The Dungeons & Dragons Players of Death Row by Keri Blakinger Keri Blakinger delivers beautiful, insightful reporting in this story about death row inmates who set some level of escape from their often inhumane circumstances by retreating into the fantastical … Continue reading Outside Reading — The Legend of Arthaxx d’Cannith edition
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. By the middle of the twenty-tens, I had mostly stopped paying attention to movie posters. This was … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — Moonlight movie poster
The Great Buster: A Celebration (Peter Bogdanovich, 2018). Rarely has a director been more in their element than Peter Bogdanovich is with this documentary survey of the life and career of Buster Keaton. The film features the requisite interviews with … Continue reading Now Playing — The Great Buster: A Celebration; X Y & ZEE; A Love Song
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. A characteristically dandy essay in today’s edition of The Reveal reminded me that one of my favorite … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — Red Eye trailer
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (Rob Garver, 2018).This documentary traces the life and career of one of the most formidable film critics to ever amass column inches. From her perch at The New Yorker, Pauline Kael helped … Continue reading Then Playing — What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael; 27 Missing Kisses; Dial 1119
Greta Gerwig on the Blockbuster ‘Barbie’ Opening (and How She Got Away With It) by Kyle Buchanan This is a fairly straightforward interview with Greta Gerwig, conducted after her latest feature, Barbie, officially blew past all expectations for its critical … Continue reading Outside Reading — She’s Having the Best Day edition
There are few better examples of damning with faint praise than to note that Barbie, the new comedy directed by Greta Gerwig, is better than it has any right to be. It’s true, though. In a cinematic age where it’s … Continue reading Now Playing — Barbie
Until Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a three-hour movie that I would describe as moving at a breakneck speed. For a large portion of its running time, that was my main impression of this biopic of … Continue reading Now Playing — Oppenheimer
It’s the exposition scenes that really tip off director Christopher McQuarrie’s commendable embrace of the inherent ridiculousness of this screen franchise that he’s basically made into his life’s work. Any time that latest Mission: Impossible circles around to another explanation … Continue reading Now Playing — Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. Among the overabundance of … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Ben Stiller as Tom Crooze
