TIFF14/NYFF Round-Up

Here are links to my TIFF coverage from earlier this year, plus some reviews of films I saw in Toronto but pitched as NYFF reviews. TIFF Rev...

The Smart Dumb Films of Lord & Miller

Here's a piece I wrote back in June on the super-smash team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, whose satiric chops are overstated but ...

Beyond the Lights

I had some reservations about aspects of Gina Prince-Bythewood's critique of celebrity itself, but overall Beyond the Lights  is a gorge...

Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014)

Warning: contains spoilers Give David Fincher some credit: he may have cemented his name as the man who converts grim bestsellers into self-...

Love Streams

One of two pieces I wrote recently about John Cassavetes' not-quite-swan song, his masterpiece Love Streams . An excerpt: The film’s tit...

Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014)

Filled with Nic Roeg-esque montages and a finale that repurposes Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life as some sort of metaphysical chase seque...

Blu-Ray Review Round-Up (08/10/2014)

Here's a few months worth of Blu-Ray reviews from Slant and Movie Mezzanine. Movie Mezzanine Sleepaway Camp (Scream Factory) Rollerball ...

The Dance of Reality (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 2014)

By the same token, it’s also a fitting summary of everything that hinders the film’s aspirations to a singular vision. The highly chromatic,...

Music Reviews

I'm trying my hand at more music reviews this year, mostly for the site Spectrum Culture. Here's links to my music-related pieces: N...

Finding Fela (Alex Gibney)

A greater sin still is how the film saps Fela’s music of its energy. It’s not entirely Gibney’s fault: no documentary about an artist has ev...

Blu-Ray Review: The Lego Movie

The Lego Movie  is too scattershot and content to be the satire some claim it is, but I nonetheless find its 40-jokes-per-minute mania pleas...

Blu-Ray Review: The Man from Laramie

The Man from Laramie  is the last Anthony Mann-James Stewart collaboration, and if it's not the best of their work (I'd narrowly giv...

Blu-Ray Review: L'Eclisse

The more I watch and return to Michelangelo Antonioni, the less concerned I am with "solving" his elliptical form and the more I...

Blu-Ray Review: Like Someone in Love

Abbas Kiarostami's Like Someone in Love  was one of my favorite films of 2013, and Criterion's Blu-Ray is predictably superlative, p...

Blu-Ray Review: A Hard Day's Night

I watched A Hard Day's Night  for the first time back in 2009 when the Beatles remasters came out and loved it so much I was instantly r...

Louie Season 4 Recaps

Rather than do individual posts, here are links to all of my Louie coverage Episodes 1 & 2: "Back" and "Model" Episo...

Two Rode Together (John Ford, 1961)

Here's my review of John Ford's excellent late-period Two Rode Together  and its fine Blu-Ray release from Twilight Time. Read my fu...

Regular Lovers (Philippe Garrel, 2005)

[The following is a belated Blind Spots entry.] The grainy black-and-white imagery and raw sound give Regular Lovers an impression of verit...

Game of Thrones Season 4 Recaps

Very pleased to say that I am covering this season of Game of Thrones  for Slant's House Next Door blog. Here are links to the first fiv...

Link Round-Up (05/06/14)

Here are the rest of my outstanding review links, all of them Blu-Ray reviews for Slant. - Blu-Ray Review: Hail Mary - Blu-Ray Review: The L...

Louie, Season 4, E01 "Back" and E02 "Model"

I'm covering Louie 's new season for Slant's House Next Door, and here is my recap for the premiere double-header, which shows t...

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1933)

[The following is a belated Blind Spots entry.] Fritz Lang stood out as the first master of sound cinema by making talkies that, ironically,...

Criminally Underrated: Abel Ferrara

Over the last year or so I've become a devout fan of Abel Ferrara, the gutter-punk poet of New York, whose works of self-investigating e...

Ninja 2: Shadow of a Tear (Isaac Florentine, 2013)

Ninja II  came out on home video at the very end of last year, and it was one of the best action films I saw in 2013. From what I've see...

Review Round-Up (05/05/2014)

I like to give every film its own page here, even when linking off-site, but frankly I've fallen too far behind on updating this blog wi...

The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)

Wes Anderson’s latest, The Grand Budapest Hotel , has bowed to reviews that link the occasionally staggering scale of its production design ...

Enjoy the Silents

This was the first of a planned monthly series on silent cinema, which appears now not to be going forward unless I can find a new home for ...

John Ford's Lasting Importance

I had hoped to devote much of February to a celebration of John Ford, whose 120th birthday was on the first of that month. But restructuring...

Best DVD/Streaming of the Week (1/28/14)

Another round-up. Sadly, this appears to be the last one, at least for Film.com. Best DVDs Best Streaming

Best DVD/Streaming of the Week (1/14/2014)

Quick link piece here since it's so past publish date Best DVDs Best Streaming

Thief (Michael Mann, 1981)

Back in January I wrote about Michael Mann's incredible theatrical debut Thief  (one of the best feature debuts ever, even if Mann had ...

The Sun Shines Bright (John Ford, 1953)

I wrote about John Ford's The Sun Shines Bright , cited by the man himself as his favorite of his movies, for Spectrum Culture . It'...

Pleasuring Yourself

It’s been a while since someone got a missive against elitist taste posted in an elite publication, so clearly we were overdue. The latest c...

Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)

[The following is a belated entry in last year's Blind Spots series.] The rhyming book-end shots that open and close Ugetsu —the first s...

All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)

[The following is a belated entry in last year's Blind Spots series.] All That Jazz is a New Hollywood film from an Old Hollywood filmm...

Blind Spots 2014

In writing terms, I had a great 2013. I added some cool new bylines to my resumé, and for the first time I even got paid for my work! As suc...