Reaction Shots

Licorice Pizza. A vinyl album (“LP” - get it?) Also, a record store in California back in the day. Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest is an ode to the period of my coming of age, taking place in early 1973. It’s a hugely affectionate coming of age tale played out against the backdrop of Southern California, specifically the San Fernando Valley and a bitchin’ soundtrack. It’s been referred to as a shaggy dog story, and I suppose it is. It is certainly episodic and you aren’t really sure where any single episode is going nor do you care. You do, however, care about the protagonists, Gary Valentine, a 15 year old soon to be former child actor with a penchant for quick side hustles, and the woman he tells his friend Gary he’s going to marry, Alana Kane. Both are played by two remarkable first-time actors who have direct relationships to the director. Gary is Cooper Hoffman, the son of the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Alana is played by Alana Haim, lead singer for the sister band Hai...

Rarely do the Academy Awards hold my interest in the best of years, but 2021 was one of those and I have to admit that as jaded as I am, I was tickled by the nominees this year. “CODA” won Best Picture, and I am not going to argue, though I would have gone with “The Power of the Dog.”   I don’t quite get “King Richard”’s nomination and I really don’t see Will Smith earning the statue for this performance. EDIT: well, well, well. Look who’s wrong…obviously, this was written prior to the Academy Awards ceremony. But I’m leaving it as is for posterity. “Drive My Car” (thankfully) won Best International Film, and for that I can be grateful because that was my other personal nomination for Best Pic. “Dune”, “Nightmare Alley”, and “Don’t Look Up”? Fine films, but “The Best”? I suppose of the three, I get it; but as much as I liked both “Nightmare Alley” and “Don’t Look Up”, even I have to wonder about their inclusion.  “West Side Story” I was completely behind. I couldn’t see...

I don’t know that there has been a film quite this moving in some time. Anytime you bring together themes of loss, suppressed emotion, forgiveness, and perseverance folded into “Uncle Vanya” or rather Chekhov folded into all this, I am yours. The structure of the film is a quiet, enigmatic set-up of a man and woman in bed, making love as she tells the tale of a high school girl who enters the house of her crush after he and his family have gone for the day. This may be the first of a series of thematic foreshadowings, but it’s also her way of composing a script. She, Oto, is a screenwriter and her husband Yusuke Kafuku is a theater director and actor. This is one of those sequences in cinema where you feel as though you are eavesdropping or privy to something so intimate. Not just a couple sharing space and love, but the act of creation. This sounds heavy-handed, but trust me, it’s not. “Drive My Car” is a film replete with subtleties, narrative, thematic, and performative and at t...

“When my father passed, I wanted nothing more than my mother's happiness. For what kind of man would I be if I did not help my mother? If I did not save her?” Jane Campion has added another masterpiece to an inventory of them. In “Power of the Dog”, she delivers a potent, slow-building meditation on masculinity, the transition of eras, and the secrets that lurk inside us. Along the way, both physical and psychological isolation and the failure to connect loom large.   At the center of the narrative is Phil Burbank, one of a pair of Janus faced ranch-owning brothers, who is the rougher, more brutish of the two. Played by Benedict Cumberbatch, filling out a role that shows his full range of skills as an actor, Phil is a beady-eyed, bullying prick who doesn’t suffer those he considers fools or weak easily. Or at all.  Phil’s brother George is drifting toward those categories as he retains a civilized veneer, wears nice suits, and manages the business/financial side of the ran...

I wouldn’t say that any of these are bad films. “King Richard” is the weakest of the three and if I sound like I’m judging harshly, it is because of all the nominees for “Best Picture”, it has, despite a great performance at the center and strong ones all around, the weakest showing as a film. I realized that as of this writing, I have seen most of the nominees for Best Picture for the 2022 Academy Awards and I feel it incumbent on me to do the write thing. I know it’s a lousy pun. Sue me. I loved “CODA”, really liked “Belfast”, and admired Will Smith’s performance in “King Richard”, though the movie overall didn’t completely resonate with me (and it’s a good film!) Given that parenthetical remark, maybe it’s not out of place to remind ourselves that we can experience a work of art, a film, a concert, and while recognizing its merits, it may just not completely takes us by storm. I think I’ve said elsewhere that criticism often reveals more about the critic than the work under revi...