Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: put three people in a dark house with a murderous blind villain who uses his physical disadvantage as a […]
Mountains May Depart is not the first film to completely lose the thread as it approaches the ending, of course. But it’s extra-awfully disappointing that it does so, because before that happens, it puts up a really impressive case for being one of the very best movies released in the United States in 2016. The […]
A second review requested by Vianney B, with thanks for contributing twice to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. There is a minor contradiction secreted away in the production history of Delicatessen. The 1991 film exists mostly so that Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro could prove they had what it took to write […]
Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: a third feature-length adaptation of Ben-Hur is, you know, definitely a thing one could choose to produce. While wondering […]
My Golden Days is the mindlessly generic title the film has been given in English for international distribution, but the French original translates to Three Memories of My Youth. And this blunt, functional title succinctly describes the content of Arnaud Desplechin’s latest novelistic epic about domestic emotions, which does indeed consist of three very distinct […]
In my notes for Norm of the North, I find this sentence: “The screaming lemming Norm pulls out of his ass has a great big smile, not sure if lazy animation or subtle joke”. Having finished the whole movie, I’m still not sure – lazy animation is one of the defining characteristics of the film, […]
Like so many other animation buffs, I’ve learned that it pays to be breathlessly excited for any and every new movie turned out by Laika, the studio Phil Knight bought for his son Travis using the billions of dollars Phil earned for co-founding Nike (there’s a real possibility that Phil Knight is my favorite living […]
A review requested by Mark K, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Let us be very clear about one thing: The Blues Brothers is, by any objective standard, a messy wreck. This is true of the 1980 theatrical cut, and it’s even more true of the extended cut […]
On the one hand, it’s profoundly unfair to attack a movie like Sausage Party for the quality of its animation. The whole point of the Disney-Pixar business model is that you spend a gargantuan pile of money to make an even more gargantuan pile back; the reason those studios’ films look so good is that […]
Love him or hate him – I know which side I’m on! – the fact that Michael Bay of all people has turned into a “one for me, one for the studios” director is utterly fascinating. One would not imagine that a man whose name has become a shorthand for lowest-common-denominator popular excess would have […]
Whatever else we can say about it, L’attesa is hella art film. If you fell asleep in 1965 and just woke up, you’d probably find nothing exceptional about it, assuming that all European (and especially Italian) “serious cinema” was like this: gorgeously shot, minimally paced, perhaps more ambiguous than it needs to be, chilly and […]
Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: American animation has always been frustratingly unwilling to take on adult-oriented subject matter, a gap that Sausage Party means […]
