#48 — Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017) Especially as they scale up, movies are monumentally difficult to make. Relying on a vast team of specialized collaborators practically guarantees that a long process will be beset by unfortunate compromises and the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Forty-Eight
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. I think it’s possible … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Steve Martin, “Grandmother’s Song”
#49 — Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011) What happens when a cinematic provocateur turns their attention to the inner turmoil of a person? When the instinct to rattle the audience with a bleak consideration of the futility of existence manifests … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Forty-Nine
Bombshell (Jay Roach, 2019). I assume there is noble intent behind the presence last year of two major productions dramatizing the toxic, misogynistic work environment at Fox News. I cant’ speak to the Showtime limited series that covered the same … Continue reading Then Playing — Bombshell; Harriet; Pain and Glory
564. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, O.M.D. (1981) Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark were very busy in 1980. Starting as a duo comprised of bassist Andy McCluskey and keyboard player Paul Humphreys, the band released their first two full-length studio … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #564 to #561
The Original Renegade by Taylor Lorenz There’s a long, miserable history of pop culture appropriation that swipes innovations from their creators to earn riches for performers more immediately palatable to the masses. Digital interconnectivity has only turbo-boosted that process as … Continue reading Outside Reading — The Jalaiah Harmon School of Dance edition
Much as I try to avoid getting overly mired in nostalgia for the music of my youth, there are few sonic offerings that will set my heart aflutter quite as surely as modern indie pop that adopts the slick, sauntering … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Moaning, “Fall in Love”
#50 — Mission: Impossible — Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018) In a cinematic era absolutely overrun with superheroes, how can a more conventional action movie titan keep up? Fictional demigods streak across the sky, routinely patching up the very fabric of … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Fifty
Right around ten years ago, I gave myself an ambitious but manageable task. In response to the torrent of lists tallying up the best films from the ten-year span that ended when 2009 gave way to 2010, I took my … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — An Introduction
Officially, the new film featuring characters culled from DC Comics is called simply Birds of Prey. After a disappointing opening weekend at the box office, several theater chains have conspicuously revised their marquees and websites to affix the the name … Continue reading Now Playing — Birds of Prey
