Alexander Payne has too strong of a filmography to declare that The Holdovers is his best work, but the comedy might be the most caustically concentrated realization of his career-long treatise on the way loneliness delivers a pile driver to … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2023 — Number Five
I’m sure it’s not solely that The Holdovers is set during the holiday season of 1970 that prompts director Alexander Payne to open his new movie with deliberate evocations of the U.S. cinema of that bygone era, beginning with an … Continue reading Now Playing — The Holdovers
A United Kingdom (Amma Asante, 2016). It’s almost jarring to see a modern movie as staid in its dramatization of noble societal perseverance as A United Kingdom. Based on real history, the film follows the heartbreaking travails of Seretse Khama … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — A United Kingdom; Downsizing; Girls Trip
There’s no particular inspiration for extracting this old review from the archive today. It is one of the fairly random raids of my old writing. The only annotation I’ll offer is the retrospective conviction that Alexander Payne’s segment is strongest in the film. It’s the one that has stuck with me. The new film Paris, je t’aime brings together eighteen directors (or teams of directors) to create short films celebrating the beloved city of the title. There is no through-line, no overlap, nothing that connects the pieces together. It seems everyone was given the the freedom to construct whatever they … Continue reading From the Archive — Paris, je t’aime
There is a slender but focused plot to the latest comedy by Alexander Payne, Nebraska. But it seems fairly clear that the story is ultimately a means to an end. That’s not to imply that Payne is indifferent to the … Continue reading I awoke and I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart will never again, sir, tear us from each other’s hearts
I absolutely love the first and last shots of Alexander Payne’s The Descendants. Each of them encompasses everything I like about his work in their straightforwardness, their simplicity, their understatement and their quiet, careful wit. These shots don’t push an … Continue reading Almost ready, almost there, or is it already over?
#7 — Sideways (Alexander Payne, 2004) Movies often trade in cataclysm and heartbreak, sending characters sprinting down rainswept streets chasing after that one urgent moment destined to change everything. That’s certainly stirring, but there’s also an inherent phoniness to it, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 00s — Number Seven
#12 — About Schmidt (Alexander Payne, 2002) One of the cinematic stands that I’ve taken with some regularity is that Jack Nicholson is the finest actor who made film his primary medium. This argument carries more weight with those who … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 00s — Number Twelve
Coffee for Two 