These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. I take it as a cunning affront on the part of the British that they chose to … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — “A Hard Day’s Night” trailer
For my eleventh birthday, all I wanted was a Carl Reiner movie. A little more than a year after the release of The Jerk, Reiner’s sixth film as a director and his first of four straight starring Steve Martin, the … Continue reading Carl Reiner, 1922-2020
Rethinking the Film Canon by Rich Juzwiak Earlier this year, I was listening to the Little Gold Men podcast as they discussed the newly announced Academy Award nominations. As they mostly expressed relief about the small signs of voters looking beyond … Continue reading Outside Reading — Canon Fodder edition
#28 — Snowpiercer (Bong Joon Ho, 2013) Most of the films of director Bong Joon Ho have been wholly original works, suffused with inspiration drawn from serious study of film, perhaps, but springing start to finish from his whirring brain. … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Twenty-Eight
Ashes and Embers (Haile Gerima, 1982). Made around forty years ago, Haile Gerima’s experimental drama opens with Black men driving in a city who get pulled over police officers that immediately escalate the situation, presuming guilt as a default for … Continue reading Then Playing — Ashes and Embers; Brewster McCloud; A Star is Born
#29 — American Hustle (David O. Russell, 2013) Rife with absurdity and energized by misguided bravado and crass capitalistic scheming, David O. Russell’s darkly comic rendering of the FBI’s Abscam sting operation would feel off if it didn’t have “American” … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Twenty-Nine
If there’s one thing that’s absolutely certain about a project that was developed by Oliver Stone and then given to Spike Lee to rework, it’s that the resulting film is not going to lack for ideas or ambition. Da 5 … Continue reading Now Playing — Da 5 Bloods
#30 — The Farewell (Lulu Wang, 2019) The best movies sit and resonate with a viewer, as if taking up permanent residence in the soul. Even as I write that, I understand the sentimental is almost unbearably syrupy, instilling in … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Thirty
The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961). A horror movie that favors spooky atmosphere over jolting shocks, The Innocents is adapted from the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw. Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) takes a position as a governess at … Continue reading Then Playing — The Innocents; Marshall; Things to Come
America, This is Your Chance by Michelle Alexander Well, this is the article I’ve been waiting for. There are few people more qualified to comment on this particular moment in U.S. history than Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim … Continue reading Outside Reading — The Fire This Time edition
Coffee for Two 