You can’t go home again. Thomas Wolfe’s famous line may have passed through the minds of many filmgoers this weekend as they sat through Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s pseudo-prequel to his seminal 1979 film, Alien. Though responses to the film have been mixed, a recurrent criticism seems to be that, while drawing upon the original film’s [...]
Continue Reading Survival of the Fittest: The Enduring Strength of Ridley Scott’s Alien
Expectations can be a dangerous thing, and as The Dark Knight Rises looms ever closer, many audiences, critics, and certainly a few studio executives have their fingers crossed, hoping the film can match the strength and success of its predecessor, 2008’s The Dark Knight. That film, the second in director Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, was [...]
Continue Reading Watching the World Burn: Post-9/11 America in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight
In Kurosawa: The Last Emperor, Alex Cox’s 1999 documentary on the life of Akira Kurosawa, the legendary director’s daughter speaks about how her parents met: “Their stories of how they fell in love were different. My mother said one thing, my father another. And I heard another story from someone else. It was like Rashomon”. Rashomon, of course, was Akira Kurosawa’s landmark 1950 film and such references are a testament to its invention, influence and power. In the six decades since its release, the film has only grown in stature. This month it was named the twenty-sixth greatest film of all time in the 2012 edition of the highly prestigious Sight & Sound Critics’ Poll. It’s a universal piece of work; one that transcends its geographical and temporal origins. It utilizes genuine, skilled artistry to explore some of the most incomprehensible elements of human nature. With Rashomon, Kurosawa created what is perhaps film’s finest examination of lies, perception and relative reality.
Continue Reading Perception is Reality: Relative Truth in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon
It has been over twenty-two years since the body of Laura Palmer washed up on the shores of the fictional small town of Twin Peaks, Washington. This was the start of a minor cultural phenomenon, one that began in April 1990 with the pilot of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s ABC television program, Twin Peaks, [...]
Continue Reading Let’s Rock: Reevaluating David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
October seems to be a time when movie audiences like to revisit one of American cinema’s most prevalent institutions, the slasher film. It is perhaps also a good time to reflect upon the movie that laid the groundwork for that genre, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece, Psycho. Psycho, of course, is not a slasher film. The [...]
Continue Reading The Mother of Modern Horror: The Influence of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
“Nobody has ever done anything like this.” “That’s why’s it’s going to work.” One wonders if that dialogue exchange from The Matrix is indicative of the type of conversations that Andy and Lana Wachowski always have to have about their films. The siblings’ recently released Cloud Atlas confirms their reputation as filmmakers of remarkable [...]
Continue Reading Plug Out, Tune In: Creating the Reality of the Wachowskis’ The Matrix
At the end of the month, Quentin Tarantino will release Django Unchained, his tribute to a genre that he has stylistically alluded to for a decade now, the spaghetti western. There is perhaps no film more indicative of that genre than Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, a film that Tarantino himself [...]
Continue Reading The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
With the massive critical success of this year’s Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson seems to have solidified his reputation as a director of remarkable skill. After a nearly twenty year career, he has positioned himself as perhaps the finest American filmmaker of his generation (his only true competition coming from that other, non-familial Anderson, P.T.). His [...]
Continue Reading I Always Wanted to Be a Tenenbaum: The Genius of Wes Anderson and The Royal Tenenbaums
Simply put, it was a good year. For film, at least. 2012 saw almost every currently active director of note releasing a new film, most of which lived up to or exceeded their author’s reputation. More than any other time in recent years, big movies were not afraid to get ambitious, either in scope, technique, [...]
Continue Reading The Ten Best Films of 2012
It’s my understanding that March Madness is about to descend upon us. But don’t ask me to explain what that means. It’s a college basketball tournament that apparently involves brackets and interoffice gambling, but other than that, I’m clueless. Needless to say, I don’t follow basketball. The extent of my knowledge on the subject is basically that the Lakers beating the Supersonics was part of a good day for Ice Cube and that NBA Jam for the Super Nintendo was fairly enjoyable. Despite my disinterest in the sport, I feel no reticence in declaring Hoop Dreams, Steve James’ 1994 documentary about the pro basketball aspirations of two Chicago teenagers, to be one of the finest cinematic achievements of the modern era. There’s a common belief among many audiences that documentaries –all films, perhaps- can only be as good as their subject matter. But great stories, great characters, and great insight can be found in any subject. While ostensibly a film about basketball, the brilliance of Hoop Dreams lies in how it illuminates the elements that control modern life in America: family, class, race, media, economics, and education. It’s about the thrilling triumph and devastating disappointment inherent in the very concept of the American Dream.
Continue Reading Hoop Dreams
Modern life is a curious thing. Technology and consumerism beget alienation and conformity. Perhaps because of the nation’s relative youth, American society has never seemed terribly concerned about the transition. It was arguably an issue of greater concern throughout Europe in the decades following World War II, as the ruins of their cities were replaced [...]
Continue Reading Circling the Square: A Mockery of Modern Life in Jacques Tati’s Playtime
This past weekend, Star Trek into Darkness, the second film in director J.J. Abrams’ reinvented Star Trek series, hit theaters. One need only watch that film’s advertising to know that it borrows heavily from the second Star Trek feature film, 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Regardless of the results, it’s a bold [...]
Continue Reading Best Served Cold: The Continuing Legacy of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
