APOLLO 18: The Truth is Out There
Gonzalo López-Gallego’s APOLLO 18 isn’t just a fun potboiler but an unlabeled conspiracy tape hiding in the wrong VHS sleeve, a straight-faced, paranoid political thriller spawned by the unholy union of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and Wikileaks.
MEEK’S CUTOFF: State of the Union
“Is he ignorant, or is he just plain evil?” Michelle Williams’ pioneer asks of hapless guide Stephen Meek as their wagon train of three loosely tied families winds up lost in the wasteland with depleting resources and a native prisoner in Kelly Reichardt’s MEEK’S CUTOFF.
INTOLERABLE CRUELTY & THE LADYKILLERS: Bush League Coens
Seven or eight years ago, about the time of our conflict with Saddam and the Iraqis, the Coen brothers made two films so bad they closed up shop to recharge. At least, that’s the story ‘round these parts.
DOGTOOTH: Adventures in home-schooling
The night after I got to see Yorgos Lanthimos’ bone-dry Greek family comedy DOGTOOTH at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, that same room saw the Houston Film Critics Society name THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO the best foreign language film of the year. In the year Houston hosted CARLOS, WHITE MATERIAL, MOTHER, A [...]
WHITE MATERIAL: Stay the course
Boy, there’s nothing like watching a Claire Denis film to make a guy feel thankful. Especially if that guy happens to (perhaps secretly) love COLD MOUNTAIN, as WHITE MATERIAL has at least as much in common with Denis’ cinematic cousin Olivier Assayas and regional relatives like HOTEL RWANDA as it does with the Minghella story [...]
FOUR LIONS: Boom Goes the Dynamite
I admit I was a mite concerned by the concept of FOUR LIONS—a self-proclaimed “jihad comedy” about bumbling terrorists—though less for any faintworthy controversy than for the unshakable image of a Benny Hill type running around London trying and failing to blow things up, Wile E. Coyote-style. I should have known better. Chris Morris (aka [...]
CARLOS: Almost Legal
Is there a better symbol for our historical moment than a tabloid terrorist? I don’t mean trash-mag doodler Perez Hilton; I mean a bona fide violent terrorist whose persona is more celebrity than revolutionary, whose exploits and impact are approached with bemused spectatorship in place of active engagement. Pop history has had years to streamline [...]
Documentary Ethics, Economic Disparity, and LAST TRAIN HOME
The problem with many modern documentaries is that it’s hard to know what to think without more information on their production. Take for example The King of Kong, an exceedingly-entertaining glimpse at the battle for the Donkey Kong high-score whose ultra-simplistic David & Goliath story felt too good to be true. Turns out it may [...]
THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE: The Body Politic
When I’m not carving topical jack-o-lanterns and funding my dentist’s third home, I treat Halloween as an opportunity to catch up with the horror greats I spent my adolescence cowering from (thanks to vividly traumatic childhood experiences with The Shining and The Exorcist that may or may not have involved pants-peeing). No longer new to [...]
WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS: The Visible Hand
Good news, everyone: The financial crisis has a happy ending! Let’s go shopping. The business of America is business. Other economic one-liners. If this does not describe your experience, or, indeed, real life, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps may not ring true. Director Oliver Stone’s unsubtle moralizing streak demands happiness for the virtuous (or penitent) [...]
Late Early Godard: MASCULIN FEMININ, LA CHINOISE, & WEEK END
Has any canonized auteur been met with such furious confusion as Jean-Luc Godard? Even well-studied Godardians disagree on his meanings and periods and politics. Which means there’s no way I’m going to “get” everything on my first viewing, so anxiety-free I finally completed Godard’s New Wave output. I haven’t seen them all in order (Made [...]
TFT 120 – DO IT AGAIN / Geoff Edgers / FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE / James Bigham / Javier Peña / 2010 Nashville Film Festival Day 3
TFT 120 – DO IT AGAIN / Geoff Edgers / FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE / James Bigham / Javier Peña / 2010 Nashville Film Festival Day 3 – – – DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE: DO IT AGAIN / FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE GET THE iPHONE APP – FREE TILL APRIL 22ND VISIT OUR [...]
