Dir. Spike Lee. Starring John David Washington, Adam Driver, Topher Grace BlacKkKlansman begins with the famous crane shot from Gone with the Wind, where Scarlett, desperate to pass off the responsibility for delivering Melanie’s baby, looks for Dr. Meade. It pulls further and further and further away from what must be hundreds of men lying… Read More BlacKkKlansman (2018)
Dir. Krzystof Kieslowski. Starring Juliette Binoche, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Irene Jacob Not since I wrote about Persona about eighteen months ago have I felt so reluctant to commit to what I think about a movie (or, indeed, three of them). Kieslowski died in 1996 and never lived to see the new millennium or the way the… Read More Three Colors Trilogy: Blue (1993), White (1994), Red (1994)
Tim: Matt has an entertaining question to lead us off with today for our discussion of reboots. Matt: Are these Conversations a reboot of the podcast? Tim: Here we are, living in our own little rebooted nightmare where we can no longer just say things, but where we must type all of our thoughts instead.… Read More Baumann and Burch Conversations #9: Reboots
Dir. Bob Fosse. Starring Shirley MacLaine, John McMartin, Chita Rivera Usually it is a death sentence for a movie if its best scenes don’t really include its major character or have anything to do with its plot. Sweet Charity doesn’t deserve the chair, though; if it were a person it would have been released already for time… Read More Sweet Charity (1969)
Dir. Ron Mann There’s nothing remotely Altmanesque about Altman, which, given the practically fetishistic load the movie hangs on the word, seems disappointing. (One wants to like the presence of past Altman collaborators giving definitions to the word, as I know I did when Michael Murphy went first. It was when I realized Michael Murphy wasn’t… Read More Altman (2014)
Dir. Nigel Cole. Starring Sally Hawkins, Geraldine James, Daniel Mays There’s a strand of thought which automatically equates what’s right with vegetarianism. One does it because it’s healthy, or good for the planet, or because it’s more ethical than eating animals. One doesn’t do it because it opens the palate to the widest possible range… Read More Made in Dagenham (2010)
Dir. Ray Müller By the early ’90s, Riefenstahl had had a long time to think about the answers to questions like those posed by Müller throughout the movie. She “regrets” making Triumph of the Will, was never a member of the Nazi Party, never infused her work with anti-Semitic language or “race theory,” was out of… Read More The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993)
Dir. Susan Johnson. Starring Lana Condor, Noah Centineo, Anna Cathcart Image links back here In all the articles weeping and wailing about how romantic comedies are dead, there are frequent culprits like “the demise of the mid-budget movie” or “the target demographics like superheroes” or even just “Katherine Heigl” are always at the forefront. But… Read More To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)
Dir. William Wyler. Starring Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire, Anthony Perkins One walks away from Friendly Persuasion wishing that the film had been more serious about its characters’ beliefs. It has the seeds of a good movie in it, even an unusual one. Friendly Persuasion is episodic and tranquil in a way that mainstream American movies rarely are anymore. Would… Read More Friendly Persuasion (1956)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Claude Rains Pain boils down to a loss of control. Something outside of our reach hurts, and for the most part there is nothing we can do to stop that hurt from coming, and above all else that’s what makes us crazy. Lingering deaths would be scary… Read More Notorious (1946)
Seeing Things Secondhand 