ever made. I don't think I've ever had two documentaries on the list. And as you get into the second half of my list, it's populated by films that I am less enthusiastic about than I am in admiration of. In years past it was a struggle to not leave a movie I really enjoyed off my list. This year it was about struggling to include something worthy. 2014 left me feeling chilly. There wasn't much I really went wild for.
10. The Babadook - directed by Jennifer Kent - Certainly not one of the absolute best of the year and not even one of the greatest scary films or thrillers of all time, but supremely effective and left me chilled to the bone about the psychological horrors of parenting and losing your mind.
This is one of the strangest top ten lists I've ever made. I don't think I've ever had two documentaries on the list. And as you get into the second half of my list, it's populated by films that I am less enthusiastic about than I am in admiration of. In years past it was a struggle to not leave a movie I really enjoyed off my list. This year it was about struggling to include something worthy. 2014 left me feeling chilly. There wasn't much I really went wild for.
10. The Babadook - directed by Jennifer Kent - Certainly not one of the absolute best of the year and not even one of the greatest scary films or thrillers of all time, but supremely effective and left me chilled to the bone about the psychological horrors of parenting and losing your mind.
We Are the Best! Movie Review
Swedish director Lukas Moodysson went a little dark after
his light and free-wheeling feature debut Together,
one of my favorite movies from 2001. He came back last year with We Are the Best, another film similar in
tone and just as light on its feet. It’s amazing to see a director as
comfortable dealing with high energy electrifying characters as he is with
moody depression. In his latest he tells an adorable story, adapted from his
wife Coco’s comic book about three young girls in Stockholm in the early eighties
trying to stand out as punks. The punk movement was on its way out by then and
of course girls weren’t supposed to care. But Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and her
best friend Klara (Mira Grosin) are the school’s outliers, two kids who spike
their short hair and dress alternatively. And they catch hell for it from their
peers.
Timbuktu Movie Review
The global fight against implementation of Sharia law and
the struggle against Islamofascism is given a very different perspective in
Abderrah Sissako’s striking and thoughtful Timbuktu.
In 2012, militants took over the city in Mali and laid down new laws regarding
dress codes for men and women, music performance, smoking, and adultery. They
also make clear what some punishments might be.
The city of Timbuktu is cosmopolitan. It is made up of
people from many different places and cultures, they speak several different
languages. The absurdity of foreigners walking into town and trying to create a
new uniform culture is certainly on Sissako’s mind. There is no shortage of
absurdity in Timbuktu including the
hypocrisy of those who are meant to enforce the new laws. Football is not
permitted but three soldiers fiercely debate whether Barcelona or Madrid have
the better team. And the kids play a gorgeous game of soccer with no ball. They
rely on their imaginations and ingenuity to have a good time. It is one of the
film’s most sublime moments. Then as if to call to attention to just how
ridiculous it is, a donkey wanders across the pitch. This was one of the
greatest sequences in a film full of them.
Oscar-nominated Documentary Short Films Review
The Oscar-nominated documentary short program is an
interesting crop of selections this year. Four of the five nominees are simply
documents of a particular subject, be it place, character, or family. Only one
has what could be construed as having an agenda, or attempting to call
attention to an issue and even that example is a restrained portrait of the
subject matter.
In White Earth,
Christian Jensen goes to a small town in North Dakota where the population has
swollen due to recent oil drilling. People are showing up from all over the
country hoping for a better life for their families through more work. Rather
than focus on the nefariousness of oil companies, or the blight on the land
that the drills cause, Jensen talks to the children of oil workers about how
they feel about the work, their town, and their future. It’s only twenty
minutes, so it doesn’t go deep. The film presents a snapshot of a town and some
of its people. The images are occasionally beautiful, scattered though they are
throughout. The result is a simple document of family life, parenting, and the
desire to see your children have a better life.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Still Alice Movie Review
For movies about terminally or debilitatingly ill
characters, you could do a lot worse than Still
Alice. Adapted and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland from
the book by Lisa Genova, it’s about a woman diagnosed with and then suffering
the consequences of early onset Alzheimer’s. She’s only fifty, still working as
a university lecturer, giving talks around the world on linguistics and
language development. She’s still physically active as a runner and involved in
her children’s lives. They are at that precarious age in between childhood and
having families of their own, chronologically adults, but still in need of
mother’s care.
