Tag: george clooney

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Besson, Clooney, Gilroy, Jarmusch, Jones

Dan Seeger

Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014). Though based on a half-baked idea from the rambunctious mind of its director rather than anything that originally appeared on a printed page, Lucy can make a claim on being one of the best comic book movies of the past year, in that it establishes and locks in on its own suspicious and imaginative logic and then lets all other rules fall away in favor of what’s most thrillingly entertaining in any given moment. Scarlett Johansson plays the title character, a young woman whose scruffy boyfriend gets her ensnarled in a situation in which she’s an … Continue reading Besson, Clooney, Gilroy, Jarmusch, Jones

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Clooney, Goldwyn, Kiarostami, Taylor, Vaughn

Dan Seeger

The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011). I think a strong, important movie can (and arguably should) be made about the continued racial-based social inequities imposed in the American South–really all over the country, but those below the Mason-Dixon line had a special skill for it–in the early nineteen-sixties as the power of the Civil Rights movement was beginning the much needed push back against the monied classes that wanted to maintain some diluted but still despicable variation on the slavery system abolished about a century earlier. The Help, for all its noble intentions, simply isn’t that movie. Even putting aside the … Continue reading Clooney, Goldwyn, Kiarostami, Taylor, Vaughn

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Meanwhile…

Dan Seeger

Though I haven’t linked to them yet, I’ve contributed a few words to Spectrum Culture over the course of the past week. First, there was a consideration of The New Pornographers album Twin Cinema for a “Five Years Later” feature on the best music of 2005. When the “Five Years Later” feature turned its attention to film, I got the chance to take another crack at a movie I’ve written about a couple times previously. Today, I contribute to our inaugural List Inconsequential feature, Great Musicians Who Haven’t Made a Great Album in At Least 10 Years. If my friend … Continue reading Meanwhile…