Culture Snob When Smoke was released in 1995, it received generally good notices as an intriguing but slight art-house film. Critics noted the literary sensibility of novelist Paul Auster, but they didn’t appear to understand how the movie fit into his body of work.
It’s probably only a slight overstatement that Kronos Quartet has done more than anybody else to bring “classical” music to the rock world, by playing the music of Jimi Hendrix and Mr. Bungle but also by taking it seriously, and without sniggering.
Did they do it? Capturing the Friedmans is wonderfully rich, and of all the things in it, this is among the least rewarding lines of inquiry for me. The most obvious point of the film is that we cannot know the truth of the accusations, so why argue about it?
It probably sounds like faint praise to say The Quiet American is a good story well told, but it’s certainly not intended that way. I mean that the movie is a solid, unpretentious, straightforward, compelling narrative that is skillfully written, directed, designed, filmed, and acted. It won’t knock you over, but you can’t find much fault with it. Plus: The Hours
I just don’t get how normal, smart adults get turned into raving geeks by Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
The Gits only released one album before singer Mia Zapata was killed, Frenching the Bully, but it’s quite amazing. The record is good – debuts are rarely great, and this has all the typical trappings – but it’s valuable as a document of how good Zapata was.
Eye of God is a great demonstration of the power of structure. The 1996 film written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson piles cliché upon cliché. And yet, the movie works.
The Stepford Wives is the strange case of an awful movie that somehow became part of the cultural vocabulary. How could something so unambiguously bad penetrate so deeply into our society?
My favorite albums starting with Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn …, Neko Case’s Blacklisted, The Clash’s London Calling, Coil’s Horse Rotorvator, and Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies.
Michael Moore’s divisive Bowling for Columbine is ingeniously critic-proof. If one complains about the politics of the movie, one if branded a right-winger. If one complains about fact-fudging or fairness, one is accused of missing the point.