Category: Film

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Blitz, Miller, Newman, Rudolph, Thurman

Dan Seeger

Lucky (Jeffrey Blitz, 2010). After a middling sidetrack into fiction filmmaking, Blitz returns to the sort of quirky documentary that first earned him attention. Lucky is about lottery winners. Blitz follows the trajectories of several different individuals that became instant millionaires when a few kinetic ping pong balls bounced their way. While some of the asides are good, especially those that consider the incredible unlikelihood of actually striking it rich this way, Blitz struggles to find a clear narrative to give the film some structure and cohesion. It winds up instead as a smattering of human interest studios. Some are … Continue reading Blitz, Miller, Newman, Rudolph, Thurman

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Demme, Frears, Hooper, Lee, Wang

Dan Seeger

Swimming to Cambodia (Jonathan Demme, 1987). Jonathan Demme may not have been the best filmmaker of the nineteen-eighties, but I think there’s an argument to be made that he was the most interesting. This film is a good illustration of that point. It’s a film version of one of Spalding Gray’s monologues, a meandering but always focused act of storytelling that springs from his involvement in the film The Killing Fields. Gray’s approach was simplicity itself, sitting behind a small wooden table with his spiral notebook before him and little more than a couple of maps to help fill out … Continue reading Demme, Frears, Hooper, Lee, Wang

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Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Fifteen

Dan Seeger

#15 — The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997) I should probably start by acknowledging that any film which uses an old issue of the Marvel Comics series The Fantastic Four to illustrate how dysfunction can envelop and cripple a family is playing directly to my soft spot. The idea is introduced via voiceover narration by the character Paul Carver as he sits on a stalled train bound for New Canaan, Connecticut. He goes to school in Manhattan, but it’s Thanksgiving weekend and he’s headed home, a place that’s held by a chill as deep as the one produced by the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Fifteen

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Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended, tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed

Dan Seeger

It takes no time at all for Restrepo to establish itself as a completely different breed of war documentary. The film follows an American platoon that’s been dispatched to Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, an area so fraught with danger that it’s … Continue reading Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended, tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed

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Acker, Cronenberg, Denis, Heckerling, Sturges

Dan Seeger

Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995). I’m prepared to concede that Heckerling’s gum-snap reworking of Jane Austen’s Emma is better than I would have said after seeing it upon its original release. It’s also, despite its reputation, not some glistening pop gem. It’s an agreeable bit of fluff with some charming moments, and a suitably bright performance from Alicia Silverstone, who’s more a beneficiary of shrewd casting than anything. Writer-director Amy Heckerling–here fresh from a couple dippy crowdpleasers about the inner monologues of babies, let’s not forget–is a sloppy, unfocused filmmaker. Just because her attention span may sync up with those of … Continue reading Acker, Cronenberg, Denis, Heckerling, Sturges