Unbroken Movie Review
I was afraid Unbroken,
Angelina Jolie’s second outing behind the camera, would be tacky, maudlin, and
sentimental hokum. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was wrong. The
story of Louis Zamperini was bought by Universal many years ago and finally put
into production after Laura Hillenbrand’s book on the subject became a best
seller. Zamperini was an American Olympic runner who competed in the 5,000
meter run at the 1936 Berlin games and then flew bombing missions over Japan
during WWII. He was shot down over the Pacific, survived for an astounding 45
days adrift on a raft with two other crew from his plane, was picked up by a
Japanese ship and placed in a prison camp where he endured brutal conditions
and regular beatings at the hands of a pettily jealous guard.
CT Governor Malloy has his Jed Bartlett Moment
Governor Dan Malloy went on 95.9 The Fox to announce his new liquor laws. The big one is that there will no longer be a mandatory price minimum on a bottle. As it is now, the liquor stores have to set their prices at a certain level above wholesale. Malloy's new plan calls for liquor stores being permitted to sell a bottle for $5.01 if they pay $5 for it, if they so choose.
You can watch his announcement on the radio here.
I caught the segment right after this video ends, at the point when they take a call. I can't find the transcript, but I'll paraphrase:
A man calls in and complains that this law will only serve to put the "Mom and Pops" out of business because they won't be able to afford to either buy in large enough quantities at lower prices (lack of storage space prohibits smaller stores from this practice) or to mark down their bottles enough to compete with the chain retailers who have more cash flow to do it. The caller works in the business as a liquor delivery driver and said that the new laws would eventually mean fewer liquor stores, which means fewer delivery stops, which means fewer drivers.
The governor's response, again this is a paraphrased quote: "Let me see if I understand your argument correctly. You want people to pay more for alcohol so you can be happy?"
At the moment he said that, I thought, "I want to vote for this man."
And then I instantly thought of this moment from one of my favorite TV shows of all time, "The West Wing"
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Important Anniversaries Marked in 2015
* The Oscar winners noted were released in the previous year, but given the award in the year noted.
10 Years Ago (2005)
Pierce Brosnan resigned at James Bond after four films and later in the year Daniel Craig was named as his successor.
Number of films I've seen: 87
My average rating: 6.89 / 10
My best of the year: Cache dir. Michael Haneke
My worst of the year: Fantastic Four dir. Tim Story
My average rating: 6.89 / 10
My best of the year: Cache dir. Michael Haneke
My worst of the year: Fantastic Four dir. Tim Story
directing debuts
Judd Apatow (The 40-Year Old Virgin)
Lee Daniels+ (Shadowboxer)
Rian Johnson (Brick)
Joss Whedon* (Serenity)
* past Oscar nominee NOT for directing +future Oscar nominee
notable deaths
Playwright and screenwriter Arthur Miller (89)
Director Robert Wise (91)
Actor and comedian Richard Pryor (65)
Playwright and screenwriter Arthur Miller (89)
Director Robert Wise (91)
Actor and comedian Richard Pryor (65)
Top grossing film for the year (domestic): Revenge of the Sith ($380.3 million)
(worldwide): Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ($896.9 million)
(worldwide): Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ($896.9 million)
Academy Award Best Picture winner*: Million Dollar Baby dir. Clint Eastwood
Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or winner: L'Enfant dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Movies from my collection
The 40-Year Old Virgin
Brokeback Mountain
Cache
A History of Violence
Match Point
Wedding Crashers
Movies from my collection
The 40-Year Old Virgin
Brokeback Mountain
Cache
A History of Violence
Match Point
Wedding Crashers
Non-movie related
- Iraq had its first free Parliamentary elections since 1958 on 30 January
- Pope John Paul II died on 2 April
- Pope Benedict XVI elected 265th Pope on 19 April
- Variety revealed the identity of Deep Throat to be FBI Associate Director Mark Felt on 31 May
- Four coordinated bombing attacks in London killed 52 people on 7 July, the day after the city was announced as host of the 2012 Summer Olympics
- Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast on 29 August
- Iraq had its first free Parliamentary elections since 1958 on 30 January
- Pope John Paul II died on 2 April
- Pope Benedict XVI elected 265th Pope on 19 April
- Variety revealed the identity of Deep Throat to be FBI Associate Director Mark Felt on 31 May
- Four coordinated bombing attacks in London killed 52 people on 7 July, the day after the city was announced as host of the 2012 Summer Olympics
- Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast on 29 August
Thursday, February 5, 2015
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Movie Review
For the third and final installment in Peter Jackson’s
bloated trilogy, The Hobbit, I couldn’t
bear to sit through An
Unexpected Journey and The
Desolation of Smaug to refresh my memory before trudging through the
morass of The Battle of the Five Armies.
