The defining achievement of Steven Spielberg’s version of West Side Story is that it is inadequate to the point of flat-out inaccuracy to term the film an adaptation or a remake. Yes, the work is taken directly from the enduring … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2021 — Number Eight
In Kimi, the new film from director Steven Soderbergh, Zoë Kravitz plays Angela Childs, a quality control worker for a fledging tech company. Her employer’s main product is a virtual personal assistant device called Kimi, and its distinctive attribute is … Continue reading Now Playing — Kimi
Director Todd Haynes adheres to many of the standard practices of musical documentaries in The Velvet Underground. In tracking the history of the monumental band that toiled in Andy Warhol’s Factory, transformed rock music, and inspired countless descendants who sometimes … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2021 — Number Nine
Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro, 2021). Director Guillermo del Toro brings characteristic visual panache and gleeful excitement over the most lurid doings to this adaptation of a 1946 William Lindsay Gresham novel that was previously brought to the screen not … Continue reading Then Playing — Nightmare Alley; Moonstruck; Greenland
236. INXS, The Swing (1984) INXS headed out for a quick North American tour after making initial preparations to record their fourth studio album. It was to be a critical entry in their catalog because it was following the modest … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #236 to #234
I Am Not Proof of the American Dream by Tara Westover In some quarters, Tara Westover’s runaway bestseller memoir, Educated, made her exemplar of the American ethos that rewards concerted effort no matter the station in life that is a … Continue reading Outside Reading — The Long Legacy of Claiborne Pell edition
Sometimes what I really need is a lush piece of throwback dream pop, tinged with post-punk sensibility and somehow melancholy and triumphal simultaneously. I suspect there is a time when we all need that. That time is February. The band … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Wings of Desire, “Perfect World”
Flee is both an animated film and a documentary. That simple statement of fact is integral to understanding the unique power of Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s film. The story told is that of Amin Nawabi, and he tells it himself. Interviewed … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2021 — Number Ten
Another year passes with the movies simultaneously feeling more distant and yet more accessible than ever before. When I tapped out a similar introductory missive just about a year ago, a whole calendar had been flipped through and tossed in … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2021 — An Introduction
Another dizzying, pandemic-buffeted year for movies leads to another set of largely happy surprises with the Academy Award nominations. The Academy’s efforts to diversify the voting body continue to have interesting, rewarding results. Drive My Car took its flurry of … Continue reading Jane’s Getting Serious — Thoughts on the Oscar Nominations
