The following is presented as part of the 5th Annual Supporting Actress Blogathon hosted by StinkyLulu #6 — Patricia Clarkson as “Rachel Solando” in Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010) Sticklers about such things might insist that Patricia Clarkson’s performance in … Continue reading Greatish Performances #6
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988). Almodóvar’s international breakthrough is almost quaint in its kitschy simplicity when held up against the rich, lush films that have sprung from his off-kilter cranium in recent years. It involves a tangled web of romantic and sexual relationships, largely converging in a Spanish apartment that has a convenient batch of sedative-laden gazpacho in the fridge. There evidence of Almodóvar’s sterling eye, especially in the earlier scenes, but it’s mostly an engagingly casual farce, played with a relaxation that feels nicely cultural. Carmen Maura is especially good in the lead … Continue reading Almodóvar, Campion, DeBlois and Sanders, Lumet, Pontecorvo
#50 — Always (Steven Spielberg, 1989) If you want a snapshot of who I was at the age of nineteen, Always is as good a place as any to start. Like a lot of people who grew up during the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Fifty
Yes, I’m really going to do this. When I tracked through my selections for the fifty best films of the the ten year span that began with January 1, 2000, the timing made sense. It aligned with the pending spin of the third digit on the calendar’s odometer and everyone was cooking up lists intended to summarize the entertainment of “the aughts.” When I repeated the exercise with the films of the 1990s, it had its own warped logic (or so I convinced myself) as I was honoring and making a sort of effort to preserve the prior bout of … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — An Introduction
#1 — Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) For me, the moment that best demonstrates the brilliance of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas isn’t one of the most commonly cited. It’s not Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito asking “Funny how?” to Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number One
The most important scene in the Coen brothers’ new adaptation of the Charles Portis novel True Grit occurs early on. Fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross has journeyed to the Old West town where her father was shot and killed to retrieve the … Continue reading What separates me from you? What separates me from you now?
It’s no wonder that The King’s Speech moved to the top of Oscar prognosticators’ lists as soon as it’d been seen. It’s not that it’s good, although it is. It’s that it is packed, from its production company logos to … Continue reading Whatever it was he was about to say, everybody understood everything was gonna change
It’s Complicated (Nancy Meyers, 2009). It’s not, really. It is, however, inane, phony and empty-headed. What’s more, it’s borderline offensive in its complete detachment from the problems that most people experience, positing the height of stress that someone could face is planning a wildly expensive addition to the already sizable house. Some of this could be forgivable if the comedy was funny in the slightest, but there’s a barely a laugh to be found in the strained story that wants so desperately to be farce, but no involved wants to sully their hands with such crass entertainment. Meryl Streep may … Continue reading Gray, Herzog, Meyers, Mulligan, Ritt
#2 — Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998) In Max Fischer’s dreams he can liberate his classmates from the tyranny of homework with some concerted strokes of a piece of a piece of chalk. In the waking world, triumph is a little more elusive. So begins Wes Anderson’s second feature, and, with a burst of ecstatically funny creativity, the life and aspirations of his main character are laid out. As played by Jason Schwartzman, Max believes in his own greatness with only the most simplistic idea as to what that means–the only occupations he considers viable aspirations are senator and diplomat–and he proceeds … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Two
Some films approach greatness by bucking convention. They take a standard narrative apart and rebuild it with mischievous haphazardness, or heap in abstract, abrasive imagery like rubble out of a steam shovel basket. They upend expectations about identity, motivation and … Continue reading I’m in a head spin waiting for that bell to ring
