Category: Film

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — An Introduction

Dan Seeger

Well, we can’t stop now, can we? Not when I’ve reached the decade that contains my reflexive answer to the impossible question, “What’s the best movie ever made?” (Don’t expend too much effort on puzzling out the identity of that film. It’s such an obvious, consensus-approved pick that it doesn’t just border on cliche, it resides in the city center.) Roughly six years ago, when I decided I wanted in on the proliferation of countdowns wrapping up a decade’s worth of films as different numeral moved into the third slot on the old year odometer, I genuinely didn’t anticipate the road before … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — An Introduction

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Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Nine

Dan Seeger

With these pieces tracking through the ten best films of the year, I prefer to focus entirely on the positive. The purpose is celebratory, after all. Why digress into minor flaws in individual films or more regrettable earlier efforts by filmmakers? In the case of Birdman, however, I think it will be helpful to elucidate my previous view on the work of director Alejandro González Iñárritu. To be blunt, I detest most of it. 21 Grams, Babel (which nabbed him an Oscar nomination in the Best Achievement in Directing category), and Biutiful are all manipulative exercises that revel in the easy drama … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Nine

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In a town that was like a wishing well, you were cast in like a stone

Dan Seeger

As if often the case when a film is the subject of back-and-forth, hyperbolic, politically-minded screeds, American Sniper is more of a litmus test of the predisposition of the viewer than a film making fiercely argued points on either side of the argument raging in its wake. As best as I can tell, those who decry it as a patriotically-blinded, neocon agitprop are ignoring the film’s undercurrent consideration of the way recurring wartime military service tears apart a life and a psyche. Interestingly enough, the film’s more fervent defenders’ common penchant to paint it as a sterling testament to the unyielding … Continue reading In a town that was like a wishing well, you were cast in like a stone

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You scream and everybody comes a running

Dan Seeger

Shortly after Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz was shot in killed, in 1996, a spokesman announced at a press conference, “John du Pont is a marksman, and he has an arsenal. We don’t know how many guns or how much ammunition he has.” This man pushing sixty, unbelievably wealthy thanks to a family fortune that stretched back generations, had taken one of the weapons from that arsenal and written an ugly, lurid story with the pull of a trigger. Back before stories celebrity freak shows and rampant gun violence seemed to arrive with the regularity of the tides, the twisted tale of … Continue reading You scream and everybody comes a running

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Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Ten

Dan Seeger

There are so many ways for the film version of Wild to go wrong. Adapted from Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir of the same name, Wild is practically designed to lapse into feel-good platitudes cheering the triumph of the human soul over adversity. Following a personal spiral triggered in large part by the death of her beloved mother, Cheryl (played in the film by Reese Witherspoon) set out to hike the thousand-plus miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, despite (or maybe because of) her relative inexperience in such an endeavor. Nick Hornby’s screenplay and Jean-Marc Vallée’s direction admirable cohere to present the monumental … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Ten

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Top Ten Movies of 2014 — An Introduction

Dan Seeger

Though I’d love to weigh in earlier on such matters, the vagaries of being a devoted film fan in a little mountain town, far removed from the urban centers which screen absolutely everything, require a little more patience in getting to a tally of the best films of a calendar year. Even as I buckle down to this task, there are a small slew of films that remain in my blind spot, some by my own error and plenty that haven’t found their way to one of my community’s modest number of screens devoted to artier fare. My tradition holds, … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — An Introduction

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From the Archive: Desperate Hours

Dan Seeger

When I wrote this, I don’t think I realized the film was a remake (and also had earlier iterations as both a novel and a stage play). So, that’s embarrassing, especially when I make the observation that the makings for a good film are present, betraying no evident knowledge that maybe one already existed. I still haven’t seen the 1955 version, directed by William Wyler and starring Humphrey Bogart, so I can’t even weigh in on that now. This was the penultimate feature in the career of Michael Cimino, Academy Award winner for The Deer Hunter and Hollywood cautionary tale … Continue reading From the Archive: Desperate Hours

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I was feeling kinda seasick, but the crowd called out for more

Dan Seeger

As it takes me until late in the day to offer my reactions to this year’s slate of Academy Award nominees, expressing my own sense of disappointment-tilting-towards-outrage over the exclusion of Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo from their respective categories becomes the latest in a long line of echoes. Regardless of where the respective films will land on my own personal top ten list for the year, I think there are three 2014 movies that are true feats of directing: Birdman, Boyhood, and Selma (with The Grand Budapest Hotel very nearly deserving of that designation). That the one of those … Continue reading I was feeling kinda seasick, but the crowd called out for more

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You think you’re alone until you realize you’re in it, now fear is here to stay, love is here for a visit

Dan Seeger

I’ve had a couple different conversations by now which involved listing all the other filmmakers that come to mind when watching Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. The director has already acknowledged a surprising influence from the early nineteen-eighties oeuvre of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker, especially Top Secret!, and the film does often play like one of their outlandish comedies dragged through a heavy Anderson filter in much the same way that Punch Drunk Love is a standard Adam Sandler comedy given the same transformative treatment. There’s also the clearest echo of Robert Altman since Anderson’s Magnolia, if only in a clear resemblance to … Continue reading You think you’re alone until you realize you’re in it, now fear is here to stay, love is here for a visit

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Just try to do your very best, stand up and be counted with all the rest

Dan Seeger

In the immediate aftermath of watching Selma, I was one of those many people who marveled at what a leap forward it was for director Ava DuVernay, considering the perceived degree of difficulty in shifting from small, intimate dramas to a period picture on a wide scale depicting a signal moment in recent American history. Then I revisited my own review for DuVernay’s prior film, Middle of Nowhere, and I realized the resounding inaccuracy of that perception. Yes, the scale of Selma is very different, most evident in the scenes recreating the various attempts at mounting a protest march the fifty … Continue reading Just try to do your very best, stand up and be counted with all the rest