Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Five
One of my favorite modern tropes — or at least one that amuses me a great deal — is the presentation of the male libido’s helpless susceptibility to the overtures of attractive women leading to men constantly strolling right into peril because they believe the sexy women really wants a tryst, when the real end goal is quite different. The apotheosis arrives in Under the Skin, as, say, the sexy spy in a catsuit who clobbers aroused males to swipe government secrets levels up significantly to become an otherworldly seductress able to lure random strangers into an oily pool that … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Five
Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Six
Appropriately enough, Lukas Moodysson’s We Are the Best blasts forward like a great punk song. It’s spirited and loose and free. It smacks of jubilance and a certain willfully amateurish quality. It is utterly enthralling in its committed belief in self, in the notion that anyone can find their purpose by expressing themselves purely and honestly. And of course it’s lifeblood is kicked into motion by an act of rebellion. A pair of thirteen year old girls (Mira Barkhammar and Mira Grosin) start their own punk band, largely so they can reserve the rehearsal room at a local rec center, annoying some older … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Six
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Nine
#49 — Woman of the Year (George Stevens, 1942) Woman of the Year came out a mere four years after Katharine Hepburn’s career was at such a low ebb that she was famously included on a list of actors headed “Box Office Poison” that had been compiled by the Independent Theatre Owners of America. That’s especially notable because Woman of the Year was forceful proof of how completely Hepburn had turned around her fortunes. Not only was she now considered among the most bankable stars, her clout was so enormous after shepherding her own comeback vehicle, The Philadelphia Story, to smashing … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Nine
Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Seven
I’ve come to realize how thoroughly Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook has stuck with me by how often my mind slips back to it while watching other movies, specifically those that show, however briefly, a mother in distress due to a domestic meltdown involving offspring. Whether it’s Jane Hawking enduring a household of shrieking children in The Theory of Everything or the frontier misery of The Homesman, I find myself thinking of the beset matriarch, ‘She shouldn’t have opened that Babadook book.’ That’s not simply a case of the film settling in as some kind of cinematic earworm. It speaks to the … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Seven
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 82 – 80
82. Oasis, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? In the mid-nineteen-nineties, there was no shortage of music critics who were ready to declare Oasis the next major band, the one that would endure for years and years, delivering one masterpiece after another. This was somewhat driven by the ever-excitable U.K. music press, although authoritative co-signers rushed in from all quarters. Oasis were enormously successful in their homeland, basically from the very beginning (their first single, “Supersonic,” charted in the Top 40 on the British charts, although peaking at a surprisingly modest #31). Songs from their debut album, Definitely Maybe, garnered healthy modern … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 82 – 80
From the Archive: Born Yesterday
Melanie Griffith was one of the more trying performers during my time as a film reviewer in college. It’s not simply that she wasn’t a very strong actress. She also had the clout, coming off a flare to stardom and an Oscar nomination for 1988’s Working Girl, to get cast in a healthy number of movies that were high-profile enough to land in our little Midwestern town. So unlike some others whose work I found wanting, I couldn’t avoid Griffith through the early nineties. The weariness shows up towards the end of review when I list other recent affronts to … Continue reading From the Archive: Born Yesterday
One for Friday: Lily Allen, “Don’t Get Me Wrong”
I believe I’ve used this exact phrasing previously in a One for Friday post, but it’s useful enough to be worth repeating: some days you just need a damn good cover. Even as I acknowledge covers can be cheesy and overly opportunistic, devoid of any evident meaningful connection between the appropriation artist and the original song, I have a level of helplessness when confronted with one. This is especially true when it’s a song for which I have an outsized fondness (like, say, the Pretenders single “Don’t Get Me Wrong”) performed by an artist at at time when they are … Continue reading One for Friday: Lily Allen, “Don’t Get Me Wrong”
Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Eight
The feature debut from writer-director Gillian Robespierre was much more than a single word. Quickly reduced by most of the entertainment press to a work with the primary significance of dealing with the topic of abortion more frankly, more fearlessly, and frankly more honestly than most other films that have cause to incorporate acknowledgement of the fully legal and not especially uncommon medical procedure, Obvious Child was a deeply insightful and beautifully funny creation. As Donna Stern, a low-level stand-up comic and struggling young woman approaching the age when unsettled directionless is no longer charming to herself or others, Jenny Slate works … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Eight
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Fifty
#50 — Mighty Joe Young (Ernest B. Shoedsack, 1949) There was really no pretense to originality with Mighty Joe Young. “Mightier than King Kong,” the trailer shouted, and similarities to the colossal primate who scaled the Empire State Building in the prior decade were more than superficial. Mighty Joe Young director Ernest B. Schoedsack shared that same title on the earlier film. His King Kong co-director, Merian C. Cooper, was a producer on Mighty Joe Young, and Ruth Rose worked on both scripts. While the oversized gorilla named Joe Young is different enough from his predecessor that it’s not reasonable to … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Fifty
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — An Introduction
Well, we can’t stop now, can we? Not when I’ve reached the decade that contains my reflexive answer to the impossible question, “What’s the best movie ever made?” (Don’t expend too much effort on puzzling out the identity of that film. It’s such an obvious, consensus-approved pick that it doesn’t just border on cliche, it resides in the city center.) Roughly six years ago, when I decided I wanted in on the proliferation of countdowns wrapping up a decade’s worth of films as different numeral moved into the third slot on the old year odometer, I genuinely didn’t anticipate the road before … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — An Introduction
Coffee for Two 