Category: 4 Stars
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Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho still slaps, 60 years later
Alfred Hitchcock’s always-relevant 1960 thriller Psycho still has the power to shock, amuse, and provoke.
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The sexual revolution freezes over in Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm
Ang Lee and James Schamus’ wise adaption of Rick Moody’s novel is also a triumph of art direction, casting, costuming, and sound design.
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Lou Reed and John Cale work through their complex feelings for Andy Warhol in Songs for Drella
Rather than set aside their differences, Reed and Cale meld them together in a theatrical song cycle dedicated to their early patron.
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Falling in love at the end of the world, in Wim Wenders’ Submergence
Ladies, if your fella isn’t returning your calls, maybe he’s a secret agent on a tippy-top secret mission for queen and country. Fellas, if your girl isn’t liking your posts, maybe she has zero bars because she’s doing science stuff on the ocean floor. I went into Submergence fully aware of the generally negative reviews,…
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Like a pizza in the rain: Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild
You know you’ve graduated from Movie Buff into Old Movie Buff when you start saying “they don’t make movies like this any more”… but what if they really don’t make movies like this any more? Catching up on Jonathan Demme’s filmography with Something Wild and Married to the Mob has really brought home the realization…
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Sit on my interface: Hackers is a 90s treasure
I can’t believe I haven’t had the pleasure until now. Energetic, funny, quotable, and scattered with fantastic montage sequences. The moment when Johnny Lee Miller sees Angelina Jolie for the first time is choice. And check the surreal imagery and avant-garde editing of its characters’ erotic nightmares — seriously; more than one! It’s all laughably…
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What are men, compared to rocks and mountains: Pride & Prejudice
Who doesn’t have great affection for the beloved 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice? But: I daresay Joe Wright’s 2005 feature film adaptation (the one with the ampersand) is my P&P. It may be less faithful to the text, but that’s fine; it’s its own thing. It’s delicious and I adore it. I think of it…
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Modern America is born out of lawlessness and chaos in David Milch’s Deadwood: The Movie
What an improbable treat, in an age of unasked-for sequels, that one of pop culture’s most notorious cliffhangers would receive resolution. The HBO series Deadwood is not only one of their most acclaimed productions, but also the most lamentably unfinished. Its abrupt cancellation in 2006 was followed by persistent but vague promises of one or…
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Mr. Rogers consoles the country in Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
It’s a sad state of affairs when a documentary about one of the most simply good people to have ever lived must dedicate screentime to Trump, Brexit, and Fox News, but such is the world that conservatives have made. Even if no mention had been made of current affairs, Won’t You Be My Neighbor would…
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Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!” earns its exclamation point
Darren Aronofsky’s mother! is an allegory so undisguised that it barely qualifies as one. It’s more like a cinematic smoothie: blend one (1) King James Bible, the Big Bang / Big Crunch Wikipedia article, a heavy splash of Lars Von Trier-esque literal-as-metaphorical torture of a beautiful woman, season to taste with climate change science, and…