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Thoughts on Film: October 2014
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Monday, October 13, 2014. Director David Fincher’s latest attempt to decipher the evolving state of human relations is not a pleasant experience. If you go to the movies to be entertained rather than contemplate social criticism, then I would definitely skip this one. In one long, commercial-free reality show. In this case Nick seems too cool, too level-headed for both the police and tabloid TV, especially once his version of his marriage begins to unravel. Again, image is everything, so to save hims...
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Thoughts on Film: January 2015
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Monday, January 5, 2015. Not often does a mainstream movie revolved around a character as aggressively amoral and convincingly repulsive as Lou Bloom. The episodical film follows Lou and his goofy assistant Rick (an amusing Riz Ahmed) as they nightly cruise the city hoping to arrive at grizzly accidents before the cops and the other cameramen. They hit the jackpot—and more—when they stumble onto a murder scene. While the movie is shot and performed as thoroughly realistic, much of the content he shoots a...
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Thoughts on Film: March 2014
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Saturday, March 1, 2014. PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN (1967-2014). In the 1990s, Hoffman put together a string of impressive supporting performances in some of the best films of the era, including as Scotty, the repulsive sycophant to porn start Dirk Diggler in “Boogie Nights” (1997); as the arrogant assistant to the “other” Lebowski in “The Big Lebowski” (1998);. His acclaimed performance in “The Master” (2012) left me cold, a rare misfire for this fine actor. Hoffman’s exploration of the dark side of h...
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Thoughts on Film: February 2015
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Saturday, February 21, 2015. 1 Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). 3 A Most Violent Year. 4 The Grand Budapest Hotel. 5 The Theory of Everything. 7 A Most Wanted Man. 12 The Trip to Italy. 17 Under the Skin. 18 Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. 19 Edge of Tomorrow. 1 Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman. 2 Christopher Nolan, Interstellar. 3 JC Chandor, A Most Violent Year. 4 Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel. 5 James Marsh, The Theory of Everything. 1 Michael Keaton, Birdman. 4 Benoit Del...
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Thoughts on Film: April 2015
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Monday, April 6, 2015. There’s a reason why the works of many of the acclaimed novelists of the Twentieth Century, including Bellow, Cheever, Updike, Malamud, Pynchon, and DeLillo, have rarely been adapted for the screen. Yet many of Philip Roth’s books have been brought to the screen, though rarely with success. His focus on troubled, usually May-September, love affairs has been the attraction. Not unlike the book, the relationship between Simon and his younger lover is never fully developed or at least...
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Thoughts on Film: April 2014
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Thursday, April 3, 2014. THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL. The worlds created by director Wes Anderson aren’t exactly real life but they offer a post-cynical, dead-pan comic reflection of reality, in which everyone’s emotions are on full display as if they are speaking the most important words of their. The film flashes back to the late 1930s when the hotel was in full flower, under the impeccable guidance of Gustave, concierge extraordinaire (played to perfection by Ralph Fiennes). Two important things happ...
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Thoughts on Film: December 2013
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Saturday, December 7, 2013. In 1972, 30-year-old Martin Scorsese had just completed his first mainstream movie, “Boxcar Bertha,” for Roger Corman’s company. Already a part of the New York movie scene, he asked the guru of independent filmmaking, John Cassavetes, what he thought of the film. Cassavetes told him to follow the filmmaking instincts he showed in his low-budget feature debut “Who’s That Knocking at My Door? 8221; to every question Charlie asks. In the next few years, Scorsese delivered his mas...
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Thoughts on Film: August 2015
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Saturday, August 1, 2015. Generally speaking, the past 60 years of European cinema have been about exploring the moral conflicts of modern man. At the same time, American cinema has focused on how that same man, unaware of any moral conflict, does whatever is necessary to defeat a one-dimensional bad guy. Now, in “Irrational Man,” the central character is a philosophy professor whose entire life is invested in exploring the meaning of life and his place in it. Abe Lucas (a properly distra...The film seem...
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Thoughts on Film: January 2014
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Wednesday, January 8, 2014. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET. As seen through the memoirs of Jordon Belfort, the introduction of 401ks and the rush to make a killing in the stock market turned traders into kings, especially those who weren’t hung up on ethics. Like young athletes scoring their first multi-million dollar contract, Belfort and his colleagues weren’t shy about spending their questionably earned profits on clearly illegal activities. He leads his cadre of sycophants, led by wide-eyed and shameless Do...