#45 — WarGames (John Badham, 1983) I completely understand that a multitude of factors are weighed when determining the release dates of films. The timing of their respective arrivals on on screens nationwide only has so much to do with the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Forty-Five
I’m not sure if there was ever a time when the general rule of thumb with sequels didn’t mandate adjusting expectations downward in rough accordance with the increasing number of installments. Even so, as the franchise mentality has almost entirely … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2010 — Number Five
An endlessly spinning top makes for about as fine a metaphor as could be cooked up for Christopher Nolan’s wildly imaginative, audaciously entertaining film about transforming the human subconscious into a playground for all manner of skulduggery. Inception is a … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2010 — Number Six
48. F Machine, Here Comes the 21st Century That performer that goes by the moniker Simon F was part of the mid-eighties band Interferon, which had a minor success or two before parting ways. He proceeded to release a couple … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 48 and 47
When writing about the most impressive movies, it’s always tempting to to ascribe levels of nobility and import that may not actually be present. The impact of a movie is shaped by the feelings it stirs up, after all, and … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2010 — Number Seven
A couple weeks ago, I posted the 100th One for Friday entry. It came and went without me noticing, even though I tend to be hopelessly geeky about such things. With so many of these weekly wallows in sonic nostalgia, I can easily lose track of which songs I’ve already celebrated with a few hundred typed words. A few weeks ago, I even broke down and worked up a spreadsheet to make sure I don’t repeatedly indulge in the same tired story about, say, a a crazy album cover being discussed on air during a year-end countdown show. Turns out, … Continue reading One for Friday: The Jack Rubies, “Be With You”
One of the things I like about The Fighter is the plainness of its title. The lack of adornment is nicely representative of the straightforwardness of its storytelling, the directness of its performances and the confident ease of the directing. … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2010 — Number Eight
A dead owl half-buried in snow and squalid apartments and scarily lifeless strip clubs and forbidden, secret love and a beach littered with corpses and smokestacks billowing poison into the sky and bipolar disorder and melted ice cream and a … Continue reading They think the future’s bright as halogen, we know it’s pretty bleak
Take any minute or two of Lesley Manville’s performance in Another Year and strip it of all context. Even in total isolation, it would be immediately recognizable as a character from a Mike Leigh film. She exhibits a haggardness so … Continue reading All this, but no surprises for this year’s girl
Despite the mad rush to anoint the film a staggering excavation of a generation transformed and defined by a different type of interconnectivity than any that’s come before–a charge seemingly led by film critics and others with only the most … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2010 — Number Nine
