When I arrived at the college radio station where I grew up, I discovered a strange, wonderful, boldly enlivening world. That’s hardly a new observation for me to tap out in this space, but I truly can’t repeat it enough. … Continue reading One for Friday — The Fall, “Big New Prinz”
Director Sean Baker is committed to using his art to give voice to the members of society who are too easily diminished. That’s what he did with the marvelous Tangerine, from 2015, and that’s what he does with The Florida … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2017 — Number Ten
Per tradition, the day after the Oscar nominations are announced is also the day I begin the annual process of counting backwards in celebration of the best films of the prior year. Most other fervent film fans engaged in this … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2017 — An Introduction
Heading into this morning, I was fully prepared to tap out a furious diatribe about the likely distribution of this year’s Academy Awards, the ninetieth go-round of the film industry’s highest honor. Although there are always disappointments for those of … Continue reading The Shape of Upset: Hopeful Thoughts on the Oscar Nominations
It’s probably not one-hundred percent correct to say that Phantom Thread is unmistakably a Paul Thomas Anderson film, but it sure feels right. The new cinematic offering is meticulously crafted, resolutely erudite, psychologically complicated, packed with insightful acting, and careens … Continue reading Now Playing — Phantom Thread
996. Boz Scaggs, Middle Man (1980) “Say, what do you think/ Of gentlemen wearing mink?,” Boz Scaggs croons on “Jojo,” the lead track on and first single from Middle Man. That’s suitably emblematic of the affected prestige and classiness of … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #996 – #993
The nominations for the ninetieth Academy Awards will be announced this coming Tuesday, which I will, by self-set tradition, use as impetus to begin counting down my selections for the ten best films of 2017, six weeks or so after … Continue reading From the Archive — The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
When I started working in commercial radio, it was at a “new rock alternative station.” For the first sixteen weeks I was gainfully employed there, a mere two songs moved through the top spot of the Billboard chart relevant to … Continue reading One for Friday — The Cranberries, “Twenty One”
Payment on Demand (Curtis Bernhardt, 1951). Bette Davis was a tough customer from the very beginning, but as she edged into middle age there was a special pleasure in watching her disdainfully browbeat all those wronged her. In Payment on … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Payment on Demand; The Florida Project; Money Monster
#34 — Mira Sorvino as Dr. Susan Tyler in Mimic (Guillermo del Toro, 1997) It was not, according to entertainment industry conventional wisdom, the right sort of project for a freshly minted Oscar winner. A horror film directed by a … Continue reading Greatish Performances #34
