I don’t think that 2013 was much of a year for movies, since I spent a long, long time trying to find 10 that I could unreservedly say I loved. And in the end I chose seven because the other three slots kept getting filled with movies that I had problems with even if I…
In the early 1960s, many of the now-iconic folk singers earned their followings and made reputations in the smoky, cramped clubs in New York’s Greenwich Village. This is where you could hear Bob Dylan, Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell, and be close enough to see the spittle on their lips. As history usually works, we…
Philomena I recently saw a comment about Philomena that described it as the inoffensive movie your mother will love. While I didn’t quite find that to reach the level of offensive, it did stick in my craw. Of course, there are movies cynically made for specific audiences – Tyler Perry makes movies largely for black…
I’ve started to think that when judging movies we should not compare them all on an equal plane. They should be placed into specific categories, and these shouldn’t be based on genre, like comedy or drama, but rather on budget. A movie with a $5 million budget, for instance, doesn’t deserve to be placed next…
Nebraska I am a sucker for father-son movies, so much so that I’ve wept openly at movies of such disparate quality as the lovely The Sum of Us (Russell Crowe’s gay son living with his hilariously supportive father Jack Thompson), the fine Frequency (Jim Caviezel talking with dead father Dennis Quaid through a mystical shortwave…
Dallas Buyers Club Ron Woodruff (Matthew McConaughey), a newly diagnosed and very sick man with AIDS, says this to his doctor Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) in the summer of 1985. She had just told him that he can’t get the then FDA unapproved AZT, or any of the promising drugs then only available in Europe….
There’s nothing remotely interesting about Blue is the Warmest Color except everything. The three-hour lesbian love story in French that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year features all of the oldest tropes of both love stories and queer love stories. We have the same boy meets girl, loses girl, tries to get girl…
I think it is possible to write a review of 12 Years a Slave and focus solely on its merits as a film, whether it will win Oscars, and how it could be already a classic. I think that would easily elide what the film and what films like it do to and do for…
A large number of writers have been credited with the phrase “kill all your darlings.” I had always thought it was Dorothy Parker, and the Internet claims it is William Faulkner or Stephen King. A recent Slate article places its origin as a writing guide from 1913. Whoever said it first, it’s been a key…
One of the first movies I reviewed for this paper was Heartbeats, a stunningly beautiful update of Jules & Jim made by queer Quebecois wunderkind Xavier Dolan. It lasted in San Diego for about a week; I am still the only person I know who has seen it. His next movie Laurence, Anyways won awards…
