100 Favorite Albums
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.
Tagged: Favorite Things, Lists
Bowling for Michael Moore
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.
Tagged: Bowling for Columbine, Documentaries, Michael Moore, Politics, Reviews
Terry Gilliam Meets John Hughes
Although a description of Donnie Darko might make it sound like an amalgam of motifs from the mind of Terry Gilliam, the film integrates its strangeness so well into a larger narrative that it feels more realistic than most movies. It’s funny, frightening, and ultimately devastating, a human story told very, very well.
Tagged: Donnie Darko, Reviews, Richard Kelly, Science Fiction
Spike Lee’s Messy Beauty
Spike Lee’s 25th Hour would appear to be about a good-hearted drug dealer’s last day of freedom before he begins a seven-year prison sentence, but the movie insistently pushes itself beyond that. It should be a circumscribed drama limited to the dealer (named Monty and played by Edward Norton), his girlfriend, his father, and his two best friends, but the film regularly veers into the margins.
Tagged: 25th Hour, Reviews, Spike Lee, Ways of Watching
The Best Special Effect
Four years in the making, the documentary Winged Migration is beautiful to watch yet empty. For all the time, money, and effort spent filming migrating birds, would it have been too much to ask to bring an editor on-board to turn the result into something a bit more compelling?
Tagged: Documentaries, Reviews
Why Go to Movies?
I was expecting something special out of the IMAX presentation of The Lion King, but it was merely bigger than I’d ever seen it. This was not the transcendent experience I expected and (to a degree) hoped for.
Tagged: Reviews, Ways of Watching
Failing Well
Some movies are difficult to criticize. Yes, they’re bad, but they’re well-intentioned and made with a certain amount of skill and ambition. The filmmakers have given the audience credit for being intelligent and open, and viewers ought to re-pay the favor. So it is with May, the low-budget solo debut from writer/director Lucky McKee. The movie is an attempt at a character-driven horror movie, and for that alone it deserves to be seen and praised.
Tagged: Horror, Lucky McKee, May, Reviews
The Construction of Memory
After watching David Cronenberg’s Spider, I was acutely underwhelmed and disappointed. It could be that the movie’s impact on my first viewing – akin to dropping a light object onto a feather pillow – was a function of overblown expectations. Or it could be that the movie was designed to end with more of a whimper than a bang.
Tagged: Books Into Film, David Cronenberg, Patrick McGrath, Reviews, Spider
Truth and Consequences
If you think the subject of Atom Egoyan’s Ararat is the genocide in 1915 of 1.5 million Armenians by Turks (as most critics seem to believe), you’ll find the movie a confused mess. But reducing the film to that summary is akin to saying the director’s The Sweet Hereafter was about a bus accident, or that his Exotica was about strippers.
Tagged: Ararat, Atom Egoyan, Dramas, Misunderstood Movies, Reflexivity, Reviews
Fixing Flawed Films
Give me a pair of scissors and some tape and I can significantly improve some movies – those whose major flaws are easily corrected with some minor surgery. The movies might not be great when I’m done with them, but they’ll be a hell of a lot better than what I started with. Phone Booth is one example. I watched the movie and thought, “How did they fuck that up?”
Tagged: Filmmaking, Joel Schumacher, Reviews