Danny Boyle is forever young. No matter what he does (or how good it is) you always feel his youthful energy. Boyle’s films are high adrenaline, quick-paced, and never boring. Stupid, maybe *cough, The Beach but never boring. What amazes me is that Boyle wasn’t a young hotshot music video director or hipster underground filmmaker when he made his first feature. Boyle was 38-years-old with a respectable background in theater and producing/directing for the BBC. How that evolved into marathon running zombies and guys chopping off their arms I don’t know, but he’s never lost that spark. Boyle knows how to balance the fine line between high art and entertainment, and in no place is that better displayed than in his 1994 dark comedy Shallow Grave.

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Damn it! This is so late. Here we go!!!

I made more than one mistake picking Slacker for my “First Time Filmmakers” list for Criterion Month. First, Slacker isn’t Richard Linklater’s first feature-length film. It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books is a $3,000, 86 minute, Super 8 mm film, starring Linklater as he drives through the country doing mundane day-to-day activities. Wow, I wonder why that isn’t a classic? As far as I can tell the film isn’t available apart from being a special feature on the Slacker Criterion. My second mistake was picking a non-narrative film. I don’t have a good track record with non-narrative films. I like drama, rising action. Even Linklater’s iconic hangout film Dazed and Confused had the underlying threat of Wiley Wiggins gettin’ a paddlin’. Slacker had a lot going against it in the John test and yet… I liked it okay, but why?

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This was already covered a bit in Sean’s review of Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters, but I’m not sure there are many genre’s that come with as much baggage as biopics. Mostly because unlike a lot of genres, there’s this almost preconceived “greatness” that a lot of biopics seem almost entitled to, which explains their typical Oscar bait-iness. That said, I’m not sure pre-’00s biopics quite have this baggage, because their formula wasn’t so definitively in place. Which is one of many reasons that this other Criterion biopic about an author often skirts the various clichés that could accompany a famous person’s onscreen life. Continue reading →

As John eluded to in his hot take, filmmakers like Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, and Steven Soderbergh seized on technological advances in the late Eighties and showed that you could make a movie on a shoestring budget. They helped pave the way for the indie explosion of the Nineties and, more importantly for this post, inspired Whit Stillman to give up his illustration company, sell his apartment, and go all in on making a personal comedy about wealthy young socialites. The result was Metropolitan, a film that feels equal parts frivolous and vital and serves as a reminder that there was a time that we could feel sympathy for the rich.

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This is gonna be a quick one. I had to cram this movie into the back half of my day and then bust out this review without time to reflect. So here’s my hot take!

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