The predictable result is that I had completely forgotten who some secondary
characters were, what they had done previously, and why I should care about
them at all.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Love Is Strange Movie Review
What a beautiful little movie Ira Sachs made with Love Is Strange. Alfred Molina and John
Lithgow play George and Ben, a same sex couple who get married (thanks to a
change in New York law) after almost forty years together as partners. George,
who works as a music educator in a private Catholic school, is fired for not
upholding the values of the Church. Essentially, his marriage stands in
conflict with the public image of the Church. The decision is not unlike any
company firing someone for publicly engaging in a behavior that reflects poorly
on company values. However, his colleagues and most of his students and their
parents knew he was gay and lived with Ben.
Last Days in Vietnam Movie Review
Though it’s not the most exciting or ground-breaking
documentary you’ll see, Rory Kennedy has made one of the more solid,
interesting, and important entries in the 2014 crop of award-winning
documentaries. Last Days in Vietnam
focuses on the final days of the war between North and South Vietnam, long
after the U.S. had pulled all troops off the ground and the Paris Peace Accords
had been signed. After President Nixon resigned, the North Vietnamese army
began advancing in violation of the agreement. This documentary is about the
effort to evacuate the American Embassy in Saigon including all Americans on
the ground. A lot of Americans also had Vietnamese wives and children to
evacuate. Then a simple evacuation turned into a massive humanitarian effort to
extract tens of thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians who might
end up imprisoned or executed if left behind.
Virunga Movie Review
Orlando von Einsiedel’s documentary Virunga has a special way of pulling you into one story and then
ripping the rug right from under you and slamming you with a story you weren’t
expecting. He begins with a prologue detailing, very briefly, the torrid
history of the Congo, its struggles to free itself from colonialism, and then
to embrace democracy. The next half hour or so introduces the UNESCO World
Heritage site Virunga National Park, a stunning paradise and bio-diverse nature
preserve that is home to the last remaining mountain gorillas, which happen to
be the emotional lynchpin of the film.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
A Most Violent Year Movie Review
Abel Morales is a Latin American immigrant in New York
City in 1981. He owns and operates his own heating oil business amid a social
and business landscape that is in decay. Corruption in his industry is rampant
to the point that the Assistant D.A. (David Oyelowo) is lumping him in with all
oil companies in an investigation. The city itself is witnessing its most
violent time ever. The radio news is constantly recounting the previous day’s tally
of violent crimes, a heavy load weighing the city down along with the cold
wintry mood set by director J.C. Chandor and his production designer John
Goldsmith and cinematographer Bradford Young.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Foxcatcher Movie Review
One of the lesser known footnotes to modern Olympic
history is the relationship of John Du Pont to the Olympic wrestling gold
medalist brothers Mark and Dave Schultz. It’s a funny thing that no one pays
much attention to the sport of wrestling outside of the quadrennial Olympic
cycle, but there’s something so quintessentially American about the sport Of
course it’s been around since the ancient games of Greece and eastern Europeans
often excel at it, but the American ideal is intrinsically bound to it. It’s a
sport based on physical confrontation one-on-one. You succeed based on your own
abilities. It is a total make-it-or-break-it scenario. It’s about a fiercely
intense combination of brute strength and cunning strategic skills. You have to
be tough and strong, but also to outwit your opponent.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
The Imitation Game Movie Review
Maybe I’m just not easily impressed anymore. Maybe it’s
because I rarely see any of the really bad movies anymore and so by comparison,
the stuff that is really good seems so ordinary. The Imitation Game is supposed to be one of the year’s best movies,
but it is so utterly conventional, I just found it sort of dull. This is the
story of Alan Turing, the British mathematician who helped decode the messages
churned out by Enigma, the Nazis’ communication device, which should be a ripe
subject for a fascinating story. The machine Turing developed to break the code
laid the foundation for modern computing.
