DVD / Bluray
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Prisoners (R)
If it is fair to go by numbers, movies about demons are both cheap and easy to make. Depending on how broadly you are willing to define “demon,” I would wager something demonic hits an American theater once a month. The never-ending spate of creepy kid movies which yet issue forth from The Ring’s wake, […]
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Junebug (R)
In Flannery O’Connor’s seminal lecture Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction she uses the expression “Christ-haunted” to describe the South. Since first reading this, I have been haunted by this idea of Christ-hauntedness. She goes on to say that the Southerner “who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may […]
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24 Questions for Sunshine (R)
“Cinema is truth at 24 frames per second.” -Jean-Luc Godard “Cinema is lies at 24 frames per second.” -Michael Haneke One of the most important components of interpretation is the peerless act of questioning. Frequently the question carries value even apart from an answer and the right question will always outwork an easy answer. The […]
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A Charlie Brown Christmas (G)
“Show, don’t tell” is the oldest law of storytelling, that thing which frustrated short fiction profs shout, mutter, whisper, beg and plead over and again in student workshops. “Don’t tell me Pat is angry. Show me. Did he lower his voice? Did he take deep breaths and shake his head? What?” And yet, the oldest […]
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The Magnificent Ambersons (G)
Orson Welles’ movies are generally too good to be simply “issue” movies. Citizen Kane is conversant about “the press.” Touch of Evil touches on “corruption.” The Magnificent Ambersons raises the question of “industrialization.” But the movies always invest more deeply in characters and the strangeness of human behavior. Using an “issue” of the day as […]
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A Christmas Carol (1938 Version) (G)
Of all the works of Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol may have acquired the most settled place in the popular imagination. It is one of a very few books which one need not even have read to recognize a character from a picture or a well-worn quotation. It is also the simplest major work composed […]
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The Fountain (PG-13)
In early 2002, fresh off the cult success and critical acclaim of his first two films Pi and Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky began production on The Fountain, a film based on a grand vision with a much grander budget than any of Aronofsky’s previous work. Producer Eric Watson described it as, “the movie […]
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No Country for Old Men (R)
This Best Picture of 2007 captures the bleakness of human existence with its harsh Texas landscape and pitiless villain. Llewelyn Moss finds some money, takes it, and is ruthlessly pursued by Anton Chigurh. The lines of brutality and brotherhood are hazy between them. The movie seems to promote fate and despair, but it actually has […]
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Trance (R)
Trance is a labyrinth without a string leading out. While anyone sitting down to watch might expect a director of Danny Boyle’s caliber (Sunshine, 28 Days Later) to provide that string, the third act of this film was well underway before I realized there could be no satisfying escape. Somewhere in his house, I imagine, […]
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The New World (PG-13)
When The New World arrived in 2005, it was met by two types of reviews. Many critics understood it as an epic work of poetic genius, offering glowing praises for the revolutionary storytelling and arresting eye of the film’s writer/director, Terrence Malick. However, more than a few critics and most moviegoers found the film wanting. […]
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The Mission (PG)
In the first half of the 18th century the Jesuit order, an evangelical and zealous Catholic branch of Franciscan monks, undertook missionary work to the Indian tribes in South American jungles. Impressive by any standard, they unabashedly sacrificed comfort, well-being and their own lives for the sake of preaching the Gospel to the aboriginals. The […]
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True Grit (G)
Well, not really women, since True Grit stars a fourteen-year-old girl with John Wayne in his only Academy-Award-winning role. He plays Rooster Cogburn, a name that captures his arrogance and stubbornness. Wayne fulfills our expectations as a bandit-chasing U.S. Marshal but surprises us with his soft side. He calls Mattie (Kim Darby) “little sister”. He shifts between […]
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Serving Life (Not Rated)
I go to college. Being taught is what makes up my life, and it would be foul play to act as if this were not the case. I cannot conjure up ideas, postulate moving arguments, or construct a philosophy without it coming from what I am being taught, from what smolders in my bones. Consider […]
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Never Let Me Go (R)
Anybody who picked up a copy of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go after finding it on Time’s list of the best English novels written since 1923 would likely have been baffled after a hundred pages or so. They would have found the Booker Prize winning author had traded out the contemplative, first-person perspective of […]
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How To Watch A Classic Film: The Wizard of Oz (G)
On my first day of Western Civ 257: Literature of Western Civilization in college, we started on Homer’s Odyssey and the professor claimed the text was “above criticism,” a statement which I found a bit precious. How is anything above criticism? Is Homer now become Holy Writ? The more history books I read, though, the […]
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Billy Elliot (R)
Only in the final act of the film does anyone ask Billy Elliot about his dancing. Until he stands before the admissions board for the Royal Ballet School, he is either told to dance or told not to dance. When finally someone asks him, “What does it feel like to dance?” Billy unfolds a rather […]
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Jiro Dreams Of Sushi (PG)
A review of Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011), Three Stars (2012), A Matter of Taste: Serving Up Paul Liebrandt (2011) In the beginning, Jiro Ono wistfully asks “What defines deliciousness?” At first, it might seem strange for one of the most distinguished chefs alive to ask such a thing. Would we not expect a world-renowned […]