It’s been quite the season for movie stars portraying endurance in the face of overwhelming odds while operating in isolation. While premieres and the resulting opening chatter took place earlier, across successive weekends Sandra Bullock tumbled through space and Tom … Continue reading Odds and ends, odds and ends, lost time is not found again
As has been widely reported, 12 Years a Slave is difficult to watch. That’s by design, of course, but it’s not simply a dutiful willingness to meet the scourge of American slavery at the only place any creator of conscience … Continue reading I wish you could know what it means to be me, then you’d see and agree that every man should be free
I had a nicely balanced week at Spectrum Culture: one film review, one album review. First I reviewed the new album from Minor Alps, a duo comprised of Juliana Hatfield and Matthew Caws, the latter best known as the leader of Nada Surf. His involvement piqued my interest, though, because of his preceding tenure with the Cost of Living. And thus my quest to cite obscure bands from my college radio days in Spectrum reviews marks another tally. On the film side, I wrote about a new documentary tracing the genesis, production and influence of George A. Romero’s The Night … Continue reading Spectrum Check
Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic (Marina Zenovich, 2013). Richard Pryor had a life that was singularly amazing (deeply troubled childhood, an impact on the art of stand-up comedy like no other, and a personal life fraught with peril and bad decisions), so much so that it seems almost impossible to contain it within a single film. He couldn’t do it with the thinly fictionalized Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling, and Marina Zenovich–inadvertently, no doubt–does her level best to prove that the documentary feature format similarly has no hope of containing the man’s unbalanced magnificence. She clicks through the … Continue reading Ozu, Polley, Sullivan, Tourneur, Zenovich
Though I was otherwise up to my Adam’s apple in cleaning, painting and other coordination involving a distant house, I still had a couple contributions go up this week at Spectrum Culture. First, I had a new film review, covering a horror flick from the director of Splice. I selected this because a certain member of my household always welcomes a new cinematic excursion into horror, even though they often disappoint. That was certainly the case in this instance, although I’ll admit that it had a promising enough premise that a few changes could have made it into something interesting. … Continue reading Spectrum Check
Escape from Tomorrow is a helluva stunt and a mediocre movie. And I’m being generous with the latter assessment. The debut feature from writer-director Randy Moore traces one family’s problematic day at the Happiest Place on Earth, marked most notably … Continue reading But listen to the color of your dreams
A single scene can’t make a bad movie into a good movie, but it is possible to transform a good movie into one that’s near-great. At the very end of Captain Phillips, the new docudrama about a 2009 encounter between … Continue reading On your way to a world that others might have missed
It was a fairly standard week for me at Spectrum Culture: one film review and one album reviews. On the movie side, I covered an entry in that most woeful of categories: the genially dark indie film comedy. I’m not sure why these sorts of films are so hard to pull off, but the art houses are littered with dismal examples of underdeveloped comedies every year. And, as is the case with the one I reviewed this week, a remarkable amount of the time, the films in question are blessed with incredible casts. On the music side, I drew the … Continue reading Spectrum Check
When considering the merits of the new Alfonso Cuarón film, it’s advisable to remember the full title slapped on the front of the original script he wrote with his son Jonas: Gravity: A Space Adventure in 3-D. It’s that word … Continue reading Step up, step up, step up, the sky is open-armed
There’s an interesting shift in Nicole Holofcener’s usual storytelling technique that takes place in her latest film, Enough Said. Most of her big-screen efforts have involved multiple storylines all sharing relatively equal space, sometimes overlapping in the narrative but more … Continue reading You were told to not take chances, you missed out on new dances
Coffee for Two 