History is not tangible. Despite out attempts to commemorate it with statues and monuments, it’s not a piece of concrete that multitudes can look upon with reasonable assurance that everyone is seeing the same thing. Instead, it’s a collection … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2008 — Number Five
So there’s this guy, right? He dresses up in a costume like a bat–well, it’s more inspired by a bat, I guess–and dives around in these supercool cars and motorcycles and stuff and he beats up criminals. Or perhaps you’re … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2008 — Number Six
#7 I highly doubt that Hollywood power brokers are aggressively examining the oeuvre of Mike Leigh in search of remake fodder. Lucky for all of us, since it’s easy to imagine the cheery monstrosity that would result if Happy-Go-Lucky fell … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2008 — Number Seven
#8 Something that works on the page won’t automatically work on the screen, especially when the original prose tends towards the ruminative. That may explain why the likes of John Updike and Philip Roth are relatively underrepresented on the big … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2008 — Number Eight
#9 Gus Van Sant’s Milk pulls off the gratifying trick of making the fact that its title character is gay simultaneously vitally central and utterly beside the point. Harvey Milk’s mid-seventies rise from San Francisco small businessman to influential political … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2008 — Number Nine
#10 Set deep in a Scandinavian winter, Let the Right One In is a dark movie. Dark material, dark sensibilities and a dark, dark sky that crushes down on the characters with an enveloping, bleak power. The Swedish film focuses on a lonely boy who discovers a strange new friend in his apartment complex. It is a girl who appears to be about his age, but is actually ageless. She’s initially curious but standoffish, declaring the impossibility of friendship between the two. In a way, she’s right. What emerges feels like more than friendship, certainly more than the sort of … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2008 — Number Ten
When you’re devoted to evaluating film from a geographic locale that’s well-distant from any established centers of cinema, the timing of a year-end top ten list and corresponding ruminations is fairly detached from the actual calendar. It’s more like calling time of death in the back of the ambulance. You work and work, but eventually you just know it’s time. It’s time. To be completely accurate, my decision-making is impacted by the timing of Hollywood’s annual company picnic and trophy ceremony. As has been the case the past three years, I’d like to have the countdown wrapped up before the … Continue reading I’m telling you I caught the sun creeping up behind my shoulder
For many, the announcement that Ron Howard would be directing the film version of Peter Morgan’s acclaimed play Frost/Nixon caused dismay. It was another example of a Hollywood hack being handed a prestige project with ruination of the work a … Continue reading They’ll never rehabilitate that mother, no way
It’s hard to fathom an odder milieu for an Oscar-nominated film than the world of professional wrestling, particularly the seedy version of it that appears in Darren Aronofsky’s new film, The Wrestler. But then, it’s equally hard to find any … Continue reading Give your heart to somebody soon right away, right away
Some time back, I noodled around with a comparative theory about the stylistic methodologies adopted by members of the small, influential group of acclaimed British theater directors who started working in film during the nineties. These are the sorts of … Continue reading Well, it would’ve been, could’ve been worse than you would ever know
Coffee for Two 