Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Starring Thanapat Saisayamar, Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee Boonmee (Saisaymar) is a man who is fairly well-off and who, by the looks of it, is faintly doomed. His kidney is not doing well; the laborious process of draining it hasn’t been unsuccessful, but it isn’t helping him in the way it will need… Read More Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
Dir. David Cronenberg. Starring James Spader, Deborah Kara Unger, Elias Koteas This is a review of an NC-17 film and as such contains discussion of some topics which are better suited to mature readers. There’s a scene a little more than halfway through the movie which defines Crash for me, one which sticks the film’s… Read More Crash (1996)
Dir. Jan de Bont. Starring Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, Philip Seymour Hoffmann The roving band of free spirits who chase tornadoes, who each have their own weird nickname and their own competency within the group, have seen it all in their years of following twisters…except for an F5. Only Jo (Hunt), whose father was killed… Read More Twister (1996)
It’s our first B&B B&B in a while, and we use to clear out the storeroom a little bit while March Madness is still happening, more or less. (‘Tis the season! And the “branding” we don’t actually have!) We both run a slightly different Shakespeare bracket, Matt makes some tough choices about sandwiches, and Tim… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 34: In My Father’s Warehouse There Are Many Brackets
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. A lovely young woman named Melanie (Hedren) – all lovely young women are named Melanie – is a flirt, a prankster, a teaser. She has the sort of verve for mischief that one… Read More The Birds (1963)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Jimmy Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger The idea behind Rope is a perfectly scrumptious one for a film; a pair of handsome young men, Brandon (Dall) and Phillip (Granger), decide to kill one of their friends for the thrill of it and then host a party immediately after, with food served from atop… Read More Rope (1948)
Dir. Todd Haynes. Starring Julianne Moore, Xander Berkeley, Peter Friedman Carol (Moore) flips through her guide to Wrenwood. Peter Dunning (Friedman) appears to have founded the center all the way back in 1978; by now it could be 1988, although the given year for the movie is ’87. 1978 is an interesting year for him… Read More Safe (1995)
Dir. Christopher Nolan. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page As the van which is holding the inception team and their mark tumbles, so too does the gravity change in a hallway where Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) is fighting a manifestation of Robert Fischer’s (Cillian Murphy) subconscious. The two of them come closer to falling up than anyone… Read More Inception (2010)
Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville. Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Irene Tunc Just as monster movies are often highly successful when the monster is hidden from our sight (Jaws, The Thing), so too can romances be terribly erotic when there’s absolutely no sex. Brief Encounter is such a film; it turns even the idea of a sexual liaison between the… Read More Leon Morin, Priest (1961)
Dir. Brad Bird. Starring Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano, Janeane Garofolo Up until 2007, here’s how Pixar movies had ended: Toy Story – Woody and Buzz chase down a moving truck on an RC car, fall with style into a minivan, and then have their first Christmas together A Bug’s Life – After the gruesome death of… Read More Ratatouille (2007)
Seeing Things Secondhand 