The most important thing about Princess Diana is that she died. This is not to be reductive to the tumultuous and complicated life she led before her untimely passing, but from the arc of history Diana’s life will always exist … Continue reading SFIFF Review: Spencer Provides an Elliptical Look Into the Impenetrable Life of Princess Diana
Expectations can be a dastardly thing. What you want, and what a movie is actually giving can create a gulf that hampers the experience no matter the quality on display. It’s both the wonder and the danger of the film … Continue reading Three Films Show The Flexibility of Genre and Tone at SFIFF
When going to a film festival one always has to be concerned about the time. When screenings start, if there’s enough minutes on the clock to grab food, or if a movie beginning late won’t run so long that you … Continue reading Memoria Bewilders and The Worst Person in the World Charms on the First Full Day of the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival
In Which We Look Out Windows I’m going to level with you, the name of this series is a lie. Yes it is ostensibly the sequel to my feature covering the movies of the 90’s, but it’s title is wack. … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 23: Lost in Translation
In Which Nothing is Learned The Coen Brothers are arguably the most critically lauded filmmakers of the last forty years. Their decades spanning career includes films of all genre and tones, features a wide variety of movie stars, and have … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 23: Burn After Reading
In Which Something is Rotten in New York Spike Lee is one of the hardest directors to talk about. One reason is that he has such an expansive body of work, a filmography rapidly approaching four decades and multiple dozens … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 22: Inside Man
In Which the Future May Pass Us By When I wrote about Southland Tales I made note that that movie got a whole lot of mileage out of surprising prescience. What seemed to be absurd nonsense in 2006 turned out to be … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 21: Children of Men
For the Want of a Nail Of the Three Amigos of Cinema Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu is the most divisive. He lacks both the enveloping compassion and commercial instincts of del Toro, and the whizz bang fireworks wonder of Cuaron. He’s … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 20: Babel
Once Upon a Time Here’s a fun fact. In the 2010’s five of the ten Best Director Oscars went to three people: Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Guillermo del Toro. Now this in and of itself isn’t that crazy … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 19: Pan’s Labyrinth
In Which There’s a Lesson to be Learned One of the truisms of film watching is as follows: the greatest sin a movie can commit is not to be bad, but to be boring. While truisms tend to be overly … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 18: Lions for Lambs
Do love mountains of gore? Explosions of violence? Tough talking grunts? Big heists? And all in one movie! Than you might have enjoyed Zack Snyder’s latest zombie opus Army of the Dead. Yes it might be a blatant rip of Aliens, yes Snyder give … Continue reading Spoiler Space: Army of The Dead
In Which it’s David V. Goliath The film landscape of the mid 2000’s is haunted. A specter looms over Hollywood and many a different production shrug underneath its shadow. There is a dark and ominous force that creeps into the … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 17: In The Valley of Elah
In Which We Are Still in the Desert As discussed in the article about Munich, movies made about the past are never just about the past. Especially when the contemporary world is roiling through a complicated and difficult to parse moment. Such … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 16: Jarhead
In Which We Met on Montauk As elucidated through the previous articles in this series the 2000’s were a boon for a certain style of indie film. The look and aesthetic of the previous decade was ebbing in favor of … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 15: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
In Which it’s Silence of the Lambs Meets Psycho In the early part of the 2000’s a certain pall cast over the culture. Cut from the brief moment between the turn of the century and the 9/11 attacks. This short … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 14: Adaptation
In Which There Are No Brooms on the Horizon In the mid to late 00’s there was a sudden, and honestly kind of surprising, boom of great movies. For a period over about two and a half years there was … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 13: Michael Clayton
In Which I Was Busy Hello. Not a full article today because of stuff with family and the fact that I lost something and spent a better part of my free time trying to find it. Anyhow here’s a schedule … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise Presents: A Schedule
In Which Bond Begins There is an eternal truism in the world of filmmaking, Hollywood always learns the wrong lessons from success. When something strikes a chord with audiences studios frequently chase the superficial elements of what worked rather than … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 12: Casino Royale
In Which Home has a High Price No movies about the past are actually about the past. Yes they may recount, in varying levels of detail, events that happened in bygone days, and said accounts can indeed tell a whole … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 11: Munich
In Which the Camera Starts Shaking In 2002 three action espionage movies graced theaters: Die Another Day, xXx, and The Bourne Identity. While both Bond and Cage duked it out to be the coolest, hippest, and “not your daddiest” of the spies, it was … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 10: The Bourne Supremacy
In Which it’s Time to Enter the Xander Xone In 1995 ESPN brought the world the first X Games. An annual competition to highlight the world of so called extreme/action sports. These were trials of skill that skipped the average … Continue reading Post Millennial Malaise 09: xXx
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