When I joined the writing staff at Spectrum Culture, I was probably most looking forward to having access to the sorts of small, independent films that either took months to get to my humble mountain town or bypassed our local … Continue reading Spectrum Check
In some quarters, the effectiveness of 12 Years a Slave was attributed to the emotional distance director Steve McQueen had from the specter of American slavery, since he was born and raised in England. That theory ignores McQueen’s own record … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2013 — Number Eight
#49 — The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951) Flying saucers raced across the movie screen with impunity in the early nineteen-fifties. In the first two years alone, there was Flying Disc Man from Mars, The Flying Saucer, The Man from Planet X and The Thing from Another World. That doesn’t even take into account all the movies dependent on more conventional rockets to get eager youngsters into the mayhem of their weekend matinees. Most of these sci-fi offerings (and “sci-fi” seems far more appropriate a term than “science fiction” in this instance) show off their dashed-off, cash-in … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Nine
One of the things I appreciated most from the very beginning with Spectrum Culture was the site’s editorial mandate to reserve five-star reviews–the top of our rating system–for only the very best of the best. There was even a process … Continue reading Spectrum Check
The kismet of cinematic artistry is elusive, which unfortunately alleviates the unfair sense of disappointment when the most creative individuals struggle through dry spells. By now, it’s understood that Woody Allen is too prolific (and too unconcerned with anything other … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2013 — Number Nine
#50 — Lady and the Tramp (Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske, 1955) Everything I know about romance I learned from Lady and the Tramp. I’m not sure when I first saw it. Maybe it was during its 1980 … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Fifty
And so our extended exercise in chronological backtracking through list-making and backward counting reaches the nineteen-fifties, which is the first decade of film covered that I didn’t come too with a clear vision of it. I had firsthand experience with the aughts, the nineties, and the eighties. As for the seventies and sixties, they loomed large in my understanding of cinema history, thanks to defining revolutions in American and French film. What’s more, the fifties don’t have quite the same automatic allure as the forties, which I associate with my beloved film noir, or the thirties, which virtually percolated with … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — An Introduction
Director Paul Greengrass is great at the particulars of a film’s story. That’s what made United 93 comes across a model of titanic restraint when it arrived, its keen attention to the simplest details of people reacting to terrible turns of history providing an emotional poignancy that Hollywood script speechifying could never muster. Even his contributions to the Bourne series are at their best when tightly focused on the physical mechanics of the scenes. And that’s what gives Captain Phillips its bracing immediacy. Based on actual events that took place in 2009, the film follows the hijacking of a cargo … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2013 — Number Ten
One of the great disadvantages of plying an amateur film critic trade is that the bevy of opportunities to see the best cinematic offerings of any given year–the major film festivals, the pile-up of fourth quarter press screenings designed to dazzle just in time for various associations’ awards–are denied me, a situation further compounded by living in the hinterlands, well away from the qualifying runs of films in the big cities. So when the critical community is rising up to breathlessly proclaim a movie year to be especially good, the sentiment can seem a little off to me. Sure, I … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2013 — An Introduction
Before he started directing feature films, Spike Jonze had a deserved reputation a master crafter of wildly entertaining and even innovative music videos. However, I think his best single piece of work away from the big screen is clear: the … Continue reading I wouldn’t be me if she wasn’t her
Coffee for Two 