Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Friday, January 25, 2008

Hollywoodland (2006)


Any chance you get to see Bob Hoskins in a dramatic role is well worth your time, and he's great here.

Affleck's damn good too.

Also with Diane Lane, Adrien Brody, and this chick from The Craft.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Killer of Sheep (1977)


I've wanted to see this since I first read about it, probably in 1980.

I saw it on DVD two weeks ago. I watched it again on TCM Monday night.

I'd watch it again tomorrow. If it was eight hours long, that would be fine with me.

It's a beautiful film, visually just a series of astonishments.

The episode with the engine block says more about poverty than anything I've ever seen anywhere.

Hey, watch for it on TCM next year on Martin Luther King Day!

Recommended.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Anthony Lane

One great virtue of “The Orphanage” is its surfeit of women. We have just crawled to the end of a lopsided year in which many of the most popular movies, as well as those which are now straightening their ties and preparing for the awards season, suffered a kind of female elision. I thought Kelly Macdonald worked hard, and stirringly, to fight her corner in “No Country for Old Men,” but in the end the movie found too little time for her, and, as for “American Gangster” and “There Will Be Blood,” you would struggle to remember a single female face amid the tough guys. The most prominent woman was Katherine Heigl, round-bellied from her drunken rumpus in “Knocked Up,” a film that under the cover of its filthy patter marked a dismal retreat, cranking back the cause of women—not so much their social or sexual status as their raison d’ĂȘtre—to a stage so primitive that Hollywood sought to outgrow it decades ago. Carole Lombard would have taken one sip of a film like that and tipped it down the sink.

in this week's New Yorker

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters for DVD (2007)


This opens with the following subtitle:

EGYPT

ONE MILLION YEARS AGO


That's probably the funniest thing in the movie.

Primer (2004)


I watched this a little over a year ago and admired it, but had trouble following the storyline in the last third.

I watched it again a couple days ago -- same outcome.

If anyone knows for certain what happens in Act 3, please write.