Film diary

Relocating Philip Marlowe from 1940s Los Angeles to 1970s London is such a patently terrible idea that it’s no wonder no one involved in this seems to make much of an effort. But some contributions seem actively intent on dragging it down even further, most notably the tacky TV movie aesthetics and Candy Clark’s embarrassing, absolutely ridiculous take on Camilla (née Carmen) Sternwood. Awful.

Many years in the making, Mad God is the stop-motion passion project of special effects legend Phil Tippett, best known for his pioneering work on Star Wars, RoboCop, Jurassic Park, and others.

Tippett cites Karel Zeman’s revered collage aesthetic as a primary inspiration, but I see a lot more of the Quay brothers in Mad God, or at least the grotesque brand of Street of Crocodiles worship seen in Adam Jones’s early Tool videos. While… See more →

This is essentially a six-hour Vox explainer video—sans cute graphics and podcast cadence—shoehorned into a drama. Like The Wire before it, it excels at unpacking long-festering issues in the American criminal justice system, making a product that’s both coherent and cogent out of a complex story on a non-linear timeline. But all the information it wants to convey and all the points it wants to make are spoken rather plainly, which may make it successful… See more →