Dir. Hal Ashby. Starring Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern There’s a “Just So” story I encountered for the first time when I was a little boy. It was depicted in 3-D comic book form and came with the requisite glasses. (I may be making this up, but I’m pretty sure it came from a… Read More Coming Home (1978)
Today, on this one-year anniversary of Grantland’s demise, Matt and I take to the podcast to discuss what we loved about the site, what we wished had been better, and what we hope to see from its sequel site, The Ringer. In a time when it’s as hard as it ever was to pay people… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 27: Halloween in Cambodia
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns One of the cliches of Oscar history is the lament that the awards for 1998 passed over Saving Private Ryan in favor of Shakespeare in Love. “Passed over” is a little strong, seeing as Private Ryan racked up wins for Best Director, Best Cinematography, Film Editing, and swept the… Read More Saving Private Ryan (1998)
The airing of the Hamildoc on PBS (which is only available until mid-November! If you haven’t watched it, hurry!) a few nights ago was received with the kind of joy which you’d expect. I was a little surprised at how much it aligned with the Hamiltome, and I was more than a little surprised at… Read More Race, Slavery, and Colonial Era Musicals
Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Starring Kirk Douglas, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready If you don’t count Fear and Desire, and from what I can tell Stanley Kubrick would really rather you didn’t, Paths of Glory is Kubrick’s third film of twelve and his first certain classic; if you don’t count Fear and Desire, it’s also Kubrick’s first film about war, a… Read More Paths of Glory (1957)
Dir. Byron Howard and Rich Moore. Starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Jenny Slate Zootopia is built on sight gags, one of those rare gifts to animated film that just work better there than in real life. Judy Hopps (Goodwin), who is incredibly small compared to the other animals in Zootopia, chases a thief into a… Read More Zootopia (2016)
Dir. Steve McQueen. Starring Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Brian Milligan After the debut of 12 Years a Slave, the charges that McQueen’s direction – his long takes, his still camera, his artful establishing shots – was “gimmicky” or, more inscrutably, “distracted from the film” began to proliferate. I’ve always thought that was primarily a response to… Read More Hunger (2008)
Before the Internet, it was very clear to me that Luke Skywalker was the hero of the Star Wars films. He was the one imbued with special powers, the only good guy with a lightsaber, the one who blew up the first Death Star and who, in a sort of oblique way, was responsible for… Read More Star Wars I-VI Project: Episodes V-VI
Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Starring Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin “You know Hitler?” “Hitler, yes.” Emmi (Mira) asks Ali (ben Salem) that question twice in this film. The first time, it’s the same night she’s met Ali. They’re sitting at her dinette maybe a couple of hours after they met for the… Read More Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
Dir. Charles Sturridge. Starring Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Claire Bloom (My thoughts on the preceding episode are here.) No new characters of any importance, no new threads to manage, no real change since last we met with our Brideshead friends. “Sebastian Against the World” is an episode built to bring serious issues to a head,… Read More Brideshead Revisited S1E4, “Sebastian Against the World”
Seeing Things Secondhand 