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
Dir. Dominic Cooke. Starring Saiorse Ronan, Billy Howle, Adrian Scarborough On Chesil Beach might even have been Atonement but for two things. (It is probably not fair of me to compare them, but Ian McEwan, sad lovers, I doubt I’m the first one here.) First, Ronan and Howle don’t have the power of Knightley and… Read More On Chesil Beach (2018)
Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. Starring Zoe Kazan, Tom Waits, Tim Blake Nelson If the six segments of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs are meant to cohere, then it’s as six distinct pieces of the various types of the western genre. It hits on virtually all of them from gunmen to highwaymen, wagon trails (why… Read More The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Dir. Yann Demange. Starring Jack O’Connell, Sean Harris, David Wilmot If you think that more civilized discourse would go a long way to solving our political problems, if you are socially liberal and economically conservative, if you wistfully recall the dominion of uber-WASPs like George H.W. Bush, if you think “All Lives Matter” gets at… Read More ’71 (2014)
Dir. Paul Schrader. Starring Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Cedric Kyles I spent a long time preparing the joke: when an American remakes Winter Light (and sort of smushes in a little Diary of a Country Priest), he ends it with an explosion. The movie disappointed my joke, alas, although I’m not sure it would have been worse if… Read More First Reformed (2017)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Julia Dufvenius, Liv Ullmann, Borje Ahlstedt Image links back here Music is a discipline too often taken for granted, I think; there’s a sense in the popular imagination that all musicians are either Mozart reborn, effortlessly cranking out the hits, or teetering on the edge of personal collapse à la Johnny… Read More Saraband (2003)
Dir. Roberto Rossellini. Starring Nazario Gerardi, Severino Pisacane, Esposito Bonaventura Federico Fellini worked with Rossellini on several of his movies as a writer. Whether or not one prefers his neorealist period to his baroque one is up for contention, but it’s a pleasure in either event to see the off-kilter characters who would populate his… Read More The Flowers of St. Francis (1950)
Seeing Things Secondhand 