Violence and Sentimentality in the Movies: A Dangerous Pair?
Richard Brody at The Front Row has this interesting reflection on violence and the movies/media in general: “There does seem to be a great deal of research on the question of violence and of quantity of viewing; but very little, if any, on the subject of treacle. I do worry about the effect of violent [...]
'Election Day': What is Democracy?
- – – What does democracy mean? Linguists in the TFT community already know that it derives from a mashup of the Greek work ‘Demis‘ (meaning large bearded man in a kaftan) and ‘Crazy‘ (meaning a way for Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo to ensure their financial futures and colonise the hybrid brain of the human [...]
Gareth Goes Home: 'Turning Green' mixes him up
You know, we like to be friendly round here, but if you’ve been in the The Film Talk neighbourhood for any length of time, you’ll also know that we often grieve the lack of imagination in most films. Robots kill some people/people kill more robots; abs-ridden guy meets cute girl/conflict/unification; bloke changes, you know the [...]
'I'm Up to My Neck in Being an American, whether I Like it or Not'
Wallace Shawn – you know, Wallace Shawn, man of wit and letters, agreeable suppers with theatre directors, and potentially poisoned cups of mead, has some things to say about life. Haymarket Books have gathered his elegant essays in a book (remarkably enough it’s titled ‘Essays‘) which turns out to be one of the wisest and [...]
Prods and Pom-Poms
Watching Ben Jones and Paul Hutchinson’s entertaining documentary ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’ (available on DVD at a bargain price from Hooptedoodle Films) was a nostalgic experience. (Full disclosure: It’s set in my home town, and Paul and Ben are friends of mine. Second full disclosure: I think I’d like the film even if I didn’t like [...]
Re-visiting 'Hunger', the Most Important Film I've Seen this Year
In April we presented Episode 62 of TFT, focusing on ‘Hunger’, the astonishing feature film debut of the visual artist Steve McQueen, which compelled audiences on its release last Autumn, and is now available on DVD. I’m still reeling from my experience of watching this movie and wanted to revisit it; thoughts below. The political [...]
'The Girlfriend Experience': Are You A Prostitute Too?
Steven Soderbergh has managed to build an enviable career – he gets to make fun, huge projects like ‘Ocean’s Eleven’, and alternates these with smaller, self-consciously serious films such as ‘The Underneath’, ‘Kafka’, and ‘The Girlfriend Experience’, which I saw this afternoon at the Chelsea Clearview next door to the Chelsea Hotel, in, as you [...]
Films I Saw And Were Great At The Time But On A Second Or Third Viewing Are Even Better #1: 'The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada'
I took another look at Tommy Lee Jones’ directorial debut ‘The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada’ at the weekend – I was struck on my first viewing three years ago at the level of craft and understanding of how to tell a story, not to mention the meaning of the story it’s trying to tell: [...]
'In the Loop': The Best Political Satire since 'Dr Strangelove'?
I may just have seen the film of the year. A contemporary satire that deserves comparison with Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, which starts hilarious, gets funnier, and more real, and even more uncomfortable until the laughs are intellectual but don’t become audible, because the truth of what is happening on screen can only evoke [...]
Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains
To whet my appetite for a weekend brimming with new documentaries at the Full Frame Festival, I finally got around to watching Jonathan Demme’s humane film about Jimmy Carter ‘Man from Plains’ last night – a film about the most useful post-Presidency in US history. What struck me the most was not the fact that [...]
'Watchmen' Re-visited
Regular listeners will already know that my genial co-host and I didn’t much care for ‘Watchmen’. Jett, as a long term fan of costumed avengers felt it missed the point, to say the least; I wasn’t sure. I saw it again the other night in the hope that my thoughts might clarify themselves. So, for [...]
