Tag: 1991
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Albert Brooks navigates a secular afterlife in Defending Your Life
I sometimes find it perversely pleasing to hate a much-liked movie — one enshrined in The Criterion Collection, no less. Nice to know I am not yet a total victim of the monoculture! I do respect one positive aspect of Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life that many reviewers single out: it is indeed refreshing to…
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Why can’t Star Trek always be as good as The Undiscovered Country?
“Please let me know if there’s another way we can screw up tonight.” Not only is Nicholas Meyer’s The Undiscovered Country my personal favorite Star Trek movie, I may go far as to argue that it is the best. It truly ticks every box of what makes Star Trek Star Trek, and comes the closest…
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Songs That Broke My Heart: Hallelujah by John Cale
Conventional wisdom will tell you nobody did Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” better than Jeff Buckley. The few who disagree are likely of the opinion that nothing beats the original. Here’s a third opinion: the person who transformed Cohen’s song into the modern standard it is today was John Cale. As I started to compile songs for…