Bad Movie Nights have gotten harder to do. There are two elements to this observation. For one, when we started engaging in this diversion in dreck over a decade ago it was relatively easy to pull a night together. Out … Continue reading Would you believe it’s a happening?
Well, today’s news certainly isn’t going to help my woeful record in the annual Oscar nomination prediction contest. (Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”) Continue reading There are maybe ten or twelve things
Trouble the Water (Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, 2008). It would be easy to make a documentary about the devastation Hurricane Katrina brought to New Orleans and the equally disastrous governmental response that is grounded in apoplectic anger, especially since indignation seems to be the default starting point for many current non-fiction filmmakers. Deal and Lessin create something more delicate, more nuanced, more complicated, and, because of these qualities, far more fascinating. The hook of the film’s first half is on-the-scene camcorder footage taken by Ninth Ward resident Kimberly Rivers Roberts as her neighborhood and then her home floods during … Continue reading Oh the movie never ends, it goes on and on and on and on
When making a movie about major cons, it helps to have Ricky Jay‘s involvement, which bestows upon the project a tacit endorsement. And so The Brothers Bloom begins with Jay’s voice, narrating the headlong tale of the titular characters’ boyhood … Continue reading We question everything we see, when someone’s talking there’s nothing to believe
It may be telling that upon returning to Madison for the first extended visit in several years, the very first place I went was a movie theater. To be thorough and accurate, it was the Sundance Cinema, which opened two years ago. I’ve been very curious about this particular venue for a few reasons, led by the fact that it’s been gestating for an awfully long time. We included a news story about plans for a small chain of Sundance movie theaters back on the old radio movie review show, meaning there was open discussion of this at least sixteen … Continue reading I want the strong “M,” erase it and back to The Madison
It doesn’t seem that long since Sam Raimi directed a horror movie, but it has been, going back to Evil Dead 2 in 1987 (that film’s follow-up, Army of Darkness, is a lot of things–comedy, action film, warped gladiator movie–but … Continue reading But they don’t know there can be no show
Get Smart (Peter Segal, 2008). So mechanical that it quickly becomes depressing. This launch of a new film franchise based on the sixties TV spy spoof–it’s nearly impossible think of it in terms of a single film rather than the beginning of an ongoing endeavor–is assembled from repurposed parts and spectrum-spanning cast members designed to make sure there’s at least one person in the credits that appeals to any randomly selected potential moviegoer. Anne Hathaway, playing Agent 99, has one moment that she plays with admirable commitment to honest emotions. I’m assuming that her castmates consulted with her after that … Continue reading B movie, that’s all you are to me
It’s nearly fifteen years since Pixar, the little studio behind a small batch of acclaimed and Oscar-winning computer animated shorts, released the revolutionary Toy Story. It was actually viewed as somewhat risky at the time. The long, expensive process required … Continue reading And she’s learning the spaces she leaves have their own things to say
Atlantic City (Louis Malle, 1980). Malle’s film is about the ways in the which the glimmers of remaining light at the end of the day can lure the most desperate into believing it’s actually the unexpected emergence of a new dawn. Burt Lancaster plays the old-time small-timer at the heart of the film, conveying his forlorn desperation and self-deluding rejuvenation with great delicacy. You can feel the character shift as his opportunities the become the big operator he’s always fancied himself begin to come to pass. But the film is about reality rather than aspirations. Malle keeps it all grounded, … Continue reading Wasting time, dropping lines like “I could get you into movies”
In 1984, a fledgling filmmaker with one feature to his name, an inauspicious low-budget horror sequel, imparted to the world a humble little story a young woman, the time traveler who loved her, and the big, oddly accented robot who … Continue reading Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies and everyone goes
Coffee for Two 