Ashes and Embers (Haile Gerima, 1982). Made around forty years ago, Haile Gerima’s experimental drama opens with Black men driving in a city who get pulled over police officers that immediately escalate the situation, presuming guilt as a default for … Continue reading Then Playing — Ashes and Embers; Brewster McCloud; A Star is Born
I don’t have much to add to the review below (originally published at my former online home), except to note that every great director deserves to have a final film as perfect of a closing statement as this one is … Continue reading From the Archive: A Prairie Home Companion
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
And here we are at the top of my list of the best films of 1992, at least at the time of our broadcast. As I note in the write-up, my on air cohort and I agreed on the title that deserved to be called the top cinematic offering of that year. In fact, that was remarkably commonplace through the years. Basically every time we talked about top films of any given year on the radio, we were in complete agreement about the #1 position, a trends that persisted at least a couple years past the end of the show. … Continue reading From the Archive: The Player
One week ago, I helped bring the school year to an end at the college generous enough to employ me, thanks to my leadership role with the annual commencement ceremony for graduating students. This made me think back to my own college graduation, two decades (and change) ago. Part of my long goodbye from school involved writing one last movie review column for the student newspaper. I explain what I chose to do in the actual piece I’m transcribing, so I won’t get into the choice here. I will note, however, that I’ve written about both these films in this … Continue reading From the Archive: Frankie and Johnny and The Player
#6 — McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971) It’s routine to praise directors for their abilities to construct entire worlds, especially in the modern era of filmmaking which increasingly depends upon the startling efforts of creators who are freakishly adept … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Six
#23 — M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970) Whenever I look at Robert Altman’s breakthrough 1970 film set during the Korean War, I find it simultaneously completely logical and utterly incomprehensible that it spawned a beloved television series that ran for 251 episodes … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Twenty-Three
#27 — Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975) What does it say about the difference between European cinema, I wonder, that there’s such a pronounced fundamental difference between the two directors, roughly contemporaries, from each respective region that are best suited to having … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Twenty-Seven
Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962). Vladimir Nabokov’s novel was less than ten years old when Stanley Kubrick took a swing at it, so he was working with a best-selling sensation instead of a revered part of the canon. That–combined with the significant detail that he was Stanley Kubrick and he plainly did want he wanted–gives the director great latitude in his adaptation. Nabokov himself is the credited screenwriter, but much of that material was jettisoned by Kubrick on the way to making his own distinct, darkly comic work. James Mason is marvelous as Professor Humbert Humbert, the man who becomes smitten … Continue reading Altman, Clements and Musker, Gordon (and others), Kubrick, Weir
#11 — The Player (Robert Altman, 1992) The Player is regularly described as Robert Altman’s poison pen letter to Hollywood. Hell, I’ve probably used that phrasing a few times myself. That sells it short, however, reducing the film’s artistry to an … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Eleven
