RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES: You say you want a revolution
I’ve never felt cognitive dissonance like reading my Twitter feed this week—but maybe that was all the cold medicine—seeing nonstop (and counterintuitive) raves for Rupert Wyatt’s blockbuster RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
Episode 181: CAPTAIN AMERICA / THE ROCKETEER / BEGINNERS / COWBOYS AND ALIENS / Special Guest: Zaid Abu Hamdan director of Bahiya & Mahmoud
Episode 181 – Gareth and I watch COWBOYS AND ALIENS so you don’t have to.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER: That’s Entertainment
The only thing more tiresome than Marvel’s latest Shakespeare tragedy is the postmodern elevation of trash/pop/camp—a useful experiment, like shaving your head— so I won’t say Joe Johnston’s CAPTAIN AMERICA: WORLD-FRIENDLY SUBTITLE is a good film.
HARRY POTTER & THE DEATHLY HALLOWS 2: Childish Things
As half-films go, David Yates’ HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2, FILM 8: ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET VOLDEMORT lurches from scene to setpiece like it’s Daniel Radcliffe’s awkwardly effortful performance.
Episode 180 – HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 / PROJECT NIM / TABLOID / Special Guest: Jordan Bayne
Episode 180 – Incredibly we get Gareth to see another Harry Potter film – listen in for the thrilling result. No seriously, listen in. It is thrilling. Eight films worth of thrilling.
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.
CONAN O’BRIEN CAN’T STOP: I’m Still Here
The great joke of the title CONAN O’BRIEN CAN’T STOP is that I was wondering the whole time when he was going to start. It takes fifteen minutes for Rodman Flender’s topical documentary to find a funny scene
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS: L’Age D’Or
Speaking of pseudointellectuals, I’ve never—not even at SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE—seen a movie with an audience more vigorously engaged in the signaling to everyone else that, yes, old sport, they got the reference, they’re very smart, they had THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL over for dinner the other night
OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST: Burden of Dreams
I’ve started and stopped this review so many times it’s like I’m practicing Kegels while peeing. Fitting, too, considering my subject, a fictionalized documentary (think THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES) about its own crew searching for inspiration to film the outright fiction of its last act after a dead financier imperils the project
The 2011 Palm Springs International Short Film Festival and Film Market – Part 2
More vids from the 2011 Palm Springs International Short Film Festival and Film Market including a brief chat with John-Salcido and David Tenenbaum of CATAPLEXY. In-depth interviews with some of the fine filmmakers here, including HOTEL RWANDA director Terry George to follow later this week on The Show.
SUPER 8: Plan 9 From the Spielberg Home for Daddy Issues
The problem with making an entire movie about the wonder and torment of lens flares is that the human eye is hardwired to detect artifice.
Episode 178 – SUPER 8 / Special Guest: William Eubank at the 2011 Seattle International Film Festival
Episode 178 – We get another report from the 2011 Seattle International Film Festival including an interview with director of LOVE William Eubank and some thoughts on the end to the myth of redemptive violence in the Summer blockbuster SUPER 8 are proferred.
Episode 177 – The 2011 Seattle International Film Festival / TABLOID / HOT COFFEE / X-MEN: FIRST CLASS / Special Guest Carl Spence
Episode 177 – We get Jett’s dispatches from the 2011 Seattle International Film Festival including an interview with artistic director of the fest Carl Spence and brief thoughts on Errol Morris’ TABLOID and the must-see doc HOT COFFEE.
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS: Birth of a Nation
I guess X-MEN: FIRST CLASS was set in the ‘60s to better reflect Matthew Vaughn’s thoughtless patriarchal identification, because it damn sure wasn’t about civil rights, the Cold War, liberation, or the Holocaust, weighty abstracts whittled into icons, the better for Vaughn to pretend his film has some deep, world-historical meaning
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST
It isn’t simply that I like DEAD MAN’S CHEST better than CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, that my sui generis brain chemistry arbitrarily prefers squid-pirates to skeletal specters and sexy rogues to straight-laced do-gooders, thought that’s certainly true.
Episode 176 – TREE OF LIFE / ROAD TO NOWHERE / Special Guest: Steven Gaydos
Episode 176 – Thoughts on the syrupy yet beautiful TREE OF LIFE and the mysterious and stunning ROAD TO NOWHERE; includes an interview with ROAD writer Steven Gaydos. Also discussed: STAVISKY… and REJOICE AND SHOUT.
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES
While the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN franchise started with a fun, fresh take on a notoriously stale brand of box office poison, eight years and two directors later, the plastic surgery is finally catching up to it.
Episode 175 – MIDNIGHT IN PARIS / Brief Thoughts on THE HANGOVER 2, KUNG-FU PANDA 2 and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4
Episode 175 – Review of the brilliantly light and lovely MIDNIGHT IN PARIS; how THE HANGOVER 2 could have been saved and brief thoughts on KUNG-FU PANDA 2 and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4: ON STRANGER TIDES.
BRIDESMAIDS: Funny Girl
I’m shocked—shocked!—to find the big, dirty bone of contention with Paul Feig’s BRIDESMAIDS is the centerpiece gross-out scene, when whole mailing lists of people expecting a nice, polite feminist comedy were driven to conniptions
Episode 174 – THOR / BRIDESMAIDS
Episode 174 – Review of the “I’ve already forgotten if I’ve seen it” THOR and my film of the year BRIDESMAIDS. Enjoy!
Don’t Think Twice, It’s Insane, or: When the Communal Viewing Experience Goes Wrong
The Grove in Los Angeles is a lot of things to a lot of people. More precisely, it is meant to be everything to everybody. The sprawling, 575,000-square foot, open-air marketplace offers an alternative to Main Street, Costco, the Internet or any sort of reality existing beyond the confines of a price-tag. I mean no [...]
THOR: Norwegian Wood
If you only see one small-town American story with an Oedipal skeleton enveloping space and time and prehistoric beasts this summer, please, for the love of all that is cinematically holy, make it Terrence Malick’s THE TREE OF LIFE, because Kenneth Branagh’s nominally Norse still-life THOR is so cosmically incompetent
Episode 173 – FAST FIVE / Special Guest: Jack Gill
In this week’s show Gareth and I mull over that great summer action film FAST FIVE and have on as a special guest an award-winning stunt coordinator from the movie Jack Gill.
Carlos Reygadas, BATTLE IN HEAVEN and the Sound of Silence
The Film Talk’s magnificent JumboChat5000 operating system, which also coughs up my lottery numbers, recently flagged up a months-old post by my comrade Tony Youngblood about cinema anima.