Citizenfour Movie Review
It’s not very often I get turned around on an issue from
a documentary film. I didn’t think much about Edward Snowden when his name was
big in the news for revealing that the NSA was collecting data on everyone’s
phone calls and emails. It struck me as suspicious that, of all places, he
wound up in Russia, after first spending significant time in China. Was some
foreign government supporting him? And why? I thought, at the very least, he had
committed a crime by leaking classified documents. Laura Poitras’s documentary Citizenfour allows us to spend lots of
time with him, giving us the sense of really getting to know the man and make a
decision for ourselves about him.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
How Did I Do (2015 Edition): Or My Results on the Oscar Nomination Predictions
One prediction I got right was that my predictions would not be very good. I don't have records going all the way back, but I'm pretty sure this is close to my worst prediction year. I got a perfect score for only one category - Original Screenplay - and missed on all five (!) in the Sound Mixing category. That's the first time I've ever gone 0/5 in any category. Pretty bad. Anyway, getting 4/5 in a major category is not really a significant accomplishment. Most of the time there's a pretty solid selection of four actors or actresses, four directors, four screenplays. It's the fifth spot that's the hardest to nail down.
In the top eight categories I went 34/43 for a 79%, a full ten percentage points below last year. I should give myself an extra point for correctly predicting there would be only eight Best Picture nominees.
Across all categories that I predicted (so excluding the three short film categories) I scored 72/106 for 68%. Ouch!
So here are the nominees and how I fared...Nominees marked with an asterisk were the ones I missed.
Picture 7/8
Pretty surprised that Whiplash made the cut and Foxcatcher didn't. I wasn't wild about either movie, but that Bennett Miller was nominated for Best Director is quite an accomplishment considering his film isn't even one of the best eight of the year.
American Sniper
Birdman
The Imitation Game
Selma
predicted but not nominated: Foxcatcher
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
87th Academy Awards Nomination Predictions
Let me just start by saying that I will not do better on my predictions than last year, when I scored my best prediction rate ever with close to 90% in the top eight categories and better than 75% across all categories.
One of the biggest factors affecting my abilities this year is that I still have a pretty long list of things to see. My predictions are based on a combination of seeing the films and evaluating them, thinking about Hollywood politics, thinking about what other people are likely to respond to emotionally, and also a kind of gut instinct which is really just about bringing the former factors together.
I don't think 2014 was a very good year for film. A lot of what is likely to get a nomination for Best Picture is pretty mediocre. And that follows on down the line through all the technical categories and a lot of acting performances that just failed to blow me away.
The major things still on my list to see are Into the Woods; Unbroken; American Sniper; Selma; The Hobbit; and A Most Violent Year in addition to a bunch of lesser films that could score technical nominations.
My prediction lists are all in order of likelihood. So in most categories, at least the first three spots are dead locks.
Best Picture
I'm calling only eight nominees this year. Since they went to a range of 5 - 10 nominees, there have always been nine nominees, but I just feel like 2014 was a bit weak.
Boyhood
Birdman
The Imitation Game
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Selma
6. Foxcatcher
7. The Theory of Everything
8. American Sniper
If there are more than eight:
9. Into the Woods
10. Whiplash
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Citizen Koch Movie Review
My personal politics are irrelevant when it comes to
evaluating a movie. At least I do my best to make it so. Of course sometimes
you can’t help it. Doing my best to look objectively at Citizen Koch, the documentary by Carl Deal and Tia Lessin about the
impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens
United v. Federal Election Commission on American politics, I would say
this is a film that fails to thoroughly examine the very issue it claims to be
about.
The Citizens United
case, as you may or may not know, was the 5-4 split decision that essentially
ruled that, when it comes to campaign contributions, corporations are
individuals protected by the First Amendment. The result of that decision has
been the funneling of enormous amount of corporate money into political actions.
The Trip to Italy Movie Review
In The Trip to
Italy, comedian Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan re-team with director Michael
Winterbottom for a sequel to The Trip.
This time, instead of a food tour of the north of England, they are following
in the footsteps of Percy Shelley and Lord Byron from Piedmont to Capri.
The two are slightly older now and in their advancing age
and settling careers they have become more melancholy. Though they still laugh
and smile and enjoy the beauty around them, there is a wistful quality beneath
that reveals their dissatisfaction. Playing fictionalized versions of themselves,
Steve has a teenage son who lives with his ex-wife. Rob has a wife and young
daughter. His wife never seems to have time for him and Rob falls into a little
dalliance with a woman he meets.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
The Theory of Everything Movie Review
There are two central characters in The Theory of Everything, the Stephen Hawking biopic directed by
James Marsh and adapted by Anthony McCarten from the memoir by Hawking’s
ex-wife Jane. Stephen and Jane are equal partners in screen time and emotional
heft in the story. This is less a biopic that gets into the inner workings of a
genius mind and his struggle to continue working during a debilitating illness
than it is a love story about two people overcoming the terrible weight of that
illness on their lives.
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