As another strange Summer comes to a close, we take a trip to Italy by talking about 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. We do a bit of a deep dive into the many past (and future) adaptations of author Patricia Highsmith’s most famous creation as well as a brief look at Highsmith’s career. This conversation goes in a lot of different directions and we spend a surprising amount of time talking about Chris Kattan. How do we get there? Well, you’ll just have to listen and find out. Continue reading
We’ve reassembled the squad for the first episode of The Pick of 2021! Hopefully this will be another fun and fruitful run of episodes that will see us continue to do what we do best — forcing each other to watch movies and then talk about them. This episode sees us diving into a recent release that probably would’ve been more fun to watch in a theater than on HBO Max, but that’s the reality of living in a world that can’t quite return to normal. Also, each one of us offers some decidedly musical Little Picks, which marks the return of John exploring McDonald’s recent trend of half-baked promotional meals endorsed by pop stars. Continue reading
I wrote this review shortly after Space Jam: A New Legacy came out, but refrained from posting it and disrupting the posterity of Criterion Month. While the film world has already moved on from Space Jam to that beach that makes you old, it still felt appropriate to end Criterion Month with the kind of movie that’s a vital reminder that taking a break from cinematic trash for a month can be a very good thing indeed.
When you spend as much time sifting through the world as pop culture as we do, sometimes you get certain movies or TV shows or franchises attached to you as being specifically “yours”. I had this with Space Jam in recent years, receiving multiple birthday or Christmas gifts from friends consisting of Space Jam merch. Now, one has to ask how a film that was relatively successful 25 years ago and has had no direct sequels, spin-offs, or reboots could garner a veritable amount of merch so long after the fact. I think a lot of this had to do with a mix of millennial nostalgia, half-irony, the ‘90s being a golden age of basketball, and the fact that it was the most successful re-introduction of the Looney Tunes into the zeitgeist in recent memory. Whether any of this has to do with the quality of Space Jam as a film is a little beside the point, though I am not one of those people who will tell you that of course Space Jam: A New Legacy is bad because the original Space Jam is bad. Continue reading
So after reviewing movies of various lengths and ambitions this year, I’m bringing it home with a review of a movie that is decidedly small. Kelly Reichardt has made a singular career out of crafting these very intimate, contemplative films that rarely have a ton of conflict or innate drama. Of the films of hers I’ve seen, Old Joy seems like the purest distillation of this, as there’s not a ton that happens (even for the indie road movie genre), but then again, nothing really needs to. Like much of Reichardt’s oeuvre, the film’s unassuming nature is like a warm bath compared to the overstimulated nature of today’s media, or should I say it’s like a dip in a hot spring? Continue reading
Ah, the plight of a film watched late in Criterion Month, when we’re all a little burned out from watching arty, cerebral movies. This makes it especially hard to write about a film as layered and exquisitely made as Beau Travail, which leaves as much to chew on as any film I watched during this year’s Criterion Month. So much so that despite how much I enjoyed my viewing of it, I didn’t zero in that much on one aspect most people seem to talk about in regards to Beau Travail (its portrayal of repressed homosexuality). Though that’s just one aspect of what’s remarkable about the film, as everything is done with so much confidence, and yet there are so many things left unspoken by the film’s end that it leaves you lingering in its dusty doorway, looking for answers. Continue reading
One dilemma that I don’t think we’ve talked about much is that The Criterion Collection, as great and all-encompassing as it may seem, doesn’t always have the exact movie you want to see by certain directors. An example that applies to a recent director we covered is Pedro Almodóvar, whose favorite film of mine is not in The Collection (Talk To Her). However, it doesn’t bother me all that much that John ended up watching Women On The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, since it’s probably the best place to start with Almodóvar.
I’m not sure if that’s necessarily the case with To Sleep With Anger, the lone film directed by Charles Burnett in The Criterion Collection, as it seems like 1978’s Killer of Sheep is the most influential and highly regarded of his films. But for whatever reason, be it copyright issues or something else, To Sleep With Anger is the place at which I’ll have to start with his filmography. Continue reading
Last year when I reviewed Lady Snowblood, it was a nice respite from the headier films I usually take on in Criterion Month as it’s about as purely entertaining of an action movie as you could ask for. Granted, it also manages to be visually arresting in a way that elevates it above pure pulp into Criterion territory, which is a little ironic considering its visuals are rooted in its Manga source material. Watching its sequel, Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance, was a bit of a similar experience, considering I could fit the length of both Lady Snowblood movies within the last film I watched. Though Love Song of Vengeance is a bit of a departure from the original film, as it tones down the over-the-top violence and extensive sword fights considerably, but I think is a more interesting companion piece in the process. Continue reading
