Blowing It
Both Brokeback Mountain and Munich are patient, well-made genre movies that strip most of the politics out of charged subjects. Sadly, both are also botches.
Reviews
Reasons to Hike Wolf Creek
I know Wolf Creek doesn’t seem like an appropriate destination for cultured – and sensible! – people such as you and me, but allow me to make a case for visiting this remote area of the Australian Outback in your cinematic travels.
Tagged: Greg McLean, Horror, Reviews, Torture, Wolf Creek
My Father the Hero
It’s been a decade since I read Christopher Buckley’s Thank You for Smoking. I remember it as slight but laugh-out-loud funny, one of the few books I did not hesitate to recommend to anybody. The movie adaptation, written and directed by Jason Reitman, didn’t make me laugh out loud, but I was surprised at its modest depth – and the sources of that richness.
On the Mundanity of Spooge
Although obviously Andersonian (Rushmore-ic?), The Squid and the Whale is not a movie that Wes Anderson could have pulled off. Noah Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical film is too raw, naked, painful, and real. It fuses The Royal Tenenbaums and Ordinary People at a genetic level that Seth Brundle would appreciate. Although it acts like a comedy, the movie’s familiarity and truth will be as funny to many people as a slap in the face.
Drunken Commentary Track: I ♥ Huckabees
After choosing I ♥ Huckabees for the second in the Culture Snob “Drunken Commentary Track” series, I can confirm that my thoughts on the movie are less than cogent. You, dear reader/listener, can now hear long, awkward silences and extended digressions as Culture Snob, Bride of Culture Snob, Bad Dog Ginger, and River Cities’ Reader film critic Mike Schulz try to say something of value about the movie. Click to download the audio file (mp3 format, roughly 24 megabytes, 107 minutes), which is intended to be listened to while watching the movie.
Good Night, and Good Riddance.
The handsome Good Night, and Good Luck is a joy to behold but short on ideas, drama, and humanity. It ends up being a dull film documenting the dull work of dull television journalists, when it really wants to be a sober but nostalgic reminder of heroic muckrakers bringing down the big bad bigot of the Red Scare. Perhaps most crucially, as a lesson for our times it’s a deeply flawed comparison.
The Truman Show
Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for his performance in Capote, one I found a mite calculating. The film as a whole suffers from a similar malady: It seems to operate more cautiously than deliberately, a hint too restrained and with a trace of self-conscious uncertainty. Yet, fundamentally, the studied, low-key choices work.
Shattered Glass: The Inaugural Drunken Commentary Track
A real-time discussion of Billy Ray’s 2003 movie about New Republic faker Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) and his editor (Peter Sarsgaard). This commentary track is meant to be listened to while watching the movie. The audio file (mp3 format, roughly 16 megabytes, 94 minutes) features Culture Snob joined by River Cities’ Reader film critic Mike Schulz, with important contributions from Bride of Culture Snob, and at least one interjection from Bad Dog Ginger. Click to download.
The Devolution of Atom Egoyan
Atom Egoyan’s Where the Truth Lies is a work whose very title, with its cheesy double meaning, portends bad, blunt things. If it works at all, it’s as an act of self-parody, in which the filmmaker’s heady concerns are consumed by the tripe of his ostensible subject matter. Plus: the tedium of 2046.
Joyful Discomfort
The unfortunately neglected Happy Endings has the unfixed, casually natural sexuality of Pedro Almodóvar, the existential screwball absurdity of I ♥ Huckabees, an offhanded but sincere interest in serious themes, and the voyeuristic allure of watching people try to extricate themselves from traps set by their own stupidity and greed. Plus: a Wizard of Oz for the 21st Century, and the kinda crappy clarity of Asylum.
