Film diary

Whether they’re grappling with the side effects of success or (more likely) licking the wounds of failure, I don’t have much sympathy for people trying to be superstars. And as much as 20 Feet from Stardom is primarily an affectionate profile of some of pop’s most noteworthy backup singers, it spends a little too much time entertaining assertions that these (mostly) women’s status as historical footnotes is some kind of gross injustice.

Granted, it’s not… See more →

Veronica Mars has a lot of work to do. For the cult following of the TV series that spawned it, it needs to be a reunion, and for the potential fans who never saw that series, it needs to be an introduction. The series’ third season attempted a similar balancing act, eschewing the first two seasons’ year-long, serialized story arcs in favor of standalone episodes that wouldn’t put off new viewers unfamiliar with the backstory.… See more →

I don’t begrudge Thelma & Louise its iconic feminism – and it’s sad that a major motion picture asserting that women deserve to be treated like human beings is still revolutionary more than twenty years later – but the on-the-nose catharsis that defines the film also holds it back. As a pair of friends whose weekend vacation goes awry when one of them guns down a would-be rapist, Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon are an… See more →

No matter how many times I see The Silence of the Lambs, it is engrossing from start to finish. Anthony Hopkins’s Hannibal Lecter is unforgettable, but only as a foil for Jodie Foster’s much more sober Clarice Starling, without whom Lecter would be little more than a cartoon. Countless imitators tried and failed to replicate that magic, including Lambs’ two sequels. The leads anchor the film, and everything else falls into place around them.

It always seemed to me that Tonya Harding was not sufficiently contrite in public regarding her husband’s involvement in the attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan. Harding was quick to assert her innocence, but she never seemed all that mortified that someone was assaulted on her behalf, and in this documentary twenty years after the infamous event, she still doesn’t. But she is plenty bitter, and while that’s no surprise coming from someone whose life… See more →

When the credits roll at the end of The Act of Killing, roughly a third of the crew is listed as “Anonymous.” These are presumably Indonesians who have gone nameless for fear of retribution by a government, new to democracy, which perceives their participation in the film as an act of defiance. For the same reason, virtually no one who is not closely aligned with the government is interviewed in the film. The voice of… See more →

It’s hard to pin down the horror/sci-fi alchemy that makes Alien work so well, but probably more than anything else, its landmark production design is indispensable, drawing the viewer helplessly into its lived-in world, making the film’s claustrophobic dread palpable.

Carrie is one of the better Stephen King adaptations, thanks largely to Sissy Spacek’s fragile performance and its memorably masterful climax. Still, I always feel like the first hour is mostly just something to sit through while waiting for the big moment.

It’s hard not to be inspired by Wayne White’s restless creative spirit and whimsical, hand-crafted artworks across an array of media, and his cheerfully acerbic raconteur skills make the story of his journey as an artist that much more entertaining.

The Lego Movie is probably the best unabashed, 100-minute toy commercial anyone is ever likely to see. It certainly helps that the toy on offer has a long history of superior quality, and that the imagination- and creativity-focused brand values the film is designed to bolster are essentially unassailable. But it still could have been a disaster in the wrong hands, especially given the cloying, self-acknowledged cliché at the center of it: You are special.… See more →

Elena is a character study of an aging housewife who is frustrated by her wealthy husband’s refusal to offer financial assistance to her struggling son (from a previous marriage) and his family. It’s hard to tell how much one’s appreciation of the film is contingent upon their understanding of the class divide in post-Soviet Russia (mine is admittedly limited). Every plodding, beautifully shot moment of its excessive runtime is an overt examination of one or… See more →

A pompous high school literature teacher, Germain, encourages the troubling voyeurism of a promising (and manipulative) student, Claude, intending to help Claude improve his writing. But as Claude’s story becomes increasingly invasive into the real lives of his characters, Germain’s motives as an instructor come into question. Within that premise, In the House is an exploration of the audience’s role as a participant in art, and in particular the audience’s complicity in the sins of… See more →

An inventive and well-constructed mystery thriller that consistently intrigues without ever veering too far into pulp. A few too many answers pile up at the end for the resolution to be completely satisfying, but overall, I really enjoyed the ride.

If you’ve seen Johnny Knoxville’s hilarious Irving Zisman schtick in the Jackass movies, you know what to expect from Bad Grandpa, and it delivers. But trying to use an actual story to string together its collection of pranks and gags disrupts the pace and dilutes the comedy. The absence of character development was never a problem for the Jackass series before, so I’m not sure why they decided to try it here. The closing credits… See more →

There’s a strange narrative conflict at the heart of 12 O’Clock Boys. On one hand, the broader story of Baltimore’s brand of impoverished urban escapism through reckless dirt bike riding probably could have been told well enough in a short film. The local news clips and interviews with riders get pretty repetitive after awhile. On the other hand, following its charismatic protagonist, Pug, through three of his formative years (ages 12–15) offers a valuable glimpse… See more →

A wonderfully atmospheric, somewhat Lynchian portrait of emotional deterioration, with no small amount of affection for giallo films and the analog audio era. Excellent score by James Cargill and the late Trish Keenan of Broadcast.

I was 22 before I finally saw The Godfather. I previously had no interest in mob movies, mainly because of what I knew about Tommy DeVito, Joe Pesci’s character in Goodfellas, whose maniacal extortionist with an intolerable sense of entitlement I took to be the genre’s dominant archetype. While it turned out that wasn’t entirely off-base, I was pleased to find many Mafia stories richer than I expected.

Fifteen years later, The Wolf of Wall… See more →

In Her, the central romance between Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) and his artificially intelligent operating system Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) is developed almost entirely through conversation, since Samantha doesn’t have a physical presence. As a result, virtually everything either character thinks or feels is plainly stated aloud, giving viewers little to assess for themselves. The film is its own CliffsNotes. And while it touches on various difficulties inevitable to a relationship between a metaphysically boundless AI and… See more →

Computer Chess is a paradox. It appears to be a (successful) attempt to be as dry and impenetrably arcane as its subject can be, even for people who might be interested in that subject. In theory, it’s a compelling experiment, but its very definition requires that it offer no rewards, and for the most part, it meets that requirement.

Any film that sets out to play a bunch of Big Star music and talk to people in the know about how it was made and why it’s great can’t really go wrong, and this one doesn’t. But while the early acts offer engaging coverage of the birth of Memphis’s legendary Ardent Studios, Big Star’s formation, and the great records that followed, what comes after is a bit murky. There is much hypothesizing about why… See more →

This was good for a few chuckles, but I expected more from the collective comedic pedigree involved. There are plenty of gags reminiscent of other John Landis classics like The Blues Brothers and Three Amigos, but Trading Places just doesn’t have the same heart. That said, as a Philadelphia area native, I did appreciate the many location shots as a great snapshot of the city in 1983.

McConaughey is excellent, but the redemption story is pretty by-the-numbers, and is ultimately overpowered by a rather shrill anti-FDA polemic.

Somehow I never noticed the US foreign policy allegory happening here.