Reaction Shots

Bob Dylan contains multitudes (see also, I’m Not There ), is a towering cultural presence and has been for sixty years. The significance of his work is immeasurable and the man himself remains something of an enigma, and an artist who doesn’t look back. He reinvents himself routinely and has done so for all these decades.  In his eighties, he still tours relentlessly and if you’ve seen him more than once, you don’t know what you’re going to get which can be cause for elation or disappointment. But you can’t say Dylan is boring and I hate to say it, but James Mangold, Jay Cocks, and Timotheé Chalamet did a good job of rendering him so. Look, to me biopics are the lowest form of cinema. Few and far between are the ones I actually like and I don’t care how much they fudge the truth or indulge in hagiography, even (no, that’s not true; I hate that shit). However, it should be a criminal offense to make your subject so dead-eyed petulant and try to fob that off as edgy or to use that wo...

Halina Reijn has a sure eye for unique characters and perhaps the wryest of wits.   Bodies, Bodies, Bodies   was pretty fun and a rip on privilege, class, social media, all wrapped up in a murder mystery.   Babygirl   interrogates sex and power wrapped up in a kind of dramedy. I agree with a number of people that there are resonances with   Secretary   and Kidman’s earlier turn in   Eyes Wide Shut , but while those films were focused and more pointed,   Babygirl   doesn’t quite resonate with me. Kidman’s Romy Mathis is by any measure, a remarkable woman; she heads a robotics company on the cutting edge, is obviously successful, has a beautiful family and discovers she has a kink. Maybe more than one, but the principle one that is front and center is her BDSM relationship with an intern, Samuel, that threatens everything. For awhile, there’s a genuine dramatic tension that sustains the film until it ceases to evolve into anything more interest...

I finished last year strong with   Poor Things   and there is nothing of that ilk out right now. I am going to see Babydoll later as the first movie of 2025, but I knew Sis wanted to watch a flick and we had been discussing   Gosford   for years.  It’s not just that it’s a stacked cast with some of the greatest actors of several generations or that Fellowes delivered the sharpest script of his career; it’s that it’s one of those premier examples of how film is a collaborative medium and that Bob Altman knew that better than many, if not most.  When he fired on all cylinders, Altman turned out at least a dozen genuinely great films. When he wasn’t quite as inspired, he had control of his craft enough that even the most workmanlike movie was still pretty entertaining. And like everyone, he had his off cays and more than a couple of his sub-par works suck.  But not here.  Altman always had an eye on class and the codification of and limitations to re...

Dear god almighty. This was dire. A film based on script by Ed Wood, Jr., the great auteur of Plan 9 from Outer Space , Glen or Glenda , and one of my favorites, Jail Bait , that really, really needed his direction. That, friends, is dire. There’s diddly to say about it, except that on the good side, it does have Criswell turning in a performance almost as good as his Plan 9 run. It has Pat Barrington, a well regarded (maybe?) burlesque and topless dancer, doing double duty as the female lead and as one of the dancers in the vignettes. And maybe, a nod should be given in the direction of Fawn Silver as “The Black Ghoul", a knock-off Vampira in a role written for Maila Nurmi, the actual Vampira, but who had schedule conflicts. And no, Silver is not a Black woman. Sounds promising yet? No, please don’t think that’s the case.  Here’s the deal. A couple is driving along the highway in, I don’t know, the Hollywood hills. The woman is apprehensive about her companion’s desire to go to a...

Having just written about Murnau’s seminal masterpiece, and being a huge fan of Herzog’s, I admit to some trepidation in an anticipating Dave Eggers’ version.  Part of what I’d anticipated was that it would lack weight and depth. I think this is true. Eggers’ version is soaked in atmosphere, in remarkable detail, and a distinct eroticism that subsumes some of the larger themes that we encounter in both earlier versions. It is also a much longer than those earlier versions.  I was thoroughly engaged by what Eggers has brought to the screen and he’s fleshed out characters in ways I didn’t completely expect; but I missed the chthonic earthiness Murnau and Herzog. Eggers thrusts us into an intimacy with something that is supposed to be primordial and ancient but it doesn’t quite strike me that way.  The Transylvania of this iteration doesn’t enchant me or awe me as the earlier films. Nor, for all the superb effects, did I feel the sense of foreboding or evil thet I find in t...

David Eggers'   Nosferatu   opens here on Christmas Day. I’ve been, for the most part, avoiding reviews, but I am betting that it will be a fine film regardless of whatever nits others and/or myself pick at. As much as comparisons are said to be odious, any work that takes on such material is inviting them and at the same time, inviting us to return to the original work. Before diving in, I’ve typically confronted films like   Nosferatu   (1922) through a kind of two-dimensional approach. The first is an historical dimension; this is comprised of  prevailing contemporary events/social-societal movements, personnel on the film under discussion, thematic antecedents (found in films and other artworks and movements that were of the moment). The other dimension is almost purely aesthetic; film technique, visual use of metaphor/analogy, incorporation of social/psychological elements current at the time of the film’s creation, and so on. With any work of   N...