Since his 2010 breakout film Rubber – previously covered in this blog under the rubric of Absurdities in the 21st Century – Quentin Dupieux has cemented himself as one of the most idiosyncratic and consistent filmmakers working today. An auteur in the truest sense (he is French, after all), a Dupieux film is almost instantly recognizable. They are…
Read MoreWhen famed musical composer and innovator Stephen Sondheim passed away November 26th of last year, I vaguely knew of some of his musicals and his contribution to the theater and the arts.
Three months later, I find myself in awe of an artist who not only created some of the most important American innovations to an art form but also made sure to pass his knowledge on to students and the next generation in a very open, practical way.
I don’t know if you’ve ever done this but sometimes when someone dies, I seek out interviews on YouTube. Every now and then I fall down a rabbit hole of wanting to know everything about that person.
This happened to me with Sondheim.
In December and January, along with…
Read MoreEverything about The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane screams, “b-movie”. Awkwardly long title? Check. Made in the late seventies? Check. Canadian co-production? Check. And in many (probably most) ways that’s exactly what it is. But then the cast makes one seriously reconsider that first impression. Led by a 13-year-old Jodie Foster…
Read MoreWhen I saw the trailer for Studio 666 I immediately wanted to see it, I thought it looked like a lot of fun. And do you know what? I was totally right, it is a lot of fun!
It’s time for the Foo Fighters to make their tenth album, so they…
Read MoreWhen the great Sidney Poitier died in January, there was much talk about In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Lilies of the Field, all of his most well-known films, but I also heard about this film for the first time, Buck and the Preacher, a western…
Read MoreAs any great creative artist moves from flesh and blood to myth, the great works tend to get discussed ad nauseum, the minor works forgotten or relegated to footnotes of footnotes.
But sometimes these footnotes…
Read MoreNear the beginning of this year, I was finally able to see Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s much-acclaimed new film, Drive My Car. The heaps of critical praise it has been given are well deserved and I don’t hesitate to add my own laudatory comments, for whatever they’re worth. One of the key elements of the story that struck me is the relationship between a middle-aged theatrical director and his driver, an adult woman maybe twenty years his junior. Almost uniquely in the history of movies, the scenes…
Read MoreRobin and the 7 Hoods is the final Rat Pack movie, it is a movie starring Frank Sinatra, it is a musical, it is a comedy updating of Robin Hood, it is all of these things, but can you guess which of these facts is the reason I saw this movie?
If you answered none of the above, you are correct, because the actual reason is…
Read MoreSo, Cinematic Void, after the end of January Giallo, is extending their Monday night residency at American Cinematheque, programming vampire movies in February, and for Valentines Day they showed good old Fright Night. The original and far better version.
For my entire childhood, and beyond, Roddy McDowall always was my favorite…
Read MoreLook, obviously, this isn’t a good movie. If I’m defining good as beyond merely entertaining. It’s the kind of movie that you watch because you woke up before you wanted to, can’t get back to sleep, and are resigned to do something extremely non-taxing until it’s appropriate to formally begin the day. The benefit of watching a movie like this…
Read MoreFord was an ornery, complicated man. To say the least. Very few folks could gain his respect to actually “manage” him if that’s the right word. But two who seemingly figured out how to get the best out of Jack Ford while checking Ford’s indulgences were…
Read MoreLast year, when I was doing my 365 Films in 365 Days Project, I started doing little tributes when people died. I would watch and review a film of the decedent, preferably one that I had never seen before like O’Hara‘s Wife for Ed Asner, although sometimes it would be a film that I just adored and hadn’t seen in years, like Heaven Can Wait for Charles Grodin.
Well, there were so many deaths in January 2022, that I decided to do a subsection of these reviews, and I’m calling it Passings.
I am not doing them in order of said passing, and thus am starting with the most recent, Howard Hesseman, who died last week. Now, he didn’t do tons of films…
Read More
