Category: Film

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Now Playing: Nocturnal Animals

Dan Seeger

There are many flares of ingenuity in the sophomore directorial effort of Tom Ford, but perhaps the most important and telling is the title he chose. In adapting the 1993 novel Tony and Susan, written by Austin Wright, Ford opted for the title of a work of fiction within the fiction: Nocturnal Animals. Not only is that a far more elegant name to hang on a film, it offers an intriguing insight into the darkness that exist in and around the characters that move across Ford’s meticulous images. The film stars Amy Adams as Susan Morrow, an art gallery director … Continue reading Now Playing: Nocturnal Animals

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Dominik, Howard, Junger, Miller, Wolchok

Dan Seeger

Deadpool (Tim Miller, 2016). And so we’ve reached the point in the superhero era of cinema that allows for a caustically deconstructionist take on the genre to become one of the biggest hits of the year. There might be no better methodology for tracing the chronology of the genre’s takeover than measuring the comparative impact of Mystery Men (a dud in 1999) to Kick-Ass (a solid hit in 2010) to Deadpool (a sensation in 2016). Technically, Ryan Reynolds first played Wade Wilson in the dismal X-Men Origins: Wolverine, release in 2009. Besides the smirking countenance of the actor, that iteration … Continue reading Dominik, Howard, Junger, Miller, Wolchok

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From the Archive: Sleepwalkers and White Men Can’t Jump

Dan Seeger

Here’s another fine example of the strain and struggle I went through to link separate films when I wrote about them for The Pointer, the student newspaper where I attended college.  My only real recollection of this article involves being stopped in the hallway of the Communication Arts Center by a professor who skeptically grilled me on whether or not I’d actually seen Sunset Boulevard. I had. The academic should have given me grief over the ridiculous mixed metaphor in the last paragraph. Writers have long been the undervalued heroes of moviemaking. Films from Sunset Boulevard to last year’s Barton … Continue reading From the Archive: Sleepwalkers and White Men Can’t Jump

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Now Playing: Loving

Dan Seeger

It can be too much of a burden to put on a movie, to insist that it offer a cautionary alarm about the conflicts and risks swarming into modern society, doing so with clarity and firm intent. It is challenging enough to tell a story on screen, especially one based in fact, when the needs of drama and the moral obligation of accuracy can tug on different sleeves, without the pressure of winning a moral argument. And yet that is precisely what certain movies can do. It is not necessarily an obligation, but it is a gift, at least of … Continue reading Now Playing: Loving

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The Art of the Sell: Wes Anderson, “My Life, My Card”

Dan Seeger

These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art.  Wes Anderson is rightly earning a fleet of social media raves for his new Christmas-themed ad for H&M. Thankfully, it’s far better than what he came up with the last time he pointed his camera at Adrien Brody on a train. It also got me thinking about other commercial spots Anderson has directed, including his contribution to the American Express “My Life, My Card” campaign. The meticulous detailing that can swerve towards preciousness can get wearying across … Continue reading The Art of the Sell: Wes Anderson, “My Life, My Card”

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Now Playing: The Edge of Seventeen

Dan Seeger

In The Edge of Seventeen, Hailee Steinfeld plays Nadine Byrd. She’s a high school junior beset by a fairly typical array of problems: family that doesn’t understand her, a small cluster of friends whose loyalty is continually tested, the always baffling pile-up of signals from boys. If the issues aren’t familiar from life, they certainly will tickle the recollection of anyone who’s watched a movie about teen-aged existence, at least those that flowed downstream from the rough seas sailed by Commodore John Hughes. Even as I type that out, becoming approximately the ten million and seventy-seventh person to handily categorize The … Continue reading Now Playing: The Edge of Seventeen

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The Unwatchables: The Beaver

Dan Seeger

There was a time when I was absolutely convinced that Jodie Foster was the future of U.S. cinema. In 1991, she starred in The Silence of the Lambs, giving a riveting performance as Clarice Starling that justly earned her an Academy Award, her second Best Actress win in the span of three years. That same year, she delivered her directorial debut in Little Man Tate, an imperfect but insightful drama about precocious talent that benefited from the sense Foster was drawing on her own experience as a child actor who could somehow slip comfortably between a loopy Disney comedy and … Continue reading The Unwatchables: The Beaver