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Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Three

Dan Seeger

Coherence takes place almost entirely within a single house, and yet it truly resides in an incredibly expansive existence. A group of friends gathers for a dinner party. The scene is filled with the sort of easygoing banter that carries with it a complicated shared history, include a few passing hints of resentments and conflicts previously addressed and bypassed but not quite forgiven. In the midst of all this chatter arises curious, largely unworried conversation about news stories about a comet passing through the night sky. Then the power goes out. From there, James Ward Byrkit’s feature directorial debut spins off … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Three

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Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Four

Dan Seeger

Snowpiercer achieves remarkable narrative freedom precisely because director Bong Joon-ho believes in sticking to the rules. Other films that strive for thrill ride status, either in terms of vividly stirred intellect or full-throttled action (Snowpiercer is one of the rare beasts that goes for both), are all too quick to abandon internal logic when it serves the perceived need to set pulses pounding with clockwork regularity. Bong understands the value of setting parameters — maybe your own wonderfully gonzo parameters, but parameters nonetheless — and then honoring them. A movie doesn’t have to be believable to be plausible. It can … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Four

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Your apocalypse was fab for a girl who couldn’t choose between the shower or the bath

Dan Seeger

I’ve been enthusiastic about Jupiter Ascending for quite some time, and that anticipation only ticked upward when the film suffered the ignominy of a postponement from the heart of summer to the dreary days of early February, a scheduling shift announced a mere six weeks before its original release date. That’s because I wasn’t necessarily craving my time in the theater before the latest sci-fi extravaganza from Andy and Lana Wachowski (or as they’re billed in the credits for Jupiter Ascending, simply “The Wachowskis,” like they’ve formed a traveling family band) out of a belief it was going to be good. Given what … Continue reading Your apocalypse was fab for a girl who couldn’t choose between the shower or the bath

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One for Friday: Eggs Over Easy, “Henry Morgan”

Dan Seeger

Among the many targets of my retroactive pop culture grumpiness, classic rock radio is one especially deserving of my ire. There wasn’t a flood of rock ‘n’ roll history available to anyone with an on-ramp to the information superhighway and the diligence to keep following hyperlink spurs until they discovered something wild and different. There were magazines to read, but they could only describe the sound, not share it. Some benefitted from cool older siblings or other local rock aficionados who were happy to pass along some black vinyl wonder with an insistent “Listen to this.” The best bet, though, … Continue reading One for Friday: Eggs Over Easy, “Henry Morgan”

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Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Five

Dan Seeger

One of my favorite modern tropes — or at least one that amuses me a great deal — is the presentation of the male libido’s helpless susceptibility to the overtures of attractive women leading to men constantly strolling right into peril because they believe the sexy women really wants a tryst, when the real end goal is quite different. The apotheosis arrives in Under the Skin, as, say, the sexy spy in a catsuit who clobbers aroused males to swipe government secrets levels up significantly to become an otherworldly seductress able to lure random strangers into an oily pool that … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Five

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Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Six

Dan Seeger

Appropriately enough, Lukas Moodysson’s We Are the Best blasts forward like a great punk song. It’s spirited and loose and free. It smacks of jubilance and a certain willfully amateurish quality. It is utterly enthralling in its committed belief in self, in the notion that anyone can find their purpose by expressing themselves purely and honestly. And of course it’s lifeblood is kicked into motion by an act of rebellion. A pair of thirteen year old girls (Mira Barkhammar and Mira Grosin) start their own punk band, largely so they can reserve the rehearsal room at a local rec center, annoying some older … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Six

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Nine

Dan Seeger

#49 — Woman of the Year (George Stevens, 1942) Woman of the Year came out a mere four years after Katharine Hepburn’s career was at such a low ebb that she was famously included on a list of actors headed “Box Office Poison” that had been compiled by the Independent Theatre Owners of America. That’s especially notable because Woman of the Year was forceful proof of how completely Hepburn had turned around her fortunes. Not only was she now considered among the most bankable stars, her clout was so enormous after shepherding her own comeback vehicle, The Philadelphia Story, to smashing … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Nine

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Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Seven

Dan Seeger

I’ve come to realize how thoroughly Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook has stuck with me by how often my mind slips back to it while watching other movies, specifically those that show, however briefly, a mother in distress due to a domestic meltdown involving offspring. Whether it’s Jane Hawking enduring a household of shrieking children in The Theory of Everything or the frontier misery of The Homesman, I find myself thinking of the beset matriarch, ‘She shouldn’t have opened that Babadook book.’ That’s not simply a case of the film settling in as some kind of cinematic earworm. It speaks to the … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Seven

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From the Archive: Born Yesterday

Dan Seeger

Melanie Griffith was one of the more trying performers during my time as a film reviewer in college. It’s not simply that she wasn’t a very strong actress. She also had the clout, coming off a flare to stardom and an Oscar nomination for 1988’s Working Girl, to get cast in a healthy number of movies that were high-profile enough to land in our little Midwestern town. So unlike some others whose work I found wanting, I couldn’t avoid Griffith through the early nineties. The weariness shows up towards the end of review when I list other recent affronts to … Continue reading From the Archive: Born Yesterday