Dir. Alexandre Aja. Starring Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper, Cso Cso You know what’s great? Crawl is great. There is a dog named Sugar (Cso Cso) who shows up very early in the movie. She gets close-ups and everything, so naturally one feels an immediate closeness to her. Sugar is also such a good name for a dog,… Read More Crawl (2019)
Dir. David Fincher. Starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Carrie Coon There must be some contingent of the viewing public that just likes to watch crazy women, and to plaster on the vaguest psychological terminology to explain away why they might do something lurid and shocking, like throw some red wine on their panties and then… Read More Gone Girl (2014)
Dir. Sam Mendes. Starring George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Claire Duburcq The Allies won. There, I got the spoilers out of the way. With about forty-five minutes left in the movie, finally something happens that makes you say, “Ah, Deakins did this.” Schofield (MacKay) has just awoken. Where it was afternoon before now it is blue night. He… Read More 1917 (2019)
Dir. Sam Weisman. Starring Brendan Fraser, Leslie Mann, John Cleese A beautiful young heiress, stuck in an engagement with a man she doesn’t seem to like very much, goes on a trip in which her fiance’s venality comes to the fore as a new suitor slouches in. This new man charms her, even though he’s… Read More George of the Jungle (1997)
Dir. Noah Baumbach. Starring Jason Hamilton, Chris Eigeman, Olivia D’Abo Image links back here The difference between Metropolitan and Kicking and Screaming is about a decade’s worth of perspective. Watching Kicking and Screaming I wished that Whit Stillman had been the one making it rather than Baumbach in the way that people prefer butter to margarine. (The presence of Chris… Read More Kicking and Screaming (1995)
Dir. the Safdie Brothers, who I will start to refer to by their Christian names when they get separate Twitter accounts. Starring Adam Sandler, Julia Fox, Kevin Garnett Spoilers because this is still in theaters. I am so tired of leading off with spoilers. I have got to start writing about stuff from the ’40s… Read More Uncut Gems (2019)
Dir. Christopher Nolan. Starring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart I wrote a review of Mamma Mia! a few years ago, and now I’m kicking myself for not saving it for one of my unlikely movie pairings to alongside The Dark Knight. The two of them couldn’t be neater fits: two of the top five grossers of 2008,… Read More The Dark Knight (2008)
Dir. Josh Cooley. Starring Tom Hanks, Annie Potts, Tony Hale Toy Story 4 is like the reverse ship of Theseus. In the original problem, the physical ship rots away and is replaced piece by piece, and the question is primarily whether the naming of the ship, or the spirit of the ship, is what makes… Read More Toy Story 4 (2019)
Dir. Eiichi Yamamoto. Starring Aiko Nagayama, Tatsuya Nakadai, Katsutaka Ito Dir. Volker Schlondorff. Starring Jeremy Irons, Ornella Muti, Alain Delon Two movies about sex, which go about the subject about as differently as one could imagine. In Belladonna of Sadness, the Devil (Nakadai) appears to Jeanne (Nagayama) as a, well, he’s a penis, and he… Read More Belladonna of Sadness (1973) and Swann in Love (1984)
Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison, Richard Burton The most famous scene of Cleopatra is one that unfolds slowly, but in a sense it’s what we came for or, at least, what we knew we’d be getting when we saw Hermes Pan’s name pop up in the opening credits. Caesar (Harrison) has… Read More Cleopatra (1963)
Seeing Things Secondhand 