This is the way I like to imagine it happened: director Peyton Reed and his collaborators on the 2003 film Down with Love, part pastiche of and part spoof of old Rock Hudson-Doris Day sex comedies, were almost done with … Continue reading One for Friday: Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor, “Here’s To Love”
I regret that I know the work of Mike Nichols primarily — almost entirely — from the movies he made. That’s no slight on his cinematic output. Nichols signed his name to a multitude of classic films, consistently bringing a distinctive sense of style to his efforts, one paradoxically defined most by its tricky invisibility. Nichols didn’t really have a signature, at least not one beyond a crisp mastery of the visual language of film. There was a spacial airiness to his compositions that made the films feel as though they’d been shorn of clutter. He had the efficiency of … Continue reading Mike Nichols, 1931-2014
#5 — Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) A story about the making of Rashomon insists that the actors were regularly asking director Akira Kurosawa to divulge the “official” version of the story they were telling in the film. That likely … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Five
The gimmick built into the construction of Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) has every likelihood of sinking it. The not wholly novel story of a desperate actor (Michael Keaton) mounting a troubled stage production in hopes of reviving … Continue reading Arms getting heavy, exhaustion’s setting in, waves getting bigger, life’s getting thin
This was written shortly after I decided I was going to use my silly online outlet of the moment to take another crack at writing film reviews, essentially doing so after a layoff of over a decade. I think there’s … Continue reading From the Archive: The Prestige
#6 — Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952) A few years back, when the American Film Institute followed their surprisingly successful AFI’S 100 Years 100 Movies special with annual companion lists of increasing insignificance (anybody really care … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Six
#7 — North By Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) It’s probably impossible to pinpoint the first Alfred Hitchcock-designed image I was exposed to, but I know the single shot that stands as the first I really saw. It’s arguably his most … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Seven
While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang, 1956). This noirish drama from director Fritz Lang takes aim at the seediness of the newspapers and the cutthroat competitiveness of those in the media, tiltimng at both with equal vigor. When the newspaper owner’s son (Vincent Price) takes control upon his father’s death, he uses the recent emergence of a serial murdered dubbed “the lipstick killer” to pitch his various reporters and editors against each other in an effort to preserve their jobs or even claim one of the plum new positions available. Lang’s curiosity about the darker instincts that drive people gives … Continue reading Abrahamson, Ford, Lang, Moodysson, Saulnier
This wasn’t the first writing I did for my college’s student newspaper, The Pointer, but I do believe it was the first full-length review I turned in. It’s not that much longer than the most robust pieces written for our radio show, right in the middle of its three-year run when this was published, but I presume I was feeling a little more pressure about the word count, evidenced by me essentially make the same point repeatedly in the last three paragraphs. As is often the case with newspapers, I take no credit nor blame for the headline, which I … Continue reading From the Archive: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
#18 — Kurt Russell as R.J. MacReady in The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) Kurt Russell’s best performances are usually in characters that skew towards the everyman. Though I think some overly celebrate his self-consciously cool, tough guy roles in films … Continue reading Greatish Performances #18
Coffee for Two 