Reaction Shots

One thing I don’t spend too much time on is how many dust-ups there are in film circles about stuff that really doesn’t matter.  Topics like how sequels to well-loved movies fall short and “ruin childhoods”, sound bites from directors weighing in on how comic book movies aren’t cinema, and the old, shopworn “Hollywood is out of ideas” trope all come up repeatedly over time. I don’t think the ruination of one’s childhood is really a thing. If you’re writing that, it means you survived childhood (though perhaps not adolescence). Memories are for going back to and if the thing you liked is reinterpreted or reimagined in the present, that’s fine. You didn’t like it? That’s fine, too. You thought that they could have done something more/better/else with the material? Great. Swell. Move along or write fan fiction or pitch a better idea to a producer and see if you can get your vision made. But Christ, your ruined childhood is tedious to hear about. My guess is that it was either a great ...

The Landmark River Oaks Theatre, Houston TX, photographer not known   I’ve often said that coming up in Houston, I had a year round film school. There was the Rice Media Center, the River Oaks Theatre, Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and other venues that are no longer with us. The three I just mentioned still are, but one we are very close to losing. I’ve been going to the River Oaks Theatre since the mid-70s. I saw Fellini’s “Amarcord”, Bergman’s “Seventh Seal”, and far too many more to recall. We were, some of us anyway, scandalized when the River Oaks began emphasizing first run films (admittedly, I’d moved away by then, but kept tabs on the cinema scene); but what films they were (and continue to be). From Linklater’s “Slacker” to Lanthimos’ “The Favourite” lay decades of so-called art cinema, auteurist film, and frankly, the best from independent voices. Given the onslaught of the pandemic and the toll it has taken on local and small businesses, it feels inevitable that ...