OSS 177: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006), Michel Hazanavicius, B
Pariah (2011), Dee Rees, B+
War Horse (2011), Steven Spielberg, C+
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011), Steven Spielberg, A-
A Soul Haunted by Painting (1995), Shuqin Huang, B
Rubber (2011), Quentin Dupieux, A
Surviving Life (2011), Jan Svankmajer, B
Wild Grass (2010), Alain Resnais, C-
Hugo (2011), Martin Scorsese, A-
A Time For Drunken Horses (2000), Bahman Ghobadi, B+
Incubus (1966), Leslie Steves, B-
“It wasn’t until a good thirty minutes into The Artist that I realized this was neither an homage or a post-modern genre scramble to an artistic form that’s been gone for 80-something years. This was, with only the smallest of dismissible instances, the genuine article. The Artist, if you didn’t know, is an upbeat, “Golden Days of Hollywood” silent film and it is adorable.”
Read the rest of my review at About.com.
“When Captain Kirk declared “risk is our business” in the season-two TOS episode “Return to Tomorrow” yes, he was discussing the nobler aspects of human potential. But he was also talking about big, nasty, oftentimes hairy space creatures that could turn your internal organs into chunky tomato soup with a glance. The strange, new worlds of Star Trek have some of the best villains in science fiction, but with all that infinite diversity in infinite combinations come a few that no amount of disbelief suspension can make scary. Here, then, are the 10 Least Threatening Star Trek Villains.”
“The Descendants opens with a snapshot of the sublime. A beautiful woman is shown in close-up, coasting along in a motorboat on a summer day. If Merriam-Webster needed a photo to accompany their definition of “content,” this would more than suffice. After a fade to black, director Alexander Payne slowly begins to reveal the human drama beneath this one perfect moment in time.”
A good run these last few days.
THE IRON GIANT (1999), Brad Bird, B+
THE MUPPETS (2011), James Bobin, B
TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY (2011), Tomas Alfredson, A- (review link forthcoming)
SHAME (2011), Steve McQueen, B+ (review link forthcoming)
THE ARTIST (2011), Michel Hazanavicius, A- (review link forthcoming)
A SEPARATION (2011), Asghar Farhadi, A- (review link forthcoming) (probably)
WOODY ALLEN: A DOCUMENTARY (2011), Robert B. Weide, B+
TITAN A.E. (2000), Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, B+
My first published film review post-UGO is over at About.com.
Go there to read it (I say many poignant and clever things, I swear.)
It takes a movie like Immortals to make you realize what a masterpiece 300 is.
I don’t normally blog about shorts, but not every short has music produced by Rudy Van Gelder. How can something be this playful and this subversive?
I love this movie. When you watch it enough it takes on dreamlike properties. Not just the music (and dubbed dialogue) but the obtuse logic. It is one of the great examples of something that makes sense if you don’t think about it too much. (Word is the film was rushed into production to take advantage of tax incentives and written by DC in the early morning prior to each day’s filming.) I’ve even grown to love the horrendous acting by Stephen Lack. What would be gained my *NOT* having him speak his lines like a wide-eyed ten year old?
I pull this one out when it is 1 am and I don’t quite want to go to sleep yet.
Only The Great Dictator tops it in my opinion. (City Lights, I just can’t handle some of your schmaltz.)
Rather than trying to find anything new about this movie, let’s just revel in just how attractive and (ahem) modern Paulette Goddard looks in this pic. She’s supposed to be dressed like a waterfront street rat, but she looks like Brandeis student in conservative dress to me. Actresses from the 30s usually look to old fashioned to have instinctual appeal for me, but I put PG (and Ginger Rogers, for that matter) in a different camp.
A bit of a masterpiece.
An observant friend pointed out that one of this movie’s chief characteristics is that it never actually. . .starts. Much like the lives these characters are living, it is all about “what’s gonna be.” Then things don’t really work and they (in the case of the motor home) pull the plug.
When I saw this at Sundance I lost my mind and said it was a masterpiece. Maybe it was the elevation, because on second viewing (at home) it was merely very, very, very (very), very good.
I kinda love this awful picture. It certainly wears its nerdy, nerdy heart on its sleeve.
I had all sorts of original things to say about this movie, then I read what my friend Charlie Jane Anders had to say and I’m reduced, merely, to “ditto that.”
Hard to go wrong with Jack Oakie.
The first half of this picture is absolutely fantastic. Then, when the outlaws-posing-as-good-guys have to start, you know, being good lest the Hays Code go nuts, it gets a little standard. . .and then is merely good.
A hilarious Wild West courtroom scene, too – not too dissimilar from what’s seen in Deadwood.
A strangely unconventional Western from the expat director better known for movies like Cat People and Out of the Past.
It seems less interested in plot (or establishing who are the heroes and villains) than with setting. It also did a barn raising decades before Witness.
Still, hard to get fully on board with a movie that refers to American Indians, with no compunction, as “Red Beasties.” Tough to take, even if it is coming from Andy Devine’s mouth.
Rented from Netflix b/c it features Hoagy Carmichael singing our wedding song, “Ol’ Buttermilk Sky.” It is the last thing that happens just before the credits roll.
How can a movie with this much phallic imagery also be so … squishy?
Ann had never seen this before and I took it as a personal victory that, a few days later, she referred to something as reminiscent of “the Resonator.”
