There are some books that I read over and over again. From the time I was in sixth grade up into my last year of college, I read To Kill a Mockingbird at least twice a year. (I’ll be citing the edition that is yellow and a little torn beyond its years: it’s the first… Read More Villainous Age in Harper Lee’s “Oeuvre”
Dir. John Ford. Starring John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Henry Brandon The diagetic portions of this movie begin with a surprisingly striking image: a woman stands in a doorway, black in the way Pierre-Auguste Renoir said a painting should never use black, her silhouette blocking the majestic view of the ostensibly Texan skyline. (It’s Monument Valley,… Read More The Searchers (1956)
Dir. David Lean. Starring Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Cyril Raymond At least it wasn’t penalties. When Laura Bassett’s clearance fell short and went in off the crossbar (half an hour after Toni Duggan’s shot went out off the crossbar), resulting in a crushing own goal with no time left for England to regroup, the result… Read More Brief Encounter (1945)
Dir. Alexander Mackendrick. Starring Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison There’s a movie out there about what Bill O’Reilly would have been like if he’d been born handsome in a different era. It’s called Sweet Smell of Success, and you should see it. If you are like me, and you went to high school and… Read More Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Dir. Pete Docter. Starring Amy Poehler, Kaitlyn Dias, Phyllis Smith That’s my Middle West – not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns but the thrilling, returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows… Read More Inside Out (2015)
Dir. Oliver Stone. Starring Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones, and Joe Pesci I was looking through the Wikipedia article for The Da Vinci Code recently, and I was surprised/not surprised to find that there’s a Wikipedia page for “Criticism of The Da Vinci Code.” Without really reading the article, one can guess at its contents… Read More JFK (1991)
Dir. Isao Takahata. Starring Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi, Akemo Yamaguchi When I heard that Ender’s Game was going to be adapted to film, I was hurt. This was not a, “Man, they’re not going to make it how I imagined it!” or a “Jeez, they’re going to really mess up Bean” or anything like that.… Read More Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Monsters University was greeted the same way that Brave was by critics and moviegoers alike: “It was cute. It would’ve been really good for a Disney movie, but it wasn’t what we expected from a Pixar movie.” The statement is, of course, doubly patronizing, and rather more unfair to one than the other. As hard as it is… Read More The Sorrows of Aging Pixar
Once upon a time, I didn’t feel like doing schoolwork, so I read Fifty Shades of Grey instead. My girlfriend’s roommate had a copy which I borrowed, and I finished the book in an evening. This was not a terribly difficult enterprise, as you can imagine: E.L. James is not going to become James Joyce any time… Read More Fifty Shades of Grey: A Chance for Bravery
Here goes another one of my full-movie commentaries. Today, it’s Disney’s Hercules, which was perhaps my favorite movie in elementary school and is certainly responsible for the interest in mythologies which weirded the heck out of my neighbors when I was a seven-year-old. Consider, for example, this paraphrasing of my Halloween experience in 1998: Me: Trick… Read More Hercules (1997)
Seeing Things Secondhand 