These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. As we edge towards the final days of this strange movie summer, free of blockbusters and with … Continue reading The Art of the Sell – Star Snacks
Green Mansions (Mel Ferrer, 1959). This film contains one of the most spectacular triumvirates of disastrous casting choices I’ve ever seen in a major Hollywood production. Green Mansions adapts a 1904 novel by William Henry Hudson and follows a headstrong … Continue reading Then Playing — Green Mansions; Claudine; Julieta
#21 — Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016) It has been one of the consistent animating questions in science fiction: What will humanity do when visitors from another planet arrive? The premise is an easy entryway to studies of Cold War dread, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Twenty-One
45 Years (Andrew Haigh, 2015). Andrew Haigh’s wise, serious-minded film is like one of those New Yorker short stories that grows grimmer by the paragraph as it details internalized heartbreak. I typed out that sentence right before my background research … Continue reading Then Playing — 45 Years; Walking and Talking; Losing Ground
Laggies (Lynn Shelton, 2014). There are other films that depict a twenty-something character’s panicked retreat from the looming responsibility of adulthood, but few make the minor insurrection as charmingly pathetic as Laggies. Directed by Lynn Shelton (working from someone else’s … Continue reading Then Playing — Laggies; This Changes Everything; Buck and the Preacher
#22 — Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012) Michael Haneke is not gentle with viewers. The Austrian filmmaker built his formidable reputation with material that dwells, to different degrees, on the significant cruelties human beings exact on one another. The appalling instincts … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Twenty-Two
Bad Education (Cory Finley, 2020). Based on a real incident, as reported in a New York article, Bad Education is a portrait of criminal greed dressed up as glad-handling public duty. Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman) is the superintendent of a … Continue reading Then Playing — Bad Education; The Story of Temple Drake; Rocketman
It Chapter Two (Andy Muschietti, 2019). After his big-screen adaption of Stephen King’s It outperformed any reasonable expectations at the box office, it was pretty much inevitable that director Andy Muschietti would go back to Derry, Maine, the small town … Continue reading Then Playing — It Chapter Two; Sounder; Thoroughbreds
#23 — Inside Llewyn Davis (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, 2013) No other filmmakers thwart their characters’ ambitions and unravel their dreams with quite the same aplomb as Ethan and Joel Coen. The brothers are often lauded for their uncanny … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Twenty-Three
Don’t Think Twice (Mike Birbiglia, 2016). This rueful comedy follows a modestly successful improv group that starts buckling when one member (Keegan-Michael Key) get his big break through being cast on a national television show akin to Saturday Night Live. … Continue reading Then Playing — Don’t Think Twice; Relic; Archive
Coffee for Two 