Dir. Robert Altman. Starring Maggie Smith, Kelly Macdonald, Ryan Philippe In retrospect, it was a mistake to make Gosford Park a murder mystery. What makes Nashville and Short Cuts effective is the unbelievably patient burn among small pockets of people which culminates in an event which no person can ignore. In Short Cuts, it’s the earthquake that no one can escape from;… Read More Gosford Park (2001)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Victor Sjostrom, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin We are forced to confront ourselves and our pasts only when they are placed directly in front of us and we are told, “Look!” More than anything, I find this message at the heart of Wild Strawberries, and it is a heart that is alternately warm… Read More Wild Strawberries (1957)
Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. Starring Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman Llewyn Davis (Isaac) has made an accidental habit of picking up orange cats. (I love cats. I confess to some slight distraction when they were on screen. Also, this movie has two cats, so by the standard the Academy set after The Artist, and… Read More Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Matt and I haven’t had a night at the B&B B&B in a little while, so we decided to talk NBA together in an effort to be relevant. We put in our two cents about the Boogie Cousins drama (#freeboogie), wonder about the legacies of the Grizzlies and Clippers, and try to predict which team… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 33: And Everyone Hates the Clippers
Before going into straight review territory on this blog, I used to spend a lot more of my time making lists; I blame Buzzfeed for taking the joy out of the format. But recently, while I was reading Ben Lindbergh’s recent post at The Ringer about whether or not a movie should be remade, I… Read More Remakes I’m Asking For
Dir. Wim Wenders. Starring Bruno Ganz, Peter Falk, Solveig Dommartin I haven’t been to Berlin in nearly ten years now, and the Berlin that Wenders and company depict here is a vastly different one than I saw. For one thing, the Wall still stands; one scene, as if to emphasize the non-reality of the actors… Read More Wings of Desire (1987)
Dir. Alejandro G. Inarritu. Starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone The star of Birdman is Emmanuel Lubezski, the cinematographer who at this writing has won three consecutive Oscars for Best Cinematography in three seriously stylish films: Gravity, Birdman, and The Revenant. Technically speaking, this is one of the most remarkable films of the decade. Edits are hidden so that… Read More Birdman (2014)
Dir. Robert Altman. Starring Tim Robbins, Annie Ross, Julianne Moore Pesticides are being dropped on Los Angeles,and God defend the right. Julianne Moore’s character is safely inside at a concert (with Alex Trebek!), but there’s a similar motif to what you find in Safe a couple years later. Sherri (Madeleine Stowe) yells at her husband,… Read More Short Cuts (1993)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullmann Cries and Whispers is planted in a middle ground between the theatrical and the cinematic. As a play, it works for the uncanny focus on its primary characters, the rapidly understandable emotions each character holds back, the dramatic moments of pain, the rich setting in absolutely… Read More Cries and Whispers (1972)
Dir. Charles Sturridge. Starring Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Jonathan Coy (My thoughts on the preceding episode are here.) Anthony Blanche can’t hide his revulsion when he thinks of Kurt (Coy), the German ex-soldier who is something between Sebastian’s ward and his pet. Anthony, who has acclimated to ’20s London in a way that he never… Read More Brideshead Revisited S1E7, “The Unseen Hook”
Seeing Things Secondhand 