October 2010
2 posts
“Years ago, a very wonderful comedy writer wrote a very funny book with a deep, a...”
– Anything Else (2003, dir. Woody Allen)
The Social Network (2010, dir. David Fincher) →
We haven’t blogged here in forever but we’re still watching movies. Half the team’s in Europe, but we were lucky enough to catch Ocean’s 13 together before he went. I’ve seen the Facebook movie twice and I have a lot of competing opinions about it but this HRO post jumped out at me as particularly ‘relevant’ (always). Maybe this post will be an...
May 2010
8 posts
I’m going to be working through a tremendous backlog. Who “I” is will be obvious momentarily. Bare with me.
Jafar Panahi imprisoned →
Dayereh (The Circle, 2000, dir. Jafar Panahi)
I don’t like to get upset about another culture/country’s problems because I know I am not nearly upset enough about the problems of my own. But this movie is difficult to watch without feeling like the situation in Iran is pretty fucked up. Add to that, that the filmmaker is currently in jail, held without charges, it seems because he...
Watch 阿飞正传 (Days of Being Wild, 1990, dir. Wong Kar-wai)
Days of Heaven (1978)
“Days of 1978”
April 2010
9 posts
花樣年華 (In the Mood for Love, 2000, dir. Wong Kar...
I saw this movie with my mom at the Kendall Square Cinema when it first came out; I was a junior in high school. What a good mom! She also took me to The Thin Red Line (ninth grade, at the Copley Square - closed) and Twelve Monkeys (sixth grade, at the Circle - closed). And she let me rent The Transformers Movie and The Muppet Movie (postmodernity distilled) as many times as I wanted when I was...
Collateral on Wikipedia →
Collateral (2004, dir. Michael Mann)
This is one of the movies I’ve seen most, I own the DVD, I wrote a paper about it for a class in college (the importance of its digital camerawork). Two interesting facts on Wikipedia, Stuart Beattie, the screenwriter, wanted Robert De Niro to play Jamie Foxx’s character to make it a revisionist Taxi Driver — remake potential. Also, it...
WatchElephant (1989, dir. Alan Clarke)
And then there’s Elephant (curiously produced and supposedly conceived by Danny Boyle) which uses only one strategy. Movies like this exist so that all the other movies can have characters and stories. I would urge all to watch it but I don’t think it matters, that it exists is enough.
Longest shot in a film, 17.5 minutes →
Hunger (2008, dir. Steve McQueen)
For a shot that is in the Guinness Book of World Records it is unassuming. The technical achievement is not obvious (a special camera magazine had to be made). But it transforms the movie. And I could feel that it was exceptional even as I was absorbed by the characters and debate it introduces into the movie — very late. This movie is so free with...
Humpday's Lynn Shelton on Steve McQueen's Hunger →
Humpday (2009, dir. Lynn Shelton)
Ay ay ay, by chance, I saw Humpday a few days before seeing Hunger. I post here in the order I see the movies but I sometimes write the posts out of order, as the spirit moves me. So I wrote about Hunger, a movie that gets one thinking, about it’s long central scene, only to come across this article a few weeks later when I finally got around to writing...
March 2010
29 posts
“[Jason Reitman]’s nice. He’s smart. He’s accomplished. I hate him.”
– Up in the Air (2009, dir. Jason Reitman)
Above is a quote from George Clooney (via NYT). I agree. There is something unlikeable about this guy and his movies (Juno is “positively creepy”). Still, it seems to me that this movie fulfills its Hollywood destiny and I liked it. I even...
Roman Polanski Trial Transcript →
The Ghost Writer (2010, dir. Roman Polanski)
The transcript linked above is very disturbing. I include it here only as proof against the idea that what Roman Polanski did (drug and rape a thirteen year old girl) was somehow less than a crime. That is nonsense. He is a criminal fugitive. It is fucked up that he received an Oscar for The Pianist, fucked up that people work with him, fucked up...
WatchUn prophète (A Prophet, 2009, dir. Jacques Audiard)
I saw director Jacques Audiard’s Read My Lips (2001) when I was in high school without knowing anything about it (and little about movies, in general) and as a result it is one I will remember forever; I’m scared to see it again, it has grown so much in my memory. When his next movie, The Beat My Heart Skipped (2005), came out, I...
“Better than any other movie [The Exiles] proves that there once was a city here,...”
– The Exiles (1961, dir. Kent Mackensie)
The quote above is from Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself, the essay movie from which I first heard of The Exiles. Often compared to Killer of Sheep (1977), because it is an early independent film about poor non-white people in Los Angeles, I...
grass, n. slang. A police informer.
The Hit (1984, dir. Stephen Frears)
If I were a gangster I wonder if I’d grass? This movie is like the prequel to The Limey (and Sexy Beast), I’ll have to give that one another captain.
February 2010
21 posts
“Tagline: ‘This is not your family. But this is your family.’”
– Rachel Getting Married (2008, dir. Jonathan Demme)
This movie irked me when I saw it in theaters. But a friend convinced me it deserved a second look and it is much better with the pressure off the unveiling of the plot. What I always liked about the movie is perfectly encapsulated when the...