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7 June 2010
The Ladykillers (1955)
To see Alec Guinness in The Ladykillers must be like what it will be like for a youngin’ to see Ewan McGregor pull the condom off in Trainspotting, which is to say, impressionable and revealing. I’m anxious to see Star Wars again, actually, having experienced this Ealing Studios black comedy where he is no less [...]
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16 May 2010
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Synecdoche, New York is a film that resonates with a lot of my education. I like framing it within that prism because while I remember sitting in class, reading Derrida and Bahktin and everyone else in between, the experience of it is a little fuzzy. And if I position myself in that desk, paging through [...]
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26 April 2010
An Education (2009)
An Education is one of those films that plays against itself, hyper aware of what it is and so constantly works to make you believe its charlatan and be charmed by him. This works largely because of Carey Mulligan, who is incredibly charming as the naive British girl caught up in the sophistication she craves. [...]
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18 April 2010
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans (2009)
Werner Herzog is quite the auteur, and so I couldn’t help but wonder why, while watching this film: why Werner? Why TBL:PoC:NO? What is this film’s reason for existence? The original, which I have vague memories of but am not convinced I’ve seen it in its entirety, is a complete conviction to excess, with all [...]
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5 April 2010
Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
Where the Wild Things Are finally gives “bowdlerize” its long searched-for binary: “Eggersize” (’cause it’s so much Bigger and Emotional!). I’m a little taken aback by the lurid melodrama here, which avoids being totally embarrassing because it’s so languid. Don’t get me wrong, it’s the right tone for the material, but here we have an [...]
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31 March 2010
A Serious Man (2009)
The Coen Brothers’ latest picture, A Serious Man is a movie so steeped in a personal and religious history that it can be a little off putting. It follows Physics professor Larry Gopnik as he encounters some trials in his life: his wife wants to leave him and marry an old friend, Sy; his son [...]
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5 March 2010
Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries (2004)
I finally succumbed to all the pressure about this show being second to none and checked out the miniseries. For the most part, it was pretty good. But it still feels like a television show, mostly in the way dramatic queues are framed around commercial breaks. It’s also great to see a show commit to [...]
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4 February 2010
The Hurt Locker (2009)
The Hurt Locker is among the best of the Best Picture nominations. It doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Avatar let alone actually be in competition with it. They’re both spectacles, to be sure, but one has a depth of character and human understanding that is awful glossy in the other. [...]
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27 July 2009
Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Okay – so more or else an epic failure on the bear story. I’m still writing it, but the regular posting of it made me stop writing until I stopped posting. This is obviously reflective of a host of neuroses that are more or less less interesting than Mad-Libs. And so, in the words of [...]
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12 April 2009
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
Okay, I admit it: I am a sucker for these summer movies. A coworker was telling me sometime last week that he was disturbed deeply when he realized how targeted McDonald’s happy meals were to his niece (she’s 6 or 7), so he would attempt to engage her in conversation that would prove enlightening: “You [...]