As a longtime (if occasionally lapsed) fan of superhero comic books, I’ve had mixed emotions about the mighty Marvel age of cinema. Close as it has sometimes come, the Marvel Studios machine hasn’t yet made a wholly satisfying movie, in part … Continue reading Now Playing — Captain Marvel
Megamind (Tom McGrath, 2010). Just as surely as Pixar has forged its own auteuristic identity as a studio, the same has been achieved by DreamWorks Animation, their main rival for family box office dollars. Where Pixar is built on rigorous storytelling acumen and emotional authenticity, DreamWorks opts for cheap jokes, an overt embrace of fleeting pop culture trends and endlessly frenetic onscreen business. If they can prop it all up with overly familiar pop songs, all the better. The studio is prolific enough that exceptions slip through, almost like accidentally pristine product missed by the lack-of-quality control department of a … Continue reading Boden and Fleck, Joost and Schulman, McGrath, Sherman
The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987). Bertolucci’s masterwork probably won its Best Picture Oscar due to its effortless embrace of the epic, but its the acute realization of the most intimate portions of its story that makes it a great film. It follows the life of the last emperor of China from his coronation while still a toddler to his later years toiling as an anonymous gardener after his royal role had disappeared. The sweep of history is what the film moves through, but Bertolucci and his co-screenwriter Mark Peploe rightly realize that the intricacies of the different personality entanglements … Continue reading Bertolucci, Boden and Fleck, Bozzo, Coffin and Renaud, Levinson
Coffee for Two 