That’s not true, but I feel like I need to defend his most recent movie Marfa Girl (streaming on Netflix as we speak). It’s fantastic, but the critical response to it has been tepid at best. For a few decades now it seems like any praise given to Larry Clark – and he’s gotten a […]
3 CommentsToday I was re-reading one of my favorite pieces of film criticism, Tim Kreider’s evaluation of Eyes Wide Shut Introducing Sociology. This essay blew my mind when I first read it a couple years back, casting a movie that I’d already enjoyed in an entirely new light. When I first saw Eyes Wide Shut back […]
[Note: the term “profound” is subjective, and so is everything else.] MOVIES 1. Fearless (1993, s. Jeff Bridges, d. Peter Weir) – overcoming fear of death 2. Thelma & Louise (1991, s. Susan Sarandon, d. Ridley Scott) – overcoming fear of death, profound intimacy 3. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993, s. Johnny Depp, d. Lasse […]
0 CommentsI really denied this one for as long as I could. A couple of years ago I bought a cheap VHS copy of Groove the Rave Movie at a Blockbuster that was going out of business, and I told myself it was out of nostalgia for my college years and my rave days. But now […]
0 CommentsLook out, I’m about to spew words about recent things I’ve consumed. Netflix movies Death Race 2000: Pretty goddamn brilliant. Proto-Starship Troopers-style sci-fi exploitation with a nice satirical bite. There’s a lot of Roger Corman productions on Netflix these days and I’m eating em up. The Big Bird Cage was another good one, also Switchblade […]
0 CommentsMOVIES 1) Meek’s Cutoff A slow-motion picture by anybody’s estimation, with lots of long takes where nothing much happens, that is nevertheless filled with tension. Reichardt gives the audience choices. Do you care about these people enough to feel anxious about what will happen to them? Does the hubris of the whole American enterprise render […]
2 CommentsJon Raymond is an Oregon-based writer you should get to know and appreciate. He’s published a novel, which I haven’t read, and a short story collection, Livability, which I highly recommend. He’s most well known from his collaborations with the filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, in fact two stories from Livability were made into films directed by […]
0 CommentsRepost from old blog, 10/9/2006 “In countries like the U.S. and Great Britain, we exist in a wholly sexualized culture, where everything from cars to snack food are sold with a healthy slathering of sex to make them more commercially appealing. But if you’re using sex to sell sneakers, then you’re not just selling sneakers, […]
0 CommentsI uploaded my favorite scene from the underrated 2005 Mary Harron film “The Notorious Bettie Page” to YouTube. Lili Taylor’s words here always make me emotional, and remind me of this quote from Roger Ebert: “It isn’t the sad people in movies who make me cry, it’s the good ones.”
0 Comments– It subverted genre cliches deftly. Every drug movie needs a moment when the addict hits bottom and finally examines himself, I thought it was pretty clever that “The Fighter” had its drug addict character quite literally watch himself in an HBO documentary (the filming of which frames the first third of the movie). – […]
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