Author: Chad Ossman
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Damien Chazelle’s Babylon is not very loving, as love letters go
Judging from the sprawl, spectacle, and general excess of Babylon, I can only assume that the success of Whiplash and La La Land earned director Damien Chazelle a blank check. More the pity that he spent it on this navel-gazing love letter to Hollywood, from Hollywood, as if anybody needed another one of those. Babylon […]
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All Quiet on the Western Front isn’t likely to change many minds about war
What is left for a war film to say today, after landmarks like these: I know there are many other key highlights in the genre (I didn’t even mention one of my personal favorites, Paths of Glory), but you get the idea: the best war movies have opened eyes and shifted public opinion. Edward Berger’s […]
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Robin Williams is the mumbling sailor man in Robert Altman’s slacker Popeye
There are many downright strange aspects to the one-and-only Popeye movie, and you may be forgiven for thinking the strangest of all is that it was directed by Robert Altman, or perhaps that there has been no subsequent attempt at a reboot. But to me, the biggest mystery is how this could possibly be one […]
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The hot mess Don’t Worry Darling is too much and not enough
It would have been more fun to watch this hot mess earlier, during the miniature cultural moment that briefly dominated social media discourse. It seems that the juicy, gossipy disasters must have occurred mostly behind the camera, for the actual film itself isn’t a total fiasco. I’ve unfortunately seen the not-dissimilar Serenity (2019), and I’m […]
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NYC’s indie bands survive Napster, 9/11, gentrification, and their own demons, in Meet Me in the Bathroom
Based on the book of the same name by Lizzy Goodman, Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern’s documentary Meet Me in the Bathroom surveys the early-oughts music scene in New York City, particularly The Moldy Peaches, The Strokes, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, and TV on the Radio. For the health and hygiene of all […]
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The long-forgotten comic book villain Black Adam makes for a quickly-forgotten movie
Jaume Collet-Serra’s Black Adam is an appalling fiasco, easily one of the worst, most ill-conceived movies of 2022. Like the lightning bolt that adorns the titular character’s unitard, it points straight down — down to the bottom of the year’s most painful time-wasters, among bad company like Dumbledore and Uncharted. If the notoriously shelved Batgirl […]
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Billy Bob Thornton’s doomed All the Pretty Horses
The doomed All the Pretty Horses should have, by all rights, been a golden ticket for all involved. Let’s run through its pedigree and prestige factors: Instead, a heavily compromised version underperformed and was widely panned, demoralizing director Billy Bob Thornton, alienating musician Daniel Lanois, and generally disappointing everyone. Thornton’s presence in the tabloids at […]
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Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho still slaps, 60 years later
What is left to be said about one of the most talked-about movies ever made? But rewatching Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho again for the first time in years, with a live audience at Rooftop Reds at Brooklyn Navy Yards, upended a few of my old opinions. Reams have been written about its still-unusual structure, which violates […]
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The sexual revolution freezes over in Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm
The Ice Storm takes place at the precise moment when the burned-out remnants of the ’60s sexual revolution belatedly limped into the disaffected ’70s suburbia. The centerpiece of the film is a supposedly liberating “key party” that proves otherwise, thanks to long-simmering resentments and inhibitions. Two generations of two families clash during a single disastrous […]
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Lou Reed and John Cale work through their complex feelings for Andy Warhol in Songs for Drella
When I was a dumb teenager that didn’t know anything about anything, or could tell The Factory from a factory, I first heard Lou Reed through his Transformer and New York albums — the former via the David Bowie connection, and the latter through Rainbow Warriors, a Greenpeace benefit compilation popular at the time. I […]