Let me tell you about a guy named Justin Gott. First: He’s the host of a really fun podcast called The Rambling Ramblers. Here’s the pitch: Justin and his co-host, Pete Conway, pick a movie. It’s a movie Justin has not seen, but Pete has. Justin then sees the movie. They talk about the movie. … Continue reading
I tend to think that anytime I type a word about Oldboy, somebody out there inevitably will react with exasperation. “Good God, Andy,” that person future-writes, “shut up about Oldboy already, it’s been almost ten years since it came out, find another film to gush over, damn.” So I’m paranoid. Sue me. In defense of … Continue reading
Park Chan-wook’s protagonists make a decision to leave; I’m banking on you all to make a decision to READ. Continue reading
Someone said “hey, let’s put a Park Chan-wook film out on Blu-ray,” and I responded with “I will take a copy and write about it.” Continue reading
A movie about the most vengeful bird of all! Also, genocide and sexual violence. Continue reading
A note: I rarely, if ever, use the word “masterpiece” in any material I output about films either recently released or yet to be released, because in most cases that’s a bullshit word used in bullshit contexts for bullshit reasons by bullshit people. Most often, you hear about masterpieces on the festival circuit before the … Continue reading
I have no further words for Kuso, the first feature from Flying Lotus, aka Steve Ellison, because I expended them all while writing my review of the film for The Playlist. Suffice to say: It’s something else. As you’ll no doubt gather from the piece’s opening paragraph, I have a high threshold for fucked up movies, … Continue reading
It’s a quantifiable fact that I love the cinema of South Korea, thanks largely to the work of Park Chan-wook, whose magnum opus Oldboy remains one of my favorite movies of all time (of all time). But a decade and change after getting into Korean film, I have come to see Park as a gateway filmmaker, … Continue reading
Note: I wrote this review of Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin around two or so years ago, give or take, which is the blink of an eye in a cosmological context but close to a fucking lifetime in the context of film criticism born in the social media era. I’m sharing it here, now, for a couple … Continue reading
“Finding good reference points for Jessica Jones outside of the obvious is a bit tricky. Yes, the show has very clear noir roots (or neo-noir, for all the pedants out there); sure, Krysten Ritter’s role suggests shades of Veronica Mars. There are even a few brushstrokes of Demme and Fincher in here, too, exhibited in … Continue reading
Sometimes, people give you a thumbs up. Recently, Andy Buckle over at The Film Emporium did me that honor by name-dropping me in his Liebster Award blogathon post. Over a week has passed since he published his own response to this chain event– I’ll use work, real life, and a mountain of movie reviews as … Continue reading
The Large Association of Movie Blogs’ annual awards feature is up, running, and waiting for your nominations– and I’m campaigning for your votes. Continue reading
It’s hard to talk about the New Wave of South Korean cinema without at the very least touching on revenge pictures. Blame Chan-wook Park; his vengeance trilogy represents three of the best-received South Korean pictures released during the movement’s surge in the early-to-mid 2000s, and Park himself stands out as arguably the most talked about … Continue reading
For those who have read this blog for a while (or who have read it very thoroughly in a minute passage of time), my interest in defining films that are personal and unique to my individual identity and perspective as a cineaste should be well known from my (admittedly minimal) Movies That Matter series to … Continue reading
There’s an argument out there somewhere stating that in the last ten years, film noir has enjoyed something of a revival with the release of films like Memento, Oldboy, and most notably Brick, and maybe there’s some validity to that claim. But film noir as a genre never died out; it just lost a lot … Continue reading
Driving home from work the other day, I plugged my iPod into my tape adapter (you read me right) and slowly cycled through the albums stored on that most ingenious (and simultaneously nefarious) of inventions, painstakingly considering each record in an effort to pick out which album made the most sense as the soundtrack for … Continue reading
I wake up disoriented and dazed; I open my eyes, and I can hardly see through an aggressive sheen of bright light. As my vision adjusts, I find myself on a white, sandy shore as I stare across water so blue as to be otherworldly. Wind flutters through my hair. The sun beats down on … Continue reading
(Note: I meant to pick this series up much, much sooner than I did, but as you can probably deduce my Top 25 of the Decade list demanded my full attention. You can take a look at the first entry in this two-part series here. Another note: This series is not spoiler-free in the slightest, … Continue reading
Coming down the home stretch of this series. For those just tuning in: Part one, part two, part three, and part four for your reading pleasure. 5. Knocked Up: Ben is a lovable stoner loser with no direction or genuine ambition; Alison is a career-oriented young woman who recently received an on-air promotion at E! … Continue reading
When did you first hear of Park Chan-wook? For those of my readership who haven’t heard this name, South Korean auteur Park technically began his career in film in 1992 with a movie called Moon is the Sun’s Dream. He followed up this entry– which was a critical and commercial failure– with a pair of … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 