Tag: 2015 movies

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Attenborough, Feig, Peyton, Tourneur, Werker

Dan Seeger

Oh! What a Lovely War (Richard Attenborough, 1969). The feature directorial debut of Richard Attenborough adapts a hit British musical that used era-appropriate songs to slyly satirize the pretty geopolitical messiness that fed into and then prolonged World War I. Though initially intriguing in its brash theatricality, the film’s conceits quickly prove to be stiff and overly distancing. It begins to come across as a revue with only the thinnest of through lines, especially as it stretches to a overlong running time pushing two and a half hours. There are scattered pleasures, led by Maggie Smith as a bawdy music hall … Continue reading Attenborough, Feig, Peyton, Tourneur, Werker

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Greatish Performances #23

Dan Seeger

#23 — Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Johnson in Creed (Ryan Coogler, 2015) I don’t begrudge Sylvester Stallone the victory lap he got to take for his seventh performance as the hangdog Philadelphia boxer Rocky Balboa. While he’s perpetrated a great many heinous acts on moviegoers (he didn’t just star in Rhinestone, Cobra, Over the Top, and Cliffhanger; he also helped write them!), there’s something appealing, even charming, about his unlikely perseverance in the business. There might have been a little more sourness had the Academy Award nomination he received actually turned into a win, but, as was the case … Continue reading Greatish Performances #23

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Abrams, Benson and Moorhead, Fosse, Jones, Roach

Dan Seeger

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015). As a piece of nostalgic reclamation, the latest “Episode” of the Star Wars saga does its job so efficiently that its hard to get overly enthused about it as cinema. In a strangely fitting turnabout, the film series that fundamentally changed the business of U.S. moviemaking has turned into a follower, adhering closely to the mighty Marvel model. There’s little indication that The Force Awakens is laying the groundwork for vaster, interconnected stories, but it’s all introduction and reassurance, a tapping of the baton before commanding the symphony to life. The sense of … Continue reading Abrams, Benson and Moorhead, Fosse, Jones, Roach

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Now Playing: The Revenant

Dan Seeger

It is probably my own fault, believing on the scantest of evidence that director Alejandro González Iñárritu had found a new avenue for his artistic expression. As problematic as Birdman might be as the reigning Academy Award winner for Best Picture, particularly over Richard Linklater’s remarkable Boyhood, it signaled a useful shift in the filmmaker’s blindingly self-satisfied march through ever-mounting misery. The film still trafficked in overt nihilism, but couching it in the wryest comedy gave it just enough of a tinge of enlightenment to make it devilishly engaging rather than redundantly soul-deadening. If The Revenant is an accurate example … Continue reading Now Playing: The Revenant

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Now Playing: The Danish Girl and Joy

Dan Seeger

In this era of Caitlyn Jenner and loads of respectful awards attention paid to the Amazon series Transparent, it’s tempting to look at the tepid, staid The Danish Girl as sadly behind the times in its depiction of an individual coming to terms with their true self. Then Ricky Gervais returns to the Golden Globes hosting gig with a slew of jokes that utilize cheap, hateful mockery of transgendered individuals as punchlines, the least offensive of which is the dig at Jenner which has stirred the most ire. (The casual derision towards Jeffrey Tambor’s work in Transparent, with Gervais, for … Continue reading Now Playing: The Danish Girl and Joy

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Broomfield, Demme, Radice, Safdie and Safdie, Truffaut

Dan Seeger

Ricki and the Flash (Jonathan Demme, 2015). By the last third of the film, it seems clear that Demme’s chief motivation for taking on this project is the opportunity to apply his extensive experience directing concert films to this fictional story of a derelict mother (Meryl Streep) who fronts a bar band. He certainly demonstrates only passing interest in the tepid familial drama in the script, written by Diablo Cody with a equal freedom from her previous dialogue quirks and recognizable humanity. When Streep’s bedraggled singer returns to her former home, responding to a suicide attempt by her daughter (Mamie Gummer), every … Continue reading Broomfield, Demme, Radice, Safdie and Safdie, Truffaut

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And it’s paid for and I’m so grateful to be nowhere

Dan Seeger

Chapter One: The Huckster’s Reintroduction To be fair, Quentin Tarantino has never been anything other than transparent about his convictions. He is an unabashed recycler, a self-aggrandizing showman, a virulent jabber jaw. He is a cinematic con artist of the highest order, taking all the influences that swirl in his head, buffeted by the blizzard winds of his grindhouse-soiled psyche, and spilling them out onto the screen with only the barest hint of deeper introspection. Much as he loves the gamesmanship of movie narrative, from the pleasure of imposing subversion onto the inane to the flawed puzzle box of displaced … Continue reading And it’s paid for and I’m so grateful to be nowhere

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And I still remember all those days we spent alone

Dan Seeger

Carol, the latest film from Todd Haynes, is unyieldingly admirable in almost every way that matters in the construction of great cinema. The screenplay, adapted by Phyllis Nagy from a novel by Patricia Highsmith, is meticulous and thoughtful, spelling out the conflicts of the main characters in a determined, empathetic fashion. The performances evidence an equal amount of care. Maybe more than anything, Haynes’s directing job, heavily abetted by the cinematography of Edward Lachman, is the sort that can be studied for decades, held up as the embodiment of the way that images can be framed and finessed to tell … Continue reading And I still remember all those days we spent alone

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Inside this stillness is a wave, a force from which we won’t be saved

Dan Seeger

It’s not that the entire career of Adam McKay makes it appear that he’s have no interest in, much less facility for, an adaptation of The Big Short, Michael Lewis’s fury-stirring 2010 book about the fiscal malfeasance that precipitated the real estate collapse of 2007. Time as a head writer of Saturday Night Live is inked into his resume, meaning there’s got to be at least some amount of political awareness in his skill set, and the Funny or Die website, which he co-founded, has demonstrated a regular willingness to use broad, hooky gags as a delivery vessel for pointed, … Continue reading Inside this stillness is a wave, a force from which we won’t be saved