The worst thing to emerge from the success of the 2009 movie The Hangover is the misconception that Todd Phillips makes good movies. Before that, the matter seemed to be fully settled, the opposite conclusion largely agreed upon across the … Continue reading The Unwatchables: Due Date
#15 — Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme, 1980) Part of the appeal of subscribing to auteur theory is the sense of extra connectedness to the directors with the strongest cinematic presence. It’s easy to feel like watching a film is akin to getting concerted insight into worldviews, spiritual philosophies and political preferences. The collected work becomes a backward version of a Rorschach test, with very specific material being transformed by the viewer into something nebulous enough to project suppositions onto. While I realize the inherent fallibility of such a view, I also can’t help but fall for it when it … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Fifteen
Ah, here’s Spectrum Check, back at it’s regularly scheduled time. So the first piece I had go up this week happened as a direct result of the intervention of my friend, a fabulous babe who a generation of Madison music fans know as Casino Queen. Somewhere around the midpoint of my ongoing countdown of the best films of the nineteen-eighties, she emailed me with the gentle but firm assertion that our friendship might be in jeopardy if the 1981 cinematic extravaganza The Great Muppet Caper wasn’t included somewhere on the list. I sheepishly informed her that it indeed would not … Continue reading Spectrum Check
Sheesh. I just realized that this didn’t post on Saturday as I intended. I’m inclined to pile this into this weekend’s Spectrum post, but I’ve actually got a lot of background to add to the things I wrote this week. On top of that all, I don’t think I’m going to have time to finish my intended post for today, so…that’s that. Here a bonus, delayed midweek Spectrum Check. There was a stretch in the early-nineties when it felt like crossover foreign cinema–to the degree that foreign cinema ever truly crossed over to broader audiences–was defined by crusty old-timers bonding … Continue reading Spectrum Check
#16 — The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987) The Last Emperor almost certainly won the Best Picture Oscar because of its bigness. Its impressive scope, in terms of individual scenes bustling with extras and spectacular feats of art direction as … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Sixteen
One of the things I find most entertaining about Steven Soderbergh’s directorial career is the way so many of his films seem like they had their genesis as some sort of bar bet. “Bet you can’t make a big, glossy, … Continue reading A different disease in another translation, though you don’t understand the familiar sensation
#17 — This is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984) Is there a better compliment for a satirical film than the adoring embrace of those who serve as the target of the comedy? From practically the moment of its release, This is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner’s mock documentary about a ragged British heavy metal band and their concert tour marked by mounting indignities, was a favorite of the musicians who could reasonably consider themselves the real-world equivalents of the characters in the film. It may not quite have been required viewing on tour buses, but there were always plenty of people toiling … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Seventeen
This week, my Spectrum movie review duties absolutely gave me the chance to see a fine film that I probably wouldn’t have gotten to otherwise. I’m pleased as can be that John Sayles still gets to make movies, and clearly make them in exactly the fashion he pleases, but it’s been all too easy to let his most recent offerings go by as inconsequential. Beyond the growing unlikelihood that he’ll ever again make a film that crosses over enough to become necessary viewing for those who want to engage in spirited debates over the current state of cinema, there’s a … Continue reading Spectrum Check
#18 — E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982) The nineteen-eighties belonged to Steven Spielberg. Even those who react to the filmmaker’s name with an instinctual would surely concede that point. Considering he closed the seventies with 1941, a film that … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Eighteen
I’ve been running behind on my music reviews and the studios have been running behind on getting me screeners, so I only had one piece up at Spectrum Culture this week. It was my second contribution to our Best Living Directors series, this time offering an evaluation of Pedro Almodóvar. I wasn’t part of the selection process for our list, but I’m very pleased with it. For one thing, there’s good diversity and a strong sense of history to it. These sorts of tallies are so often of the moment and crassly devoted assembled choices that are perceived as ever … Continue reading Spectrum Check
Coffee for Two 