TIFF14/NYFF Round-Up

Here are links to my TIFF coverage from earlier this year, plus some reviews of films I saw in Toronto but pitched as NYFF reviews.

TIFF Review: A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
TIFF Review: Horse Money
TIFF Review: Goodbye to Language 3D
NYFF Review: Jauja
NYFF Review: Pasolini

Capsules:
Eden, Rosewater & Jauja
Pasolini, Tales & Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2
Phoenix, Tokyo Tribe & Hill of Freedom

The Smart Dumb Films of Lord & Miller

Here's a piece I wrote back in June on the super-smash team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, whose satiric chops are overstated but who are nonetheless making some of the most enjoyable films around as of late. Read my full piece at Movie Mezzanine.

Review Round-Up (05/05/2014)

I like to give every film its own page here, even when linking off-site, but frankly I've fallen too far behind on updating this blog with my clips, so here's the first of a few round-ups to get caught up.

Movie Mezzanine

-Blu-Ray Review: Cat People (1982)
-Blu-Ray Review: Commitment
-Blu-Ray Review: A Field in England
-DVD Review: Vikingdom
-Film Review: The Last of the Unjust (Claude Lanzmann, 2014)
-Film Review: Pompeii (Paul W.S. Anderson, 2014)
-Film Review: Need for Speed (Scott Waugh, 2014)
-Film Review: Veronica Mars (Rob Thomas, 2014)
-Film Review: Sabotage (David Ayer, 2014)
-Film Review: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Marc Webb, 2014)
-ATLFF Review: 45RPM
-ATLFF Review: The Double
-ATLFF Review: Metalhead
-ATLFF Review: Beside Still Waters


Spectrum Culture

-Caught in the Web (Chen Kaige, 2013)
-Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (Arvin Chen, 2014)
-Home from the Hill (Vincente Minnelli, 1960)
-The Wait (M. Blash, 2014)
-Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (Denis Côté, 2014)
-Book Review: Jean Luc Godard: Cinema Historian by Michael Witt
-Non-Stop (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2014)
-Jimmy P. (Arnaud Desplechin, 2014)
-The Courtship of Eddie's Father (Vincente Minnelli, 1963)
-Darkman (Sam Raimi, 1990)
-Concert Review: The Black Lips/Deerhunter
-Teenage (Matt Wolf, 2014)
-In the Blood (John Stockwell, 2014)
-Joe (David Gordon Green, 2014)
-Fading Gigolo (John Turturro, 2014)

The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)

Oh, I'm starting to hate Paolo Sorrentino. After his decent but Scorsese-cribbing Il Divo, I never got to his This Must Be the Place, and after this ostensible magnum opus, I'm in no rush. A florid blend of Fellini, Antonioni and other Italian masters that replicates their gloss but none of their rich inner life, The Great Beauty instead comes off as the artiste's rant against the ills of society, almost none of which have to do with the pitfalls of Berlusconi's Italy and instead go after real power targets like pretentious performance artists, wannabe Marxists and vain nuns (oh, and did I mention practically every target is a woman?). Sure, Toni Servillo's director stand-in comes in for some criticism of his own, but that is delivered so lightly, with such affection, such an apology for the light rap of the knuckles, that to conflate it with the hostility spared for the film's low-hanging fruit is disingenuous.

My full review is up at Movie Mezzanine.

Final Warner Archive Picks

Sadly discontinued (I enjoyed this feature, not to mention free access to Warner's streaming service), here are the last few weeks of my picks of great films on Warner Archive Instant. I still highly recommend the service for cinephiles.

Week of 10/18

Week of 10/25

Week of 11/01

Week of 11/08

Metallica: Through the Never (Nimród Antal, 2013)

I've long outgrown my metal phase, but I still love to listen to Metallica. Even so, I never expected to like Through the Never as much as I did. Antal wisely does not chase that rabbit of replicating the concert experience (impossible when cameras reside on-stage), but the film actually does end up putting forward a vision of both the material reality of putting on a Metallica show, and the subjective interplay between the band and the reaction their music prompts. In other words, it's almost the film Godard wanted Sympathy for the Devil to be, albeit with a half-assed approached to politics that thrillingly fades away into the simpler pleasures of getting your skull pounded out by riffs.

My full review is up at Movie Mezzanine.

