At one point in Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, the late Menahem Golan, the inexhaustibly enthusiastic producer of movies that probably did not merit anything close to his hilariously exaggerated boosterism, lays out his own view of his company’s legacy: “Sometimes we made good films, sometimes we made not so good films, but we made films.
Part of an ongoing effort to watch each of the films in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies series. The introduction and full list can be found here.
Why did the image of Harold Lloyd’s “Glasses character” – pasty, spectacled, straw boater still perched precariously on his head – dangling from the minute hand of a clock 12 stories up become one of cinema’s most enduring images?
Part of an ongoing effort to watch a set of films from non-White, non-U.S., non-male, and/or non-straight filmmakers and depart a little from the Western canon. The intro and full list can be found here.
When I first conceived of this series, one of the things I hoped for was to “discover” masterpieces.
Given their frequent forays into philosophical contemplation and the various tantalizing Easter eggs sprinkled into their filmography for the devout, it’s sometimes overlooked that the Coen brothers are very, very funny. If you’ve forgotten, Hail, Caesar! is here to remind you – it’s the filmmaking team’s most explicitly comedic outing in years, and one of their best.
Part of an ongoing effort to watch each of the films in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies series. The introduction and full list can be found here.
What is a “documentary”? What are its aims, ambitions, and responsibilities – to its subjects, to its audience?
Beasts of No Nation is a strange film. It’s anchored by two powerful performances, deals with timely and horrific subject matter, and is ably directed and photographed, but leaves almost no impression. If anything, it actually manages to make its cavalcade of horrors … kind of boring and distancing.
When Atlanta rapper B.o.B. released his contemptible / ridiculous Neal deGrasse Tyson diss track “Flatline” earlier this week – in which he manages to tie together Flat Earth theories, Lizard People conspiracies, Holocaust denial, and a healthy dollop of “Protocol of the Elders of Zion”-inspired anti-Semitism into one shitty, shitty package – the internet erupted.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks. After the shocking and seemingly sudden passing of David Bowie — one of our greatest, weirdest, and universally beloved artists — the great Alan Rickman went and died last Thursday. It’s a terrible loss.
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom, the Netflix original just nominated for a best documentary Oscar last week, has two inescapable problems.
First, because the filmmakers are largely embedded with the Ukrainian resistance in 2013 and 2014 – and, understandably, because they want a narrative of heroic revolution that audiences can cheer – the film never really strays from a single set of viewpoints and experiences.
Don Hertzfeldt is a magician. Beginning with basic elements – rudimentary stick figures and bemused, detached commentary on modern life – he constructs elaborate universes. Their small details become invested with meaning and heartbreak, and the intentionally simple becomes endlessly complex.