#24 — Sling Blade (Billy Bob Thornton, 1996) Before he was a tabloid fixture as Angelina Jolie’s second husband, before he was the go-to actor for mildly befuddled raunchy comedy heroes, before he was just another movieland refugee pursuing a … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Twenty-Four
The more fantastical a movie is, the more likely it will be heaped with praise for the vivid realization of its setting. Whether it’s Peter Jackson’s J.R.R. Tolkien adaptations, the Wachowski brothers’ plunge through payphone lines to reach the Matrix, … Continue reading To them ghosts in the train yard, all them ghosts in my drink
The Flight of the Red Balloon (Hsiao-hsien Hou, 2007). Taking its inspiration from the acclaimed 1956 short film by Albert Lamorisse, Hou’s feature is ravishing in its sedate patience. It captures the little struggles in a normal life–the squabbles with a tenant neighbor, the jockeying with family members over needs and expectations, the juggling of responsibilities that comes with being a single parent–with a watchful, concerned eye. He structures scenes so that they play out without an edit. The camera slowly tilts or pans, taking it all in like a languid, quizzical animal. Occasionally, a strangely resolute and ubiquitous red … Continue reading Claudel, Hou, Towne, Truffaut, Truffaut
The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009). The premise is great. Four guys go to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. The next morning they wake up from a blackout drunk with the groom-to-be missing, and they have to reconstruct their crazy night from increasingly absurd clues. It’s like Memento reimagined as a ribald comedy. The execution is another matter. The screenwriting team of Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (who saw this turn into a box office sensation just a few weeks after their handiwork resulted in a dreadful-looking bomb) just pile on incident after incident, getting laughs from jolting the audience … Continue reading Bunuel, Frankenheimer, Phillips, Wright, Wyler
#26 — That Thing You Do! (Tom Hanks, 1996) Innocence without naivete is a wonderful thing, and that’s exactly the tone Tom Hanks strikes with his directorial debut. After a string of major successes at the box office and back-to-back Best … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Twenty-Six
The Last Metro (Francois Truffaut, 1980). One of Truffaut’s last films, The Last Metro is set in a struggling theatre during World War II. The Germans occupy France, causing the acclaimed owner and director of the theatre to hide out in the basement relaying covert suggestions as the troupe upstairs mounts a production that needs to be a success to keep the business afloat. Catherine Deneuve plays his wife and muse, the person trying to keep both him and the theatre safe. Gerard Depardieu plays an actor cast in the latest production, though its his life away from the stage … Continue reading Cummings, Hartley, Lord and Miller, Preminger, Truffaut
Roger Ebert recently asserted that “Pixar is the first studio that is a movie star.” While it’s possible to quibble with that “first” designation–MGM in its glory years comes to mind as a contender for that honor–the celebrity of the … Continue reading It’s that little souvenir of a colourful year which makes me smile inside
Easy Virtue (Stephan Elliott, 2008). Based on a play by Noel Coward, Easy Virtue has all the requisite pieces to help the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert director get his artistic sensibilities back on track after the disastrously bad thriller Eye of the Beholder. The story about an English gent bringing his headstrong new American wife home to meet his snobbish, disapproving family is abundant with basic, effective dramatic conflict, and the source material guarantees that the screenplay will be filled with admirable wit. The finished product is sadly in a perpetual state of overexertion, everything ratcheted up to a … Continue reading Bunuel, Elliott, Gast, Hill, Weide
#27 — Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) Politics is a circus. It’s a bizarre mix of showmanship and exaggerated danger with every effort made to prop up the most artificial spectacles as if they’re the realest things in the world. It’s populated by people with outsized personalities projecting ingratiating joy, but there always seems to be a lurking hint of menace about them. It is controlled lunacy. About the only place the comparison breaks down is when P.T. Barnum’s famous evaluation of the susceptibility of the audience is invoked. A sucker born every minute? In politics, that seems a drastic … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Twenty-Seven
I admire Nicole Holofcener’s consistency. I don’t mean that every one of her efforts is uniformly strong, nor does she tread the same ground the same time out. Instead, Holofcener operates with a certainty of vision, a commitment to using … Continue reading Now’s the time that we need to share so find yourself, we’re on our way back home
Coffee for Two 