Dir. Eric Rohmer. Starring Barbet Schroeder, Michele Girardon, Claudine Soubrier Almost eight months to the day after I watched My Night at Maud’s, I finally finished Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales. By a weird set of circumstances, The Bakery Girl of Monceau is the last one I’ve added to my tally, and I’m not sure… Read More The Bakery Girl of Monceau (1963)
Dir. Damien Chazelle. Starring Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke It’s a Damien Chazelle movie: the answer is in Justin Hurwitz’s score. Chazelle and Hurwitz are, at this point, tied to the hip, and perhaps in thirty years they’ll even be remembered as closely (if not as fondly) as Spielberg and Williams or Fellini and… Read More First Man (2018)
One of the Grantland legacies I’m fond of, although I’m sure the idea didn’t start there, is the championship belt (RIP Grantland, long live Barnwell and Hyden). The purpose is to go year by year and create a list of who’s at the top of some field, which is a deceptively simple task, and one… Read More Anglophone Director Championship Belt, 1918-2018
1) The first thing I did, before I even began making predictions or thinking about how things might go, is check to see if any of these movies out for Best Picture had 11/2 odds. I speak, of course, of the 15% rule that The Ringer’s Kevin Clark frequently refers back to, which proclaims that any… Read More 91st Academy Awards: Quickly Scribbled Thoughts
Dir. John Schlesinger. Starring Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Terence Stamp There are better moments in Far from the Madding Crowd than this, but the most exquisitely Hardy moment of the film is at the wedding of Frank Troy (Stamp) and his pregnant girlfriend, Fanny (Prunella Ransome). (Runners-up in this movie include a thoughtless card, a fifty-pound payment… Read More Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)
Dir. David Frankel. Starring Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt “I wouldn’t care if you were pole dancing all night as long as you did it with a little integrity,” Nate (Adrian Grenier) tells Andy (Hathaway) one evening. It’s an interesting line—one that immediately follows a quip about how the guy who makes “port wine… Read More The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
This was a weird one, a real flumpo of a conversation. Matt and I got into some of the controversy of Roma, talked about Jack White and A Star Is Born, and then went headlong into the role of cultural criticism and probably what it’s for and also get right on the edge of like,… Read More Baumann and Burch Conversations #11: Year-End Review and Yelling at Each Other Because of Vox
Dir. Ari Aster. Starring Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Gabriel Byrne Never trust Ann Dowd! I don’t watch that much television, and even I know never to trust Ann Dowd! Anyway, the movie I’ve seen Hereditary compared to most frequently is Rosemary’s Baby, which I’m not sure I understand. Granted, these are two horror movies without any real jump… Read More Hereditary (2018)
Dir. Barry Jenkins. Starring Kiki Layne, Stephan James, Regina King Thorough spoilers for a movie still in its wide release. There’s a noteworthy costume choice made in the first few moments of If Beale Street Could Talk. With the camera towering over Tish (Layne) and Fonny (James), we can see that their outfits go together.… Read More If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
I’m joining in the spirit of the year-in-review post, even though the way I watch movies isn’t really conducive to the kind of list that one usually sees at the end of the year. (Incidentally, if you happen to be a recent music aficionado, friend of the blog Matt will have his year-end list of… Read More 2018 Year-End Review: Fifty Movies
Seeing Things Secondhand 