Review

There are 1,836 posts tagged Review (this is page 64 of 263).

Criterion Month Day 26: Shallow Grave

Shallow Grave (1994)

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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Criterion Month Day 25: Slacker

Slacker (1991)

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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Criterion Day 24: An Angel At My Table

An Angel At My Table (1990)

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 →

Criterion Month Day 23: Metropolitan

Metropolitan (1990)

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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Home Invasion

Spider-Man: Far From Home

With Endgame finally crossing the all-time box office record this weekend and Marvel announcing the opening salvo of their next phase of movies, I got the feeling I should finally write down my Spider-Man: Far From Home thoughts. MCU tradition dictates each Avengers sequel must be followed up, perhaps a little too soon, by a bug-themed solo adventure. This time it was Spider-Man who drew the short straw and had to follow the biggest movie ever with his own smaller-scale story… at least it seems that way from the outset. Far From Home begins as a chance to decompress after the cataclysmic conclusion of Endgame but soon grows into a staging ground for the next MCU saga. And the more time I’ve had to think about it, the more exciting that seems.

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Criterion Month Day 21: The Killer

The Killer (1989)

John Woo’s The Killer is a 1989 Hong Kong action thriller starring Chow Yun-fat and Danny Lee as a compassionate hitman and the reckless detective who’s out to get him. It’s an insanely stylish action movie in which the rules of reality are brushed aside by rule of awesome. As in, shooting a pistol in each hand while diving through a window might not make practical sense, but it sure is cool to watch. “Life’s cheap. It only takes one bullet,” says a character at one point, but in practice it takes more like a hundred.

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