Then Playing — Jay Kelly; Bringing Up Baby; Wake Up Dead Man
Reviews of films directed by Noah Baumbach, Howard Hawks, and Rian Johnson Continue reading Then Playing — Jay Kelly; Bringing Up Baby; Wake Up Dead Man
Tag: rian johnson
Now Playing — Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
I truly believe Rian Johnson has found the character he could writer and direct exclusively for the remainder of his days and be satsisfied all the way. Johnson’s 2019 feature, Knives Out, introduced Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a master detective … Continue reading Now Playing — Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Thirty-Two
#32 — Looper (Rian Johnson, 2012) Violence begets violence. In the longstanding cinematic algebra that posits the swinging of fists and the pulling of triggers as the readiest and surest solutions to all manner of problems — such as the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Thirty-Two
Top Ten Movies of 2019 — Number Ten
With a rare and gratifying exuberance for the abundant possibilities found in genre-based storytelling, writer-director Rian Johnson proved anew his mighty abilities to slyly invert tropes with Knives Out. A modern polish on the twisty mysteries tapped out by Agatha … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2019 — Number Ten
Now Playing — Knives Out
I’m fairly confident Rian Johnson considers himself a traditionalist, in defiance of any evidence to the contrary. Beginning with his first feature, Brick, Johnson settled into a mode of taking a well-worn, largely bygone subgenre and spinning it around until … Continue reading Now Playing — Knives Out
Greatish Performances #37
#37 — Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017) It’s tough being a newcomer to a lengthy tale eight parts deep in the telling, with each prior installment adding convolutions to the … Continue reading Greatish Performances #37
Now Playing — Star Wars: The Last Jedi
It’s been a little more than forty years since simple letters in a crystal blue font first informed audiences they were about to see a story that happened in a distant galaxy quite some time earlier. Conceived and directed by … Continue reading Now Playing — Star Wars: The Last Jedi
From the Archive: Top Ten Movies of 2006
Recent weeks have seen an online avalanche of top ten lists from movie critics of all stripes. I live in the frigid north, however, and it takes certain cinematic offerings a little longer to fight their way through the sleet and … Continue reading From the Archive: Top Ten Movies of 2006
Top Ten Movies of 2012 — Number Three
There’s no getting around it: I’m a sucker for the films of Rian Johnson. I loved his debut feature and his sophomore effort, sometimes feeling like an isolated supporter of the latter. There’s a crispness to his writing and an … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2012 — Number Three
Oh, you’re drivin’ me out of my mind
I greatly admire the construction of Rian Johnson’s screenplay for Looper. It’s not that he took on the daunting task of building a story around time travel and emerged with something that doesn’t collapse under unsolvable conundrums of logic, an … Continue reading Oh, you’re drivin’ me out of my mind
Coffee for Two 