By all appearance, Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) are a couple cruising to a life of aggressively grabbed bliss. Freshly engaged, they’re intensely into each other and both feeling like they’re on the fast track at the hedge … Continue reading Now Playing — Fair Play
Bottoms (Emma Seligman, 2023). In a manner that recalls the structural alchemy of her ingenious feature directorial debut, Shiva Baby, which took an uncomfortable experience at a mournful gathering and rendered it with the white-knuckle intensity of the greatest cinematic … Continue reading Then Playing — Bottoms; The Window; Pushover
Fall (Scott Mann, 2022). The premise of Fall is so perfectly suited for a feat of inventive B-movie storytelling that its relatively drab execution proves doubly disappointing. Working from a script he co-wrote (with Jonathan Frank), director Scott Mann brings … Continue reading Then Playing — Fall; Air; The Mighty Quinn
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. When I wrote about Naked, the final Talking Heads studio album, for the gargantuan countdown project that’s … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — Stop Making Sense rerelease trailer
The Unforgiven (John Huston, 1960). Adapted from a 1957 novel by Alan Le May, The Unforgiven settles in with the Zachary family, Texas ranchers whose status in their frontier community is set into turmoil when a mysterious stranger (Joseph Wiseman) … Continue reading Then Playing — The Unforgiven; Radio Unnamable; Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
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
