Continuing my trek through the films I wrote about for the episode of The Reel Thing that recapped the best and worst films of 1992, we come to the #6 entry on my list. The directorial debut of Tim Robbins … Continue reading From the Archive: Bob Roberts
With all due respect to the enjoyable spectacle from the end of the calendar year that put more eyeballs on Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson than ever before, Ex Machina is 2015 science fiction film featuring the two actors that approaches greatness. The directorial debut of Alex Garland, the film casts Gleeson as a programmer drone at a multinational tech corporation who gets selected for an exclusive trip to the home workshop of the company’s CEO (Isaac) with the promise of getting an early glimpse at the latest innovations. The breakthrough device is a robot dubbed Ava (Alicia Vikander), supposedly built … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2015 — Number Ten
There were a handful of trends that cropped up in the various year-end evaluations of the pinnacles of pop culture from the prior twelve months, but none more than furrowed-brow considerations of whether or not we are truly in an … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2015 — An Introduction
As you can see, getting to my yearly top ten list a little later that most has been a longtime problem. Back when the radio movie review program was a going concern, the program went on hiatus during the college’s winter break. Upon our return, we reintroduced ourselves with our respective top ten lists of the prior film year, which could be a challenge even at this late date, since there were plenty of Oscar hopefuls still dragging their feet when it came to claiming a screen in our humble Midwestern town (the nominations announcement and the ceremony itself both … Continue reading From the Archive: Reservoir Dogs
Hey, as long as the Academy keeps delivering these melanin-challenged rosters of acting nominees, I’m going to keep drawing from “A Whiter Shade of Pale” to headline my reaction posts. I’ll concede that this is something of a case of industry opportunity limiting the viable contenders, but Idris Elba’s performance in Beasts of No Nation had a place in nearly every set of precursor nominations and Michael B. Jordan deserves at least as much consideration for his work in Creed as Sylvester Stallone. It turns out Academy voters were as forgetful about the black artists’ contributions to the film as Stallone was … Continue reading We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor
It is probably my own fault, believing on the scantest of evidence that director Alejandro González Iñárritu had found a new avenue for his artistic expression. As problematic as Birdman might be as the reigning Academy Award winner for Best Picture, particularly over Richard Linklater’s remarkable Boyhood, it signaled a useful shift in the filmmaker’s blindingly self-satisfied march through ever-mounting misery. The film still trafficked in overt nihilism, but couching it in the wryest comedy gave it just enough of a tinge of enlightenment to make it devilishly engaging rather than redundantly soul-deadening. If The Revenant is an accurate example … Continue reading Now Playing: The Revenant
In this era of Caitlyn Jenner and loads of respectful awards attention paid to the Amazon series Transparent, it’s tempting to look at the tepid, staid The Danish Girl as sadly behind the times in its depiction of an individual coming to terms with their true self. Then Ricky Gervais returns to the Golden Globes hosting gig with a slew of jokes that utilize cheap, hateful mockery of transgendered individuals as punchlines, the least offensive of which is the dig at Jenner which has stirred the most ire. (The casual derision towards Jeffrey Tambor’s work in Transparent, with Gervais, for … Continue reading Now Playing: The Danish Girl and Joy
This doubled-up review was written for The Pointer, the weekly student newspaper at UW-Steven Point, where I secured my undergraduate degree. I tended to write about two films per week, especially since it was so rare the Central Wisconsin theaters provided really interesting titles while school was in session. Sometimes, I strained a bit to find a way to link the films in the obligatory introduction. This isn’t exactly one of the stronger efforts, I’ll admit. February releases provided their own set of challenges. It’s hard to fault a movie for having ambition. As dull sequels, idiotic comedies, and one-note … Continue reading From the Archive: Shining Through and Medicine Man
Ricki and the Flash (Jonathan Demme, 2015). By the last third of the film, it seems clear that Demme’s chief motivation for taking on this project is the opportunity to apply his extensive experience directing concert films to this fictional story of a derelict mother (Meryl Streep) who fronts a bar band. He certainly demonstrates only passing interest in the tepid familial drama in the script, written by Diablo Cody with a equal freedom from her previous dialogue quirks and recognizable humanity. When Streep’s bedraggled singer returns to her former home, responding to a suicide attempt by her daughter (Mamie Gummer), every … Continue reading Broomfield, Demme, Radice, Safdie and Safdie, Truffaut
Chapter One: The Huckster’s Reintroduction To be fair, Quentin Tarantino has never been anything other than transparent about his convictions. He is an unabashed recycler, a self-aggrandizing showman, a virulent jabber jaw. He is a cinematic con artist of the highest order, taking all the influences that swirl in his head, buffeted by the blizzard winds of his grindhouse-soiled psyche, and spilling them out onto the screen with only the barest hint of deeper introspection. Much as he loves the gamesmanship of movie narrative, from the pleasure of imposing subversion onto the inane to the flawed puzzle box of displaced … Continue reading And it’s paid for and I’m so grateful to be nowhere
Coffee for Two 