At some point, I’m sure it will happen. We’ll assemble one of our Bad Movie Night double features with a film that doesn’t really deserve such a condemnation. It’ll be one of those proudly lurid thrillers that are appealing in … Continue reading Bad Movie Night — The Box/Surrogates
In 2008, a 16mm print of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis was found in Buenos Aires that was significantly longer than any other version that currently exists. When the silent film debuted in Germany in 1927, it ran around two-and-a-half hours. As … Continue reading You could sleep along the way, dream in black and white
#8 — Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995) It can be taken as an indicator of the faultiness of my prognostication skills that I thought Toy Story would never work. I’d seen a couple of the Pixar studio shorts previously, and, while … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Eight
Today is a day I have the pleasure of directing you elsewhere. Continue reading I’m walking a line—just barely enough to be living
Separate Lies (Julian Fellowes, 2005). Following his Oscar win for scripting Robert Altman’s exemplary Gosford Park, Julian Fellowes made his directorial debut with an adaptation of an an old novel by Nigel Balchin. The film focuses of a busy, distracted solicitor whose marriage begins to fray, a situation compounded when the death of a local man in a hit-and-run car accident brings secrets to light and sets everyone reeling into a series of moral compromises. The stuff of high drama is certainly present in abundance in the story, and with Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson and Rupert Everett at the head … Continue reading Almodóvar, Argott, Butterworth, Fellowes, Scorsese
Never Let Me Go is built upon some fairly commonplace themes. Unrequited love, the pains of growing up, the burden carried by the underclass all get an airing in the film. At times it feels very conventional, very plain. It … Continue reading Your footprints still they are in the sand, everything else washed away
#9 — The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992) How long does a gag order on movie secrets last? Years before the term “spoiler alert” was coined and became part of the shared vernacular of moviegoing, Miramax was able to parlay the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Nine
Today, kind friend, I will direct you elsewhere for an example of my word putting together skills. Continue reading Though to say we got much hope, if I am lost it’s only for a little while
Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962). Vladimir Nabokov’s novel was less than ten years old when Stanley Kubrick took a swing at it, so he was working with a best-selling sensation instead of a revered part of the canon. That–combined with the significant detail that he was Stanley Kubrick and he plainly did want he wanted–gives the director great latitude in his adaptation. Nabokov himself is the credited screenwriter, but much of that material was jettisoned by Kubrick on the way to making his own distinct, darkly comic work. James Mason is marvelous as Professor Humbert Humbert, the man who becomes smitten … Continue reading Altman, Clements and Musker, Gordon (and others), Kubrick, Weir
#10 — Dead Man Walking (Tim Robbins, 1995) When a filmmaker is active politically outside of their chosen profession, it can disrupt the balance of their art. That’s especially true when the work in question is itself political in nature. … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Ten
Coffee for Two 