It’s somewhat fitting that Lake Bell has spent at least a portion of the press tour for her feature directorial debut, In a World…, frankly discussing the the condescending attitude she’s encounter from some quarters. Specifically, Bell talked about the … Continue reading Every time you wake up I hope it’s under a blue sky
I actively tried to avoid the film I reviewed this week at Spectrum Culture. It’s not because I thought it would be bad, but instead I was worried it would be good, which would make it disheartening and grueling. Sure enough, the new documentary about the few remaining physicians who provide late-term abortions kept reminding me or the sorry state of reproductive rights in the country. The film is solid. It’s the oppressive, anti-empathetic, woman-hating culture that’s a mess. I also spared a few sentences for our latest Monthly Mixtape, extolling the virtues of a song of the excellent new … Continue reading Spectrum Check
#13 — 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963) I have an aversion to dreamlike story structures, or even dream sequences in films, largely because they are often done so poorly. Never mind the frequency with which they’re little more than a fake-out, structured to set a character bolting upright in bed over whatever wicked turn just glimpsed in dreamland, an supposedly unnerving headspace depicted with essentially the same tone and approach as every other part of the film, all the better to deke the viewer. The real problem is that the depiction usually doesn’t resemble a dream all that much, instead … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Thirteen
I was kept plenty busy by Spectrum Culture, this week. For one thing, this week was a fairly uncommon instance of me having two films to review instead of one, although that was more a product of a slight tangle with the prior week’s schedule than any ambition on my part. So even though I shouldn’t have been scrambling to get it all in, that’s exactly what happened. I started with a significant disappointment: Lynn Shelton’s new film. I really enjoyed her prior directorial effort, but the new film is a mess, entirely wasting her best cast yet (and sadly … Continue reading Spectrum Check
#14 — Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969) Periodically as I track through these decade-centered countdowns, I feel compelled to offer the reminder that I arrived at the order by combining critical assessments of aesthetic value … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Fourteen
#15 — Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962) From 1956’s The Killing on, every one of Stanley Kubrick’s films was drawn from a novel, many of them the sort of prickly, complicated tomes that are tagged as “unfilmable,” a term the director … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Fifteen
#14 — Rachel McAdams as Lisa Reisert in Red Eye (Wes Craven, 2005) I think one of the marks of a good actor is the determination to treat theoretically trashy material as seriously as anything else that might land on … Continue reading Greatish Performances #14
Not that anyone’s likely to notice without me pointing it out, but I’m going to slightly jumble my usual order in listing off my latest contributions to Spectrum Culture in this weekly slot. For example, I usually position whatever list we’re track through as the last bit, almost as an aside. Instead, I’ll put our latest offering in the ongoing effort to count down the greatest greatest hits albums of all time right up front, if only to immediately note to a good friend of mine that I have now managed to make sure that anyone who chooses to search … Continue reading Spectrum Check
#16 — Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa, 1961) There’s an automatic cachet that comes with celebrating an Akira Kurosawa samurai film, but sometimes the prevailing sense of coolness–whether from the classic nature of the film or the hipsterish reclaiming of primacy … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Sixteen
Pitch Perfect (Jason Moore, 2012). Much as I can understand how this film turned into a stealth hit–it has the musical liveliness of early Glee combined with the knowing spunk of Bring It On–it’s a fairly clumsy endeavor, with strained jokes and haphazard structure that would almost count as daring anti-narrative if it were done intentionally. It’s also one of those films that has absolutely no idea how college works, not just taking liberties for the sake of the storytelling but completely ignoring any attempt to depict its setting in a way that’s at all plausible. It does have Anna … Continue reading Daldry, Eastwood, Moore, Sirk, Soderbergh
Coffee for Two 