A GIRL AND HER ALIEN

All things being equal, I am pleased that Home didn't turn out to be the movie to kill off DreamWorks Animation. I'd have been even more pleased if Home could have managed that feat while not sucking, but then, there had to be a reason why DreamWorks ended up on a cliff's edge in the first place, and it’s fun to believe that consistently churning out exhaustingly formulaic kids' films featuring ill-chosen celebrity casts and instantly-dated music...

Read More

APRIL 2015 MOVIE PREVIEW

We're meant to be warming up for summer, but the whole month feels a little bit empty, from where I stand. Not even any good-looking limited releases, really. But it has the merit of opening big with one of the popcorn movies I'm most excited about all year. And in that respect, it is a good warm-up.3.4.2015If you'd asked me as recently as 2009 if I thought that the day would come when a movie in the Fast & Furious franchise could possibly have been one of my most eagerly anticipated films of a year, I'd have found that a totally ridiculous...

Read More

TOY STORY

A review requested by Jackie Theballcat, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser.NB: Thanks to the work of curator Garrett Gilchrist, this film can be seen in nine parts at the indispensible Thief Archive on YouTube Nothing titled Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure should have the pedigree that Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure possesses. It boasts what's probably the single...

Read More

WHERE LOVE GHOST

A review requested by K. Rice, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser.In requesting a review of Paheli as part the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser, K. Rice noted that I've never once in almost ten years reviewed a Bollywood film, and wondered if that was due to my dislike of the industry's redundancy and artlessness, or if I'd simply never seen any of the things. It...

Read More

NO HAY BANDA

A review requested by Gabe P, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser.Spoilers are going to be crawling up and down this post like ants. If you haven't seen Mulholland Dr., know that I'd give it a perfect 10/10, and if I were making a list of the films of the 21st Century that are essential viewing for anyone even moderately interested in the art form, this would be jockeying for very top spot.There...

Read More

AVENGING ANGELS

The original sin of the anthology film is that no matter how tightly controlled it is, no matter how thematically tight, and no matter how aesthetically consistent, there's always going to be a segment that isn't as good as the others, and it's going to feel like it showed up in the worst possible place to fuck up the flow of the whole thing. In the case of Wild Tales, recent Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee from Argentina, which finds Damián...

Read More

TO RELUCTANTLY GO WHERE OTHERS HAVE GONE BEFORE

A review requested by Pip, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser.The story goes that J.J. Abrams, along with other chief creative minds involved in the making of the 2009 Star Trek reboot that one of their collective favorite films in the series up to that point was Galaxy Quest. This affection doesn't seem to have impeded Abrams & Co. any in their desire to make Star Trek resembles Star...

Read More

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DREAMWORKS

I don't make a habit of pimping out what I write over at the Film Experience, but I am inordinately proud of my articles for the last two weeks: a potted history of DreamWorks Animation from 1998 to today. It's in two parts: last week, I covered 1998-2009, and today, I go the rest of the way to the present. To the future, even, since I end with the impending release of the disgusting-looking Home.Please, go over! Enjoy! Join in the conversati...

Read More

BLURGEY WURGEY MURGENT

The best thing that I could possibly will myself to say about Divergent is that it was by whatever thin margin the more watchable of 2014's two virtually indistinguishable post-apocalyptic YA adaptations about the Enormously Special Snowflake whose pluck and to-heck-with-your-rules-man attitude helps to knock the legs out from underneath an inscrutable and preposterously contrived writerly conceit masquerading as a functional fantasy world, just...

Read More

BEST SHOTS: YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW

Fun times! For Hit Me with Your Best Shot this week, Nathaniel has assigned Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, one of the finest examples of that marvelously oddball genre, the 1960s Italian Anthology Film. And, on top of it, perhaps the most uncharacteristic work ever directed by Neorealist master Vittorio De Sica.The film is made up of three individual segments, each named for the woman played in it by Sophia Loren; cumulatively, they explore the sexual...

Read More

FAMILY REUNIONS

A review requested by James Cronan, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser.It's entirely possible that Tokyo Story isn't the best movie ever made. But I suspect that it might be the most perfect. Its construction is unthinkably good - not one single shot is wasted, and every cut serves a very clear and deliberate purpose. It is the film out of all films that I would want to show anybody who was...

Read More

I'M WITH THE BAND

A review requested by John, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser.Almost Famous of the year 2000 is surely the Cameron Crowest of Cameron Crowe films. Not just because it’s also the most baldly autobiographical of Cameron Crowe films, though I suspect that fact informs everything else that is true of the film. There’s a strong current of observed reality suffusing it; there’s a wealth of detail...

Read More