Tag: catch-up reviews

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Burton, Keaton, Preminger, Trank, Vidor

Dan Seeger

Chronicle (Josh Trank, 2012). Chronicle is good enough to almost–almost–redeem the increasingly tired found footage subgenre. This is in part due to the especially clever use of the footage, drawing it from a variety of sources rather than relying on one dedicated amateur documentarian who keeps the camera running no matter what level of craziness is happening (although the film inevitably must rely on that conceit more than is ideal). Security cameras, police car dashboard cams and other fully believable devices provide all the material that’s stitched together into a narrative. If physics-defying mayhem were happening outside of a upper … Continue reading Burton, Keaton, Preminger, Trank, Vidor

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Duke, Hitchcock, Lang, Lorenz, Rees

Dan Seeger

Trouble with the Curve (Robert Lorenz, 2012). A longtime Clint Eastwood collaborator–multiple credits as a producer and assistant director–makes his feature directorial debut, and it predictably looks like one of his pal’s stodgier efforts, right down to the venerable actor doing a variation of his Gran Torino gravel-voiced grump complaining about the kids these days. In Trouble with the Curve, Eastwood plays a old baseball scout who’s disparaged by the moneyball adherents in the deluxe offices, even though there’s some things you just can’t tell about a prospect from looking at a computer screen. The film is painfully simplistic, setting … Continue reading Duke, Hitchcock, Lang, Lorenz, Rees

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Cianfrance, Hitchcock, Levine, Sonnenfeld, Zinnemann

Dan Seeger

Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936). My instinct is to refer to this as an early Alfred Hitchcock film, but he was a decade and almost two dozen films into his career by this point. What’s more, this was released the year after The 39 Steps, so while Hitchcock may not have been The Master yet, he was a seasoned, skilled and respected filmmaker already. This was toward the end of the run of his British-made films, and there’s a certain added restraint–even somewhat pedestrian quality–to the narrative about a terrorist group staging bombings around London. It notably adheres to all of … Continue reading Cianfrance, Hitchcock, Levine, Sonnenfeld, Zinnemann

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Farrelly and Farrelly, Kazan, Levy, Stoller, Wain

Dan Seeger

The Three Stooges (Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly, 2012). Strangely, this attempt to update the Three Stooges for a modern audience is the most disciplined Farrelly brothers film in years. That doesn’t mean it’s good per se, but the screenplay does have a tightness and care that’s been largely missing from the siblings’ work for at least ten years or so. There’s some genuinely inspired staging to the hyper-violent comic set pieces featuring the trio of orphaned doofuses clumsily beating the hell out of each other which carries over the broader narrative. Not much of it is especially funny or … Continue reading Farrelly and Farrelly, Kazan, Levy, Stoller, Wain

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Cahill, Dardenne and Dardenne, Linklater, Peretz, Rydell

Dan Seeger

Our Idiot Brother (Jesse Peretz, 2011). There’s sure an abundance of promising elements to this comedy, but it illustrates the vast divide between lining up the right pieces and assembling them properly. Paul Rudd plays a layabout organic farmer who gets busted for selling pot to a police officer and then cycles through staying with his various siblings, played by Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel and Emily Mortimer. It’s boilerplate comic uplift with everyone evolving to understand the kind-hearted qualities behind the protagonist’s aggravatingly detached manner. There’s barely a laugh to be had in the film, though, and most of the … Continue reading Cahill, Dardenne and Dardenne, Linklater, Peretz, Rydell

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Carax, Davies, Godard, Huston, Lord and Miller

Dan Seeger

21 Jump Street (Phil Lord and Chris Miller, 2012). This adaptation of the ludicrous nineteen-eighties television series about cops undercover in high school (one of the first hits for the Fox network) was met with surprising appreciation by the critical community when it was released last spring. I can certainly understand why its metafictional comedy may have been a welcome surprise, but it’s still more ragged and predictable than it is shrewd and effective. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum have nice interplay as the requisite mismatched cops working together, and there’s something refreshing about the inversion of stereotypes, with the … Continue reading Carax, Davies, Godard, Huston, Lord and Miller

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Buñuel, Meehl, Penn, Minnelli, Rohmer

Dan Seeger

Buck (Cindy Meehl, 2011). Cindy Meehl’s measured, steadfast documentary focuses on Buck Brannaman, a renowned horseman who primarily makes his living traveling around the country and delivering ranch seminars intended to help people develop better relationships with their problem animals. Meehl was actually inspired to make the film after her own positive experience in one of those group training sessions. Her film, understandably then, comes across like the work a true believer, which is both its strength and weakness. It’s an intimate, compelling portrait of a man who’s found his way through significant personal hardship to create a professional life … Continue reading Buñuel, Meehl, Penn, Minnelli, Rohmer

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Kubrick, Kurosawa, Robbins and Wise, Rydell, Wilder

Dan Seeger

Harry and Walter Go to New York (Mark Rydell, 1976). A colleague of mine at Spectrum Culture wrote about this nostalgic caper comedy a while back, calling it “a delightful farce of a film.” Not really, but it’s surely an oddball relic of the era when nineteen-seventies adventurism gave way to self-defeating excess. Clearly inspired by (and given its greenlight due to) the smashing success of George Roy Hill’s The Sting a few years earlier, the film casts Elliott Gould and James Caan as a pair of hackneyed vaudevillians in the late nineteenth century who get caught up in a … Continue reading Kubrick, Kurosawa, Robbins and Wise, Rydell, Wilder

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Donen and Kelly, Frankenheimer, Salina, Skolimowski, Téchiné

Dan Seeger

Flow: For Love of Water (Irena Salina, 2008). Because there are few things we enjoy in our house than watching documentaries that offer an assessment, in painful detail, of how humanity is engaged in self-inflicted extinction through carelessly destructive exploitation of one of the most necessary substances for human existence. It make for a fun night of movie-watching. Real popcorn fare. Irene Salina’s film is compelling and suitably frightening, although it occasionally tangles itself up because there’s simply so much ground to cover. As admirably as it presents the scope of the problem, there are definitely times when it seems … Continue reading Donen and Kelly, Frankenheimer, Salina, Skolimowski, Téchiné

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Garnett, Gondry, Hitchcock, Sturges, Susser

Dan Seeger

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946). This adaptation of James M. Cain’s 1934 novel is a film noir classic. It’s an exemplar of the form, and perhaps the perfect introduction to the dark charms of the sub-genre built around the basest of human instincts and the shadows in which the manifestation of those urges are obscured, if only because it spells out its duplicitous so plainly. It’s also, sad to say, only a middling film, unfurling its plot with a rushed anxiousness that sometimes leaves behind necessary depth and character development. Tay Garnett’s directing is moody, but also … Continue reading Garnett, Gondry, Hitchcock, Sturges, Susser