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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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10 April 2010
Du levande [You, the Living] (2007)
Everyone with Netflix Streaming, you need to give this movie a shot. A pull-quote on the box compares it to Monty Python and Ingmar Bergman, and it’s not far off. It’s simultaneously drab and melancholy and yet what bubbles underneath is an understanding of this existential angst and depression that is nothing but joyous. I [...]
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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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20 March 2010
Deconstructing Harry (1997)
Woody Allen’s film from 1997 was actually my first. I saw it shortly after it came out on video in high school, and while I thought it was funny, it never fully resonated with me until I was embroiled in literary theory at college (and at that, it came to annoy me: is this really [...]
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10 March 2010
Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Punishment Begins [Die Strafe beginnt] (1980)
The story of Franz Biberkof, Berlin Alexanderplatz is a fifteen hour film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder based on the novel by Alfred Döblin. I haven’t seen all of it yet, but I hope writing about each section will not only give me the momentum to finish it, but it’ll give some perspective to what I [...]
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8 March 2010
Mulligans (2008)
Attempting to corner the market on reviews for awful gay movies available via Netflix streaming, Mulligans is but another conquest deserving of the addition of three sub-categories and a new major category. I must admit: the quest is not mine, rather: Eugene’s. And it is he who is on the quest to find a decent, [...]
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5 March 2010
This is It (2009)
My impression of Michael Jackson was of a frail man incapable of basic motor functions that, if touched, would shatter to glass. This is It profoundly disproves that, showing him as a completely engaged performer with his hands in all aspects of the performance. He’s chastising the band for being a beat off, he’s telling [...]
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24 February 2010
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009)
It’s been awhile since I read the collection of Wallace’s short stories, but I don’t remember being quite as appalled as I was by the film’s distillation of these short stories. In the book, they’re tempered by other stories and so maybe that’s why they seemed so awful in the movie, but the real destructive [...]
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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. [...]