Dir. Wolfgang Becker. Starring Daniel Bruhl, Katrin Saß, Maria Simon After her husband escapes to the west, a single mother of two, Christiane Kerner (Saß), becomes deeply involved in East German politics. The government is grateful. Such people are common enough in any nation: they devote themselves at a local level and become symbols at… Read More Good Bye, Lenin! (2003)
Dir. Lone Scherfig. Starring Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina Movies about young adults very frequently – that is, always – feel a need to tell the audience that their characters change. One’s teenage years [he sighed while cleaning his eyeglasses] are the beginning of a life’s summer, after a springlike childhood and before the autumn… Read More An Education (2009)
Dir. Ron Howard. Starring Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Matthew Macfadyen Howard Zinn is probably the most important historian that the United States has ever produced. (Sorry, Charles Beard. I love you too.) Regardless of how you feel about him – in other words, regardless of whether or not you think “historical revisionism” is an honest… Read More Frost/Nixon (2008)
Dir. James Bridges. Starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas Spoilers for The China Syndrome abound below. Usually I wouldn’t include a spoiler alert for a movie that’s more than thirty years old, but the film is fairly taut, and knowing too much about it would detract from the viewing experience. It’s Los Angeles in… Read More The China Syndrome (1979)
Dir. Robert Redford. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Rob Morrow, John Turturro About an hour or so into Quiz Show, I found myself…not bored, exactly, but struggling from an almost oppressive dose of formula. About an hour and five minutes into Quiz Show, I wondered if that was necessarily the movie’s fault. After all, most of the… Read More Quiz Show (1994)
Dir. Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson. Starring Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz Shrek, when it came out, was an enormous breath of fresh air. Like dawn going down to day, the Disney Renaissance had ended two years before with Tarzan, in my mind one of the more uneven features of that group. Dinosaur and… Read More Shrek (2001)
Dir. Damien Chazelle. Starring Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser People listen to music for repetition, predictability. This is why a three minute ditty on the radio can repeat its chorus three times and no one is bothered, and this is why people in pressed shirts go crazy for Ravel’s Bolero. Even music like Schoenberg’s… Read More Whiplash (2014)
Dir. Dan Scanlon. Starring Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Helen Mirren The girls are at summer camp. They report something strange is in their cabin. None of them are frightened – in fact, some even seem a little giddy. Regardless, forest rangers and other law enforcement quickly evacuate the girls before heading in. Slowly, quietly, cautiously,… Read More Monsters University (2013)
Back to the Disney Renaissance, and for an accidentally long podcast. We talk about how Josh is this close to being Lord Greystoke, Tim’s need to make everything he loves relate to Absalom, Absalom!, and most importantly, we join the rest of the Internet in asking if a hot dog is a sandwich. Come on… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 6: Autopsy-Turvy (Disney Renaissance, Part 2)
Dir. Nicholas Stoller. Starring Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Russell Brand I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall for the third time recently. I first saw it maybe a year after it came out. I watched it again in college, remembering how much fun I had when I saw it as a high school senior, and then wondered… Read More Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Seeing Things Secondhand 