If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
How can one adapt James Baldwin's prose for the screen? How can you hope to retain that hard, mournful poetry?
Unsurprisingly, the director of M...
2018-12-19 05:01:14 +0000 UTC View Post
msicism posts
Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)
Roma is fine. At first I was rather irritated by Cuarón's insistence on cramming the film with so much incident -- brass bands and wildfires an...
2018-12-17 21:58:44 +0000 UTC View PostThe House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
A good friend of mine, cinephile Ryan Wu, once compared Lars von Trier's Dogville to a beautifully baked piss pie. The craft is impeccable, and by all ...
2018-12-17 00:54:38 +0000 UTC View PostDead Souls (Wang Bing, 2018)
I have already logged a review of this film in my coverage of TIFF Wavelengths 2018, based on having watched four of its eight hours -- not something I'm partic...
2018-12-17 00:11:08 +0000 UTC View PostTerror Nullius (Soda_Jerk, 2018)
Any halfway decent critic should admit when he or she is out of their depth, and the truth is I am painfully unqualified to even scratch the surface of <...
2018-12-13 22:48:02 +0000 UTC View PostShoutout to BlacKkKlansman...
...for a throwaway reference to these ads from the 1970s.
2018-12-13 19:29:54 +0000 UTC View PostUnder the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell, 2018)
David Robert Mitchell is not an intuitive filmmaker, but that is no vice in itself. It Follows demonstrated that, if he had a single strong idea, he co...
2018-12-13 16:11:06 +0000 UTC View PostOscar Season Lightning Round 3!
The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Desiree Akhavan, 2018)
I should begin by stating for the record, I have not seen Boy Erased. N...
2018-12-13 11:51:46 +0000 UTC View PostThe Wild Boys (Bertrand Mandico, 2017)
The "wild boys" are women.
(That's a "spoiler," but it's clear.)
Mandico plays with gender but
it's retrograde, I fear.
Wild boys join a...
2018-12-12 17:05:43 +0000 UTC View PostBlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018)
Aside from its other virtues, Spike Lee's newest film serves as a scathing antidote to everything that is wrong, morally and intellectually, with Green Book...
2018-12-12 13:20:16 +0000 UTC View PostVice (Adam McKay, 2018)
DO NOT READ UNTIL CHRISTMAS!
Maybe Adam McKay is the Brechtian filmmaker we deserve. I found myself gritting my teeth through Vice 2018-12-12 02:54:58 +0000 UTC View Post
The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 1975/2018)
Could this possibly be more interesting than an officially "completed" version by Welles? It's hard to say exactly how close this is to the director's vision, a...
2018-12-12 02:34:45 +0000 UTC View PostThe Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)
Another film, like Happy as Lazzaro, that I found myself admiring more than liking, although I certainly enjoyed it more from moment to moment. In fact...
2018-12-10 22:51:58 +0000 UTC View PostTreasure Island (Guillaume Brac, 2018)
I discovered French director Guillaume Brac several years ago when two very different cinephiles, director Dan Sallitt and producer / actress Roxane Mesquida, r...
2018-12-10 04:02:08 +0000 UTC View PostHappy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher, 2018)
Happy as Lazzaro shares some clear stylistic affinities with Rohrwacher's previous film The Wonders, which I found irksome and affected. I had...
2018-12-10 03:47:01 +0000 UTC View PostNow, At Last (Ben Rivers, 2018)
British experimentalist Ben Rivers has produced some highly unusual films in his career, but nothing in his filmography prepared me for Now, At Last<...
2018-12-06 23:32:39 +0000 UTC View PostBlack Mother (Khalik Allah, 2018)
One of the major surprises of 2015 was Field Niggas, Khalik Allah's gorgeous, haunting experimental feature. It was clearly the work of someone who'd c...
2018-12-06 23:18:43 +0000 UTC View PostWhite Heart (Daniel Barnett, 1975)
One of those canonical titles that has been out of circulation for years, Daniel Barnett's White Heart is a major achievement. Experimental film histor...
2018-12-03 23:12:15 +0000 UTC View PostDonbass (Sergei Loznitsa, 2018)
When the lineup was announced for the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, there were some of us who were wondering why Sergei Loznitsa's newest fiction feature Donba...
2018-12-02 15:39:03 +0000 UTC View PostOscar Season Lightning Round 2!
Green Book (Peter Farrelly, 2018)
There they are, our two mismatched heroes, enjoying a drink and potty break at a roadside Stuckey's som...
2018-12-02 15:08:47 +0000 UTC View PostOscar Season Lightning Round!
As you know, I try to provide you with High-Quality Web Content (SM) on a regular basis. But it's that time of year, when the mad dash to the finish line of 201...
2018-12-02 14:24:28 +0000 UTC View PostJinpa (Pema Tseden, 2018)
A moderately upbeat, even Jarmuschian fable from Tibet's leading auteur, Jinpa takes its name from its lead actor, who also starred in Tseden's previou...
2018-11-25 17:50:09 +0000 UTC View PostCan You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller, 2018)
"Well," as my lovely wife Jen put it, "they can't all be F For Fake." Quite right. There's nothing particularly wrong with Can You Ever Forgive Me?...
2018-11-25 15:10:19 +0000 UTC View PostA Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper, 2018) / The Great Willow Maclay
I don't have a great deal to say about this film. Overall I was impressed with Cooper's pacing and direction, which struck me as undergirded by a general respec...
2018-11-24 03:14:46 +0000 UTC View PostThe Little Stranger (Lenny Abrahamson, 2018)
[NOTE: This post contains spoilers]
Certainly one of the year's most mismarketed films, The Little Stranger came across in its a...
2018-11-24 02:48:42 +0000 UTC View PostThe Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2018)
When I first attempted to sum up the latest film by the Coen Brothers, my overall takeaway (with which I am no longer satisfied) was that the world is filled wi...
2018-11-21 17:57:26 +0000 UTC View PostDon't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot (Gus Van Sant, 2018)
A curious film. As I watched, I found myself wondering what my friends who are in Disability Studies would make of it, since in certain respects this strikes me...
2018-11-19 22:30:29 +0000 UTC View PostThey Shall Not Grow Old (Peter Jackson, 2018)
Despite all the hype, Jackson's colorization of the footage from the Great War is really the least impressive thing about this very moving documentary. Yes, it ...
2018-11-18 05:53:44 +0000 UTC View PostPedestrian At Best (Part Three: The Quickening)
Okay, this one's for real.
I realized that there were some anomalies in the previous lists. For one thing, I was primarily going by my iTunes playlists. H...
2018-11-15 05:07:11 +0000 UTC View PostPedestrian At Best (Part Two)
Well, for some reason, making selections from N-Z was not nearly as difficult as A-M was. So I went ahead and did it. They are not any better, mind you. One not...
2018-11-13 01:46:09 +0000 UTC View Post