Dir. Tom Hooper. Starring Francesca Hayward, Robbie Fairchild, Judi Dench The gamble that any production of Cats makes, whether it’s a stage show or a movie, is that the spectacle of the piece will outweigh the inherent strangeness of the material. The answer is a really hard “No!” for a lot of people for the musical itself,… Read More Cats (2019)
Dir. Danny Boyle. Starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels About an hour into Steve Jobs, it’s clear that something about the movie just isn’t working well enough. The first forty minutes are remarkably tight, so direct and effective that it’s easy to forget the freewheeling Danny Boyle is behind the wheel with a roadmap… Read More Steve Jobs (2015)
Dir. Anthony and Joe Russo. Starring Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Redford I wasn’t going to talk about Three Days of the Condor, but a little poking around and it turns out that the people who wrote the movie wanted to talk about Three Days of the Condor, so let’s talk about Three Days of the Condor. At the… Read More Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Dir. Miguel Gomes. Starring Ana Moreira, Carloto Cotta, Teresa Madruga I was watching Thor: The Dark World with my wife the other night, and within fifteen minutes both of us were disengaged, disturbed by the literal and tonal brownness of the images on screen. The longer the movie went, the more it felt like it had taken… Read More Tabu (2012)
Dir. Shane Black. Starring Robert Downey, Jr., Paul Bettany, Guy Pearce It’s really something that what makes this Marvel movie (what’s killing cinema in my salad days) interesting and enjoyable is its closeness to ”80s and ’90s action movies (you know, what was killing cinema when I was a little kid). Shane Black, who I… Read More Iron Man 3 (2013)
Dir. Jon Favreau. Starring Robert Downey, Jr., Sam Rockwell, Mickey Rourke I’ve been workshopping this take since about halfway through this movie, and here’s what I’ve got: this is a significantly more interesting movie than Iron Man. It is not necessarily a better movie than Iron Man, because there is some real flab on this movie: the… Read More Iron Man 2 (2010)
Dir. David Fincher. Starring Gary Oldman, Sam Troughton, Tom Pelphrey Thank God it finally happened. It took until he was near sixty years old to get to this point, but there is no longer any way for us to understand David Fincher as a cool director. There’s a subspecies of movie guy for whom I… Read More Mank (2020)
Dir. Ben Wheatley. Starring Lily James, Armie Hammer, Kristin Scott Thomas Few scenes have stayed with me so viscerally as one from A Field in England where, playing out in monstrous slow-motion, a scholar with his mind ravaged by some magical power emerges as a diving rod, eyes wild, tongue out, rope affixed to him. It… Read More Rebecca (2020)
Directed by Ol Parker. Starring Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan Eventually we get to “Dancing Queen.” This is the part where I would make a joke about “contractual obligations” or something, but for all I know there are contractual obligations which mandate that “Dancing Queen” is played at least once in any ABBA movie.… Read More Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)
Dir. Taika Waititi. Starring Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Scarlett Johansson From this Hollywood Reporter article listing some trivia about Jojo Rabbit after its Best Picture nomination, here’s Taika Waititi talking about what inspired him to make the picture: I wanted to tell a story about kids witnessing the behavior of grown-ups—especially during times of conflict and war—because I’ve… Read More Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Seeing Things Secondhand 