There is a moment in Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) , about 57 minutes into the 118-minute film, where we see something that is not at all meaningful in and of itself: in the middle of a performance of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” by Gladys Knight & […]
A review requested by Alison with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. The 1991 document Madonna: Truth or Dare is a fascinating artifact, one that I honestly can’t quite figure out how to even describe. Despite existing for very nearly no other reason than to carefully manage and sell […]
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: the problem with concert documentaries, like One Direction: This Is Us, is that they’re hardly worthy of that name […]
Daniel Dennett once said, “There’s nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear,” which I largely agree with.* At this moment, I think I might refine it a bit, however: there’s nothing I like less than a bad argument for a view that I hold dear, made by a […]
The recent films of Martin Scorsese have shown a distinct tendency to be flabby and aimless – I’d not exclude his Oscar-winning The Departed form either of those charges – so it’s with a feeling akin to a spiritual rebirth that I come to praise his new Rolling Stones concert film Shine a Light as […]
Spending the whole work day moving my office was conducive to nothing but fatigue, so I apologize in advance if this is a less than wholly enlightening review; the plus side is that if I’d had a moment to think of anything interesting today, I probably wouldn’t have reviewed the film at all. Right, the […]
The concert genre is always going to suffer from the reality that Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz perfected the form in 1978 just as it essentially created it. But in the hands of a great, or at least passionate filmmaker, there still joy to be had from the concert film. Witness Neil Young: Heart of […]
