February 2011
11 posts
January 2011
39 posts
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"Sleepy Hollow" (1999)
I might be alone in thinking that Johnny Depp has jumped the shark. And I’m probably alone in my disinterest for almost all of Tim Burton’s recent work. The thing is Sleepy Hollow has redeeming qualities that far outweigh it’s failures.
The worst thing that you can say about Tim Burton is that his films are over-produced, which when you think about it isn’t that bad;...
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From The Tops of Mountains to the Depths of Caves
A couple of months ago, Werner Herzog began making the rounds and getting everyone wound up with his foray into 3D filmmaking. It was especially intriguing because the man isn’t known for working in contemporary ways or utilizing contemporary film techniques.
It’s for these reasons alone that a 3D film by the German auteur would likely be one of the finest cinematic experiences...
sexwithrobertdeniro-deactivated asked: Just wanted to say I love your icon and your posts. You've got a great film blog!
What are 3 of your favorite movies? Oh and your name?
What are 3 of your favorite movies? Oh and your name?
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"Full Metal Jacket" (1987)
The strong dualites of war are obvious from the begnining of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. The first half of the film is cold, and locked within the bland greenish interiors of Marine training grounds that stretch long and flat into the horizon. All corners meet in sharp points and are a distant memory when the film reaches Viet Nam.
The ‘Nam, exists in a dystopian state....
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"HEAT" (1995)
I think about HEAT and I tighten my fist. In my mind, it’s a coiled spring; a jungle cat; and as hard as the round in the chamber of a heist mans AR-15. In my mind, there’s a zen-like mind-body connection that I can’t place in other movies. HEAT’s got it in spades. It knows, it breathes and it exists in my mind with a single flaw: Al Pacino.
I’ve lost count on...
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"Taxi Driver" (1976)
Like a lot of things from a previous gerneration, Taxi Driver scared me and shocked me. It wasn’t the violence that alarmed me either, it was the mirror of worlds that I had seen first hand that frightended me.
I’ve never been to New York but I spent a lot of time in downtown L.A. in the early to mid-nineties, skipping school and going to action movies at the three or four...
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oops from Chris Beckman on Vimeo.
Wow. It’s been some time since I’ve seen such a clever use of video. This kind of Spike Jonze inventiveness and exuberance is a real pleasure to behold.
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"Seven Chances" (1925)
Remade in the 90’s as one of the worst remakes of a classic movie ever made, Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances is filmmaking 101 for anyone interested in how to create high energy films with a moving camera.
Like most Keaton films the plot centers around an everyday man trapped in circumstances that are out of his control. Family, women, and society as a whole loom over him and...
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"Klute" (1971)
Klute is a cinematic and sensory pleasure. It’s the kind of movie, whose pacing is so carefully composed and so precise that I can watch it with the sound off; the rhythm of shots flowing into one another providing a theraputic calm.
Gordon Willis, famed chiarascuro cinematographer gains most of the credit on this, as does Pakula and the placement of his camera — usually behind...
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Dear Action Movie,
Where have you been? I’ve missed you so much! I see your little brother around all a lot. I hope you don’t mind me saying this but he’s kind of a douche.
He’s constantly showing up in theaters with his PG-13 jersey (as if that’s something to be proud of) and talking so loud that I can hear him in the next theater. Whenever I see him he’s got nothing to say and...
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“…and then you slowly start to realize no one in Hollywood is interested in...”
– Christopher McQuarrie on making films after winning an Academy Award for The Usual Suspects.
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"The Driver" (1976)
We should have a discussion sometime about Pure Cinema. It’s a turn of phrase that carries more weight than it throws. It’s also something that implies a higher state. So, when I proclaim that Walter Hill’s masterful film The Driver is pure cinema you’re likely to think that I’m holding it in as much regard as the works of Fellini or Huston — but in some ways I...
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"Fargo" (1996)
Growing up in a city like Los Angeles it’s hard to believe people like the ones in Fargo exist. Their polite and solid keel demeanor gets interpretted as ignorant and naive in most films. But on a recent trip to Salt Lake City, I’m reminded that they do exist; and that the looseness in their shoulders comes from a life unexposed and unaccustomed to the constant harshness of...
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"Pretty In Pink" (1986)
SYNOPSIS:
A teenage girl (literally) from the wrong side of the tracks is trapped in a love triangle. She falls for one of the richest boys in school and her childhood best friend is in love with her.
The core of Pretty in Pink for me (and I imagine for devotees as well) is in Ducky. I’m not of the era so I don’t know if Molly Ringwald annoyed people back then as much she does...
salesonfilm asked: Your blog is fucking fantastic.
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"Crumb" (1994)
SYNOPSIS:
Documentarian Terry Zwigoff interviews his personal friend and legendary comic book artist Robert Crumb. Family, friends and fans also contribute theories, and anecdotes on what exactly makes Crumb Crumb.
As a disaffected youth I read a great deal of Robert Crumb’s work. It came along at the same time that I read Bukowski and Allan Sillitoe. Perverts, drunks, and angry men...
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Straw Dogs (1971)
SYNOPSIS:
Dustin Hoffman plays a bourgeois intellectual who takes his wife, a self-indulgent sex-pot, into the English countryside for a taste of the good life. Instead he finds brutes, and vicious justice. Director Sam Peckinpah takes all of his characters to thier nihilistic conclusions.
On the commentary to his underrated film Panic Room, David Fincher remarks that Peckinpah’s film...
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"Road to Perdition" (2006)
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Far from the young millionaire in Penny Marshall's "Big" — Tom Hanks has grown up to be a hit man for the mob. He's a cold-blooded killer, and a loving father. He's destroyed so much life, but if he can protect his own sons, maybe he can save his soul.
For a minute there Sam Mendes really had the world going. His career and his directorial hand has wavered a tad in the last few...
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“This was the scene where Alex (Malcolm McDowell) comes in and picks up a...”
– — Miriam Karlin (aka The Cat Lady in A Clockwork Orange)
File this under: Useless Trivia.
Understand that despite it’s filing it’s still another interesting anecdote about the way that kid from Brooklyn made movies, and as such carries along with it pixie dust that solidifies into...
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A couple years ago, I watched a film called Bottle Rocket. I knew nothing...”
– Wes Anderson - March 2000 - Esquire
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"Sweet Smell of Success" (1957)
SYNOPSIS:
When the sister of powerfully unethical gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker starts dating a (gasp!) jazz musician, he gives up and coming scumbag Sidney Falco the chance to move up — by planting a story that will destroy the innocence of all those involved.
Are you a fan of slimy, sadistic and endlessly seductive cinema? Well, good.
Burt Lancaster plays a cold, hard, and emotionless...