I wish Michael Mann had started his film career in the early 70s. I don’t know if it’s the De Niro connection on account of Heat, but I like to think of Mann as the west coast Scorsese. While Scorsese was showing off the grit of New York City’s seamy underbelly in films like Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Mann was doing the same for Los Angles with Heat and Collateral. Both directors have dabbled with period pieces, Scorsese (Age of Innocence, The Last Temptation of Christ), Mann (The Last of the Mohicans)—why is everything the “Last” of something?—and both have dabbled in horror, Scorsese (Cape Fear, Shutter Island) and Mann (The Keep, Manhunter). The difference is Scorsese started his film career a decade before.

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There aren’t a lot of movies like All That Jazz. This is a story about a director frantically trying to balance his frustrations with his latest production with his personal problems with women. A story set in a somewhat cynical world of show business, where the producers seem nice until you realize all that matters to them is money. A story that seamlessly blends reality with fantasy to help you better understand the main character. Yeah, it’s almost a totally unique story, except for the fact that it sounds exactly like 8½, Birdman, and even Singing in the Rain.
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Does true love really conquer all? This seems to be the cynical question at the heart of Ali: Fear Eats The Soul, the first film I’ve seen by filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, a director supposedly known for his undying pessimism. Fassbinder is also known for being one of the more remarkably prolific film directors ever, as he put out an average of three films a year starting from 1970 up until his death in 1982 at the age of 36. And because of that, I don’t know that Ali was necessarily the best introduction to the guy’s work, since Fassbinder seemed to be pretty consistent in addition to his prolificness. But it’s hard to beat a timeless love story, and Ali still feels like that, unfortunately. Continue reading →

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working with kids off and on it’s that they are all liars. Then again, are you really a liar if you believe what you’re saying? The whole reason children lie in the first place is because everything in the world is so new to them. They take in so much more information with far less context. They’re bound to believe things that don’t make sense to adults. And it’s this naivety that is part of the reason The Spirit of the Beehive is such a great film about children. It takes on that blurred perspective of the world through the eyes of a child. Also, it has a Frankenstein. Big points for a Frankenstein.

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I know it’s super cliche, but 2001 is one of my favorite movies. Like top 10, maybe even top five. That fandom helped put Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris on my radar, because one thing I had heard was that when it comes to cerebral sci fi, the west has 2001 and Russia has Solaris. And let me tell you, sure there are some obvious surface level similarities, but these movies should not be compared to each other.
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