Reaction Shots

The first movie to feature voiceover narration is full of fun stuff; it is a perky, fast-paced blast. Hitchcock had proved what he could do with this type of material in 1927’s “The Lodger – a Tale of the London Fog” and here, he ups the ante; this time, instead of a male protagonist who’s falsely accused, it’s a woman. It’s also a blonde woman who is offered up as the sacrificial lamb, setting up Hitch’s blonde fetish for the next forty-plus years. We have cross-dressing and gender-bending, altogether-too-close-up shots of feet, the desperate acts that a racist society can drive someone to, the brutal irony of that act, discussions of the barbarity of capital punishment, and a metatextual finale that calls into question the nature of the narrative just watched. In other words, Hitchcock is becoming HITCHCOCK. While it’s true that “The Lodger” is truly the first “Hitchcock film” after years of working on pretty middle of the road fare, and “Blackmail” is certainly a treat in...

copyright 2019 Columbia Pictures I should probably explain this title right out of the gate. For me, for the past 25 years, Gillian Armstrong’s masterpiece has been my standard for adaptations of the novel for a variety of reasons. The performances were and remain impeccable, the fidelity to the source material impressive and how it conveyed the issues that women faced in the mid-19 th century United States was, at the time, as solid as it gets without devolving into arch polemic or scuttling the whole to make a point. Armstrong’s cast had a lot to with that (duh). Winona Ryder was at the peak of her powers as Jo and Susan Sarandon as Marmee conveyed both Marmee’s warmth and compassion and her toughness, adding to her and avoiding what could have been a caricature/cypher/symbol. The humanism inherent Alcott’s book permeates that film. Claire Danes as Beth, Trini Alvarado as Meg, and Samantha Mathis as Amy provided fully realized people as the other older March chi...

I'm predisposed to like, no, fucking  love , this film. The idea of adapting Pynchon to cinema has been around for years. Like a lot of people, I would have assumed "Crying of Lot 49" would be themost likely candidate. Until three years ago when I read "Inherent Vice." Accessible, funny, and entertaining, it still holds Pynchon's themes and vision of the United States as a complex of power waning toward empire's fall. Setting that aside, I started a short list over the years of who would be the best to direct and/or write the adaptation, any adaptation. While he was alive, Kubrick. But I would have voted for the Coen brothers, maybe Spike Jonez, possibly Terry Gilliam, possibly the Nolan brothers, but oddly, Paul Thomas Anderson didn't occur to me. In retrospect, it's a no-brainer. Like his mentor, Robert Altman, Anderson has a similar multivalvent interpretation of the "American Dream"; "Boogie Nights" and ...

I wasn’t planning on reviewing television shows, but at the end of the day, why not? I don’t want to get bogged down in episode by episode recounting, but I do want to consider a series as a whole cinematic experience. There are sound reasons for this, I think. The primary reason is that so much of what’s available - on streaming services in particular - is just that: cinematic. The quality of production and the use of what is nothing less than remarkable cinematography alone make a strong argument for how Netflix and Amazon original productions can vie with theatrical releases. The second reason is that the storytelling and narrative arcs are so much deeper than what is available in many theatrical films. Sure, there’s a ton of dross out there, both on the small and large screens; however, when it’s good, it’s really good. I want to take a look at Netflix’s “Stranger Things” because on the surface of it, it appears to be a clever homage to Spielberg, Dante, Carpente...

A perfect sentence Jonathan Glazer has directed two of my favorite films; “Sexy Beast” and “Under the Skin”, two films that couldn’t be more different. One is a relatively straightforward narrative about a retired thief (Ray Winstone) being reluctantly (very) recalled to active service by a near-demonic Ben Kingsley with some of the finest dialog ever put on screen. The other is a taciturn science fiction fable of an alien who assumes the form of Scarlett Johannsson, observing, stalking, and eventually, draining her male prey of their essences (or at least, their musculo-skeletal systems). His latest is a short film that has as its inspiration, a visit to Trump Era America. The most Glazer is saying about his most recent work you can find here at the Guardian . I will be making enough references to the article, but it’s worth a read nonetheless. It is a short few minutes of harrowing terror. That it encapsulates the past few years of a presidential term characterized by ...