Category: Drama
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Kingdom of Heaven (Director’s Cut)
“There is so much done in Christendom of which Christ would be incapable.” Kingdom of Heaven (Ridley Scott, 2005) A masterpiece. A staggering achievement in filmmaking. One of the most gorgeous movies I’ve ever seen. The production design is off the charts. That team, as well as the costume design team, should have swept their…
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Elvis
“If I can’t move, I can’t sing.” Elvis (Baz Luhrmann, 2022) I love Baz Luhrmann. I find his filmmaking style so joyous and fun. This film contains many of his trademarks: fantastic flourishes of color, kaleidoscopic effects, endearing camp, and elaborate scene transitions. Unfortunately, this movie is not good. It’s kind of incoherently structured and…
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The Lost City of Z
“That jungle is hell, but one kind of likes it.” The Lost City of Z (James Gray, 2016) An interesting take from Gray that didn’t completely work for me. It’s a bizarrely-paced film –one that lingers overlong in the duller segments and cuts short the more fascinating ones. I bet there’s a killer director’s cut…
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Women Talking
“We didn’t talk about our bodies, so when something like this happened, there was no language for it.” Women Talking (Sarah Polley, 2022) A really interesting and important movie about the internal politics of an oppressed and predated upon group of women. Gentle and dreamy cinematography in the Campion, Malick, and Dominik style. All of…
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Gattaca
“They used to say that a child conceived in love has a greater chance of happiness…they don’t say that anymore.” Gattaca (Andrew Niccol, 1997) A gorgeous cinematic achievement in retro-futurism and an evocative commentary on the evolution of self-imposed societal constraints. This is a classic case of how to tell a complicated story simply and…
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The Godfather Part II
“If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything…it is that you can kill anyone.” The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) Coppola’s second of three masterpieces made in the 1970s. Gordon Willis is a god with a camera. Longer, darker, and more complex than the first entry. Also a…
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A Star is Born
“Ain’t it hard keepin’ it so hardcore?” A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper, 2018) A pretty damn impressive directorial debut. It’s certainly not perfect, especially in terms of the editing, but some of the shots are really beautiful. Gaga’s performance is a wonderful, sober deviation from her character work in House of Gucci (my first…
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The Godfather
“We’re not murderers, despite what this undertaker says.” The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) A masterpiece. A perfect movie. Coppola spends the first twenty-seven minutes of the film on a wedding sequence. What a fucking nutjob.
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Knight of Cups
“Dreams are nice, but you can’t live in them.” Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick, 2015) Malick isn’t for everyone, but I truly adore and admire his craft. Borderline experimental filmmaking that dances with the poetry of introspection and flirts with the profundity of otherwise unremarkable candid moments. In this film, he attempts to capture the…
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Raging Bull
“Jesus Christ could come off the cross sometime, he don’t give a fuck.” Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980) My worst cinema sin so far is that I don’t really care for Scorsese’s work before, say, 1986. And yes, that includes Taxi Driver. This film is competently made and includes some truly beautiful cinematography. I like…
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She Said
“He built the silence and people complied.” She Said (Maria Schrader, 2022) Didactic movies about intrepid journalists at prestigious news organizations that expose the horrors of society often make for obvious Oscar fodder. Spotlight and The Post are recent examples of this trend. This film doesn’t seem to be garnering the same amount of attention…
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Pig
“We don’t get a lot of things to really care about.” Pig (Michael Sarnoski, 2021) Mandy meets Burnt. A small, simple production that shines a spotlight on solemnity and solitude. Cage is tremendous. The twenty-first century renaissance of his career is truly something to behold, and this performance may be his best yet. I’d pay…
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The Laundromat
“‘Bad’ is such a big word for such a small word.” The Laundromat (Steven Soderbergh, 2019) The rare miss for Soderbergh. Everything about this movie is lazy. A poorly-aped, McKay-esque docudrama composed of haphazardly-constructed vignettes that utilize too many narrative styles to note. Did I mention that everything about this movie is lazy?
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The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928) Three stars for existing. A tip of the cap, as always, to the Criterion Collection. Falconetti gives an impressive and admirable performance. I suppose Dreyer and Maté can be forgiven for the dreadful cinematography due to the state of the medium at the time. The…
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The Virgin Suicides
“We knew that they knew everything about us and that we couldn’t fathom them at all.” The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 1999) An important if imperfect movie. I admire how much Coppola wanted to convey a novel on film so early into her career, and her attempt here is sublime. Her impulses are all correct,…
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White Noise
“Family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation.” White Noise (Noah Baumbach, 2022) I’m honestly surprised that Netflix didn’t just force Baumbach to make this a limited series, seeing as how they spend eighty million dollars on it. It’s not offensively bad; it’s just suboptimal as a feature-length picture. I wanted and needed more time…
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Locke
“We do okay because I straightened the name out.” Locke (Steven Knight, 2013) An impressive and audacious screenplay. Tom Hardy owns the camera. There are many reasons why this movie is great, but my favorite among them is the fact that the story takes place over almost the exact run-time of the film. After it’s…
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Paterson
“I go through trillions of molecules that move aside to make way for me, while on both sides trillions more stay where they are.” Paterson (Jim Jarmusch, 2016) I suppose this film challenges the audience to reckon with the extent to which we find poetry in the mundane, how often we allow ourselves to slow…
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The Card Counter
“We are going to have a dramatic reenactment.” The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, 2021) So much squandered potential. This movie was designed for me to love it, but it just flat out falls short in all the important ways. Oscar Isaac is great as always, though. Some of the other casting decisions leave a lot…
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First Reformed
“Even a pastor needs a pastor.” First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017)A movie about damaged people believing in corrupted faiths living in a doomed world. I liked it.
olde zoetrope 