One of the year's best American films appears to have been overlooked by a significant portion of the critical establishment. Even I took a little too long to actually watch it. While it would be easy to...
2021-01-21 05:20:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Hard to evaluate, largely because of the deterioration of the copy I had to watch, Werther is nevertheless instructive. While it's certainly easy to see the germs of Ophüls' later greatness in ...
2021-01-19 00:02:00 +0000 UTC View Post
While I wouldn't make any great claims for Herself, it boasts a few significant elements that raise it above the standard tearjerker. There are a number of plot points that are rather baldly tel...
2021-01-18 01:48:22 +0000 UTC View Post
This is a tricky one, partly because Ophüls is negotiating a number of different registers here. I'm tempted to call this a stealth melodrama. That's in part because, unlike the classic "women's picture...
2021-01-15 03:47:26 +0000 UTC View Post
You know, the sorts of things people say about Hong Sangsoo would apply just as well to Philippe Garrel. From film to film, there is great continuity of theme and formal approach, such that those who are...
2021-01-13 21:11:45 +0000 UTC View Post
I don't have a great deal to say about this one. I mostly watched it to bring my 2019 Cannes bingo card one spot closer to blackout. (Will we ever see Kechiche's Intermezzo? I'm thinkin...
2021-01-12 22:04:58 +0000 UTC View Post
For the most part, Soul is a genial riff on the sorts of themes that Pixar has been working with for the better part of fifteen years. They love wayward characters (Rémy, Carl Fredericksen, WAL...
2021-01-11 19:11:36 +0000 UTC View Post
When Matt was a kid, around the ages of 4 and 5, he had his favorite YouTube channels. Most kids are like this today, and Matt had a few common interest points with others of his generation. He loved watching videos of toy "experts" opening blind bags to see what sort of mini-action-figures they'...
2021-01-10 21:17:33 +0000 UTC View Post
For a film so concerned with formal control, A Girl Missing is really very undisciplined. For awhile now I've been intending to dip into the work of Kôji Fukada, who as become a "name" on the f...
2021-01-10 20:44:57 +0000 UTC View Post
... I humbly suggest the above for the new National Anthem. Four seconds, then play ball!
2021-01-09 06:22:45 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm starting to think we are in a Wag the Dog scenario, masterminded by Ryan Murphy. This shit is way too on-the-nose.
"Sophistication" and "urbanity" are threatening to become overused watchwords in my discussion of Max Ophüls' cinema, but how else to characterize this remarkable adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 ...
2021-01-09 05:16:16 +0000 UTC View Post
The first thing I noticed about The Eaarings is that Ophüls displays a moral sophistication and urbanity that far outstrips most of the American cinema of the time. This struck me as a direct o...
2021-01-08 23:00:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Reportedly his last words were "I conquered Thebes."
UPDATE: Sadly, it appears that this story is apocryphal. The man's widow says he was unarmed, outside the Capitol, a...
2021-01-08 19:13:55 +0000 UTC View Post
Sorry, I'm a bit distracted from movies and such. Never been in an attempted coup. I'm sure our friends from Turkey, Argentina, Portugal, Thailand, and other locales could give us some insight here.
<... 2021-01-07 00:24:22 +0000 UTC View Post
Sorry for the delay in posting. Like many of you, I had Georgia on my mind.
So the winner is the great Max Ophüls, about whose films I am woefully ignorant. There are several on the Criterio...
2021-01-06 17:41:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Sometimes films try something bold and it doesn't quite work. You can admire the ambition while still reckoning with the fact that the object in question misses the mark. In Shithouse, first-tim...
2021-01-04 19:43:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Luckily, there are only winners here.
Below are the top three choices for January's Filmatist of the Month. (I know the poll is still open, but I am going to project provisional winners based on my...
2021-01-02 19:48:53 +0000 UTC View Post
One of the enduring portraits of failure, in both the theater and the cinema, is Peter Shaffer's hypothetical rendering of Antonio Salieri. This very real composer is imagined in Amadeus as a bi...
2021-01-02 06:17:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Obviously I'm a bit late to this one, since I made the choice to hold off watching it until 12/31/20. So there's not too much I can say about Da 5 Bloods that hasn't already been said elsewhere....
2021-01-01 21:37:26 +0000 UTC View Post
Two films I've seen discussed a lot in recent months are also two films I've been pretty ambivalent about since seeing them upon release. Ngozi Onwurah's Welcome II the Terrordome, which was rou...
2021-01-01 19:43:10 +0000 UTC View Post
We made it! 2021. In these deeply unsettled times, I want to offer my gratitude for all of you who have continued to set money aside to support my writing. It means more than you can know.
As a sma...
2021-01-01 17:47:09 +0000 UTC View Post
The Kid Detective is the sort of movie I wouldn't ordinarily think twice about. It played at TIFF 2020 (such as it was) without garnering much attention. And then, as if to firmly establish its ...
2021-01-01 03:13:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Tomorrow I am going to finally watch Da 5 Bloods, so it will "count" as a 2020 viewing. But I may have time for one other (final) film of the year. What...
2020-12-31 05:41:49 +0000 UTC View Post
A film that would've been in Competition if Cannes 2020 had happened, Another Round would surely have nabbed a prize or two -- perhaps the Scenario award, or another Best Actor trophy for Mads M...
2020-12-30 02:20:46 +0000 UTC View Post
Occasionally, a film manages to go right to the heart of one of the defining cultural crises of the era. Films like this pull into focus a great many suspicions and inklings that have perhaps been experi...
2020-12-30 01:56:09 +0000 UTC View Post
The Trouble With Being Born is very reminiscent of Markus Schleinzer's 2011 film Michael, and I'm afraid that the comparison is not complimentary. Like Michael, The Trouble...
2020-12-28 20:12:03 +0000 UTC View Post
I realize it's unfashionable to appreciate Atom Egoyan these days. The official line is that he is "washed up," and this judgment doesn't exactly come from nowhere. In recent years he has made some films...
2020-12-28 05:03:59 +0000 UTC View Post
It must be said, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is more of a filmed play than a movie. Denzel Washington did a much better job adapting Fences into a reasonably cinematic object. Wolfe, a vet...
2020-12-24 21:16:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Zheng Lu Xinyuan's The Cloud in Her Room is a forbidding film at first. Although it quite clearly centers on the life and relationships of Muza (Jin Jing), many of these connections are held in ...
2020-12-22 02:38:08 +0000 UTC View Post