Foreword: Volker Schlöndorff’s Baal made me want to throw up all over myself. I’ve sat through some truly ugly and thoroughly noxious films in my time, many of them more overtly hideous than this one, but boy oh boy, I cannot think of the last time I sat through an 80 minute film that felt this … Continue reading
Well, I did it: I got an article up on Vulture. Maybe it’ll be the only one I do, though I really fucking hope not. If so, hey, I have that byline, and that’s another checkmark on my list of goals for 2017 (and just in the nick of time, which is generally how I … Continue reading
I’m a Daniel Day-Lewis partisan, I guess, because I can’t accept the idea that any actor in any movie in 2017 performs better than he does in Phantom Thread, but I can’t complain about Saoirse Ronan taking the top spot for her work in Lady Bird. …oh, right, sorry, forgot to start this off by saying that … Continue reading
I put down a thousand plus words about the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie, Phantom Thread, in my review for The Playlist; I put down a couple hundred more in a “best of the year” blurb I put together for the same site; I will be putting down even more hundreds of words for a piece I’m … Continue reading
Beefy film noir, violent, lurid crime flicks, Carroll Ballard, and early Stephen Frears make up the bulk of this month’s Criterion offerings. (Via Paste Magazine.)
Walking out of Lincoln, you may be struck at the revelation that Honest Abe had a pretty consistent comedic streak running through him. Would you believe that Spielberg’s biopic on one of the US’s greatest leaders happens to be one of the best comedies of 2012? I’m being dishonest, naturally; Lincoln, mired in a bloody stage … Continue reading
Rob Marshall is no stranger to the musical genre; just eight years ago he enjoyed considerable success adapting Bob Fosse’s iconic crime satire Chicago, both critical and monetary, from Broadway to the silver screen. His film wound up inexplicably snagging the Best Picture award at the Oscars, and even if Marshall himself got black flagged … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 