Tag: jeff nichols

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Now Playing: Loving

Dan Seeger

It can be too much of a burden to put on a movie, to insist that it offer a cautionary alarm about the conflicts and risks swarming into modern society, doing so with clarity and firm intent. It is challenging enough to tell a story on screen, especially one based in fact, when the needs of drama and the moral obligation of accuracy can tug on different sleeves, without the pressure of winning a moral argument. And yet that is precisely what certain movies can do. It is not necessarily an obligation, but it is a gift, at least of … Continue reading Now Playing: Loving

FilmLeave a comment

Landis, McDonagh, Nichols, Parks, Trevorrow

Dan Seeger

The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1980). I routinely think of this musical-action-comedy as the strongest film of the many that have been spun off from Saturday Night Live recurring characters, though we’re admittedly looking at a shallow, fetid pool. A recent fresh viewing suggests I might have been inflating in, undoubtedly on the basis of how freely I and my cohort of dopey high school friends quoted it, as if reciting a bar order of “three orange whips” at a purportedly clever moment would position us as comic geniuses. The movie is more slapdash than I remembered and spotted with … Continue reading Landis, McDonagh, Nichols, Parks, Trevorrow