The thing about Inside Llewyn Davis is that it has a phenomenally interesting narrative structure. That sounds like a euphemism, but it really isn’t; among the many things the film is doing well, its structure is easily the most unmistakable and probably the most important. This is a story about a man in his late […]
There was a time when the phrase “directed by Stephen Frears” promised (to me, anyway), if not necessarily a film that was going to be life-changing in its excellence and ingenuity, then at least one which would tell a fine story with solidity and clean, steady filmmaking skill. His movies were like dress slacks: crisp, […]
Update: This review was based on what was in retrospect a screening plagued by a highly deficient projector resulting in unusually poor image quality. While I don’t suspect that I’d ever come anywhere close to actually liking the movie, it’s safe to say that my actual thoughts are more of a 6/10 than a 5/10, […]
In the wake of tragic, violent crimes, there’s a ubiquitous, easy, and simple response: shake your head, look downcast, and intone in a very mordant tones, “What sort of person would do a thing like that?” What’s not ever supposed to happen, is somebody actually going out and answering that question, and that’s the most […]
Old man boners. Did you laugh? Because if you didn’t laugh, I can’t think of any reason at all to bother with Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, a film for which “old man boners” is very largely the only joke it has up its sleeve. “Old man projectile shits”, as well, but that’s for just one […]
It is not an unnoticed fact, but one still worth mentioning, because it is fun, that the career of Alfonso Cuarón repeated itself in a weirdly specific way. First, in 1991, he made Soló con tu pareja, a Mexican film with political overtones, that features a lot of sex. Then he went to America 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: the year’s third superhero movie, and the last of the summer, The Wolverine finds the title character traveling to […]
Dean DeBlois, I am sorry. This whole time, through both Disney’s Lilo & Stitch in 2002 and DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon in 2010, we’ve all been like, “Chris Sanders is so great”, and “good for Chris Sanders, nurturing Stitch as an idea for so many years”, and “poor Chris Sanders, couldn’t make […]
If I describe Julia Loktev’s second feature, The Loneliest Planet, as having some of the absolutely best shots of people walking that I have ever seen in a motion picture, I fancy that I have both demonstrated what is the general shape of the movie’s appeal, while also demonstrating why that appeal is undoubtedly limited […]
The most obvious thing one can notice about The Rabbi’s Cat is its lively sense of contradiction: here is an animated movie done in a brightly colored cartoon style, with gorgeously smooth lines and detailed drafting unsullied by too much fussiness in the coloring and shading, and it involves the misadventures of a talking cat, […]
The biggest question I had going into the long, long-awaited movie version of Jack Kerouac’s generation-defining 1957 novel (written in 1951) On the Road was whether it was going to have anything of value for someone who has not read the book, as I have not (like The Catcher in the Rye, it inspires the […]
The task of making a cinematic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s gargantuan, six-part fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings that was, on the one hand, comprehensive enough that it didn’t feel like a rushed and perfunctory illustration of plot points masquerading as a dramatic narrative while also being, on the other hand, a manageable object […]