Enough Said (Nicole Holofcener, 2013)

Belatedly linking to last week's review of the fine, sometimes beautiful Enough Said, which sports two incredible lead performance that are so good that the film hits a wall whenever the two main actors aren't both on-screen feeding off each other. In particular, it is hard to see Gandolfini, as he did in Not Fade Away, truly move away from Tony Soprano, and to know that we will never get to see the full development of this next stage of his career. But at least there's this performance, and at least Julia Louis-Dreyfus continues to enjoy a renaissance of her own. So many ancillary elements of the film weigh it down, but these two are alchemical.

Read my full review at Movie Mezzanine.

Warner Archive Instants Picks of the Week (10/11/13—10/17/13)

The next Warner Archive picks. This time I'm joined by Ty Landis, who provides his own pick. Read 'em both here.

Warner Archive Instant Picks (10/4/13—10/10/13)

My first round of Warner Archive picks. Read 'em here.

TIFF Capsules

Here are links to the capsules I wrote for Movie Mezzanine during TIFF.

This link contains capsules for Bastards (Claire Denis), Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch) and La última película (Raya Martin and Mark Peranson).

This one talks about Horns (Alexandre Aja) and 'Til Madness Do Us Part (Wang Bing).

This link features capsules for A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (Ben Rivers and Ben Russell) and Night Moves (Kelly Reichardt).

Also, here are Dork Shelf capsules for Closed Curtain (Jafar Panahi and Kambuzia Partov), A Field in England (Ben Wheatley) and Manakamana (Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez).

Netflix Instant Picks (9/20—9/26)

Here's my final set of Netflix picks for Movie Mezzanine. I'll now be covering good finds on Warner Archive's excellent instant service. Check out my picks.

Fanboy Contra Fanboy: The Genius of Edgar Wright

Managed to get this done just before leaving for Toronto. I loved The World's End as I have loved all of Edgar Wright's work, as ever for its critique of fan culture as its embrace of that culture's irascible childishness. Writing about the director's latest thus necessitated an overview of his entire career, which I find to be a subversive comment on everything the filmmaker holds dear. To call The World's End (or any of the others) "mature" is to miss the more complex relationship with nerdiness that Wright explores, and that he explores it with such exciting, seemingly forgotten mainstream chops only makes him more engaging.

My full piece is up at Movie Mezzanine.

TIFF Review: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)

 I wasn't the biggest fan of Birth, as this blog will attest, but I found Jonathan Glazer's return to feature filmmaking one of the year's most exciting events. In a time when an enjoyable trifle like the derivative Moon can be hoisted up as great conceptual sci-fi, Under the Skin appears as a singular object, stark to the point of being surreal even before it steps into sequences of inky voids and doomed, horny men. Admittedly, the film comes with its own reference points (chief among them The Man Who Fell to Earth), but what's remarkable is how many of the films that come to mind have little to do with sci-fi, instead recalling the work of Abbas Kiarostami or Morvern Collar. And as its hypnotic rhythms are disrupted in a final act of intimate chaos, it becomes clear that the film stands as one of the finest explorations of female sexuality and society's shaping of it. Women taught about sex as an external process learn the hard way about its actual, physical properties in ways both benign and terrifying.

Check out my full review at Movie Mezzanine.

Netflix Instant Picks (8/8/13—8/15/13)

This week's Netflix picks are up now at Movie Mezzanine.

Netflix Instant Picks (8/2/13—8/8/13)

Another round of Netflix picks from me and Ty Landis. Peep them here.

Netflix Instant Picks (7/27/13—8/1/13)

Some Netflix picks from a few weeks ago. Read 'em here.

Netflix Instant Picks (7/19/13—7/25/13)

I'm joined this week at Movie Mezzanine by Ty Landis, who offers three Netflix picks of his own. Check 'em all out here.

This Is Martin Bonner (Chad Hartigan, 2013)

I've seen a number of great independent films this year, few better than Chad Hartigan's exceptional, wise-beyond-its-years This Is Martin Bonner. A younger man's view of middle-age that is neither condescending nor bemused, recognizing old age is not be as alien as we might think while also acknowledging that one's worries and preoccupations do shift. It's a beautiful, lived-in movie, matching the older age of its leads with a sedate style that eschews the Dardennes-aping handheld cameras and blotchy sub-impressionism that seem to be so popular at Sundance. It's just good storytelling on a written, visual and acted level, and one of the best of the year's first half.

Read my review over at Movie Mezzanine.

Netflix Instant Picks (6/21/13—6/27/13)

Check out my latest Netflix picks over at Movie Mezzanine.

Netflix Instant Picks (6/14/13—6/20/13)

Belatedly putting up last week's Netflix picks. Check 'em out here.