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The Moment that Infinite Jest Broke Me
In my first official Infinite Jest post, I discuss the moment I could finally relate to Hal Incandenza, junior tennis wunderkind and dictionary memorizer extraordinaire. Reader, I wept.
Friday, 31 December 2010
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Monsters (Gareth Edwards, 2010)
Review originally written for The 405, here: http://thefourohfive.com/reviews/3138
Let me begin by telling you what Monsters is not. It is not Skyline, this year’s entry into Hollywood’s annals of over-marketed bad ideas. It is not District 9, last year's big low budget sci-fi success. Monsters, like great indie classics such as Before Sunset and Lost in Translation, uses a fantastical setting to tell an essentially human story. It starts when the horror story is long over and other stories begin to take precedence.
Monsters jumps off from a classic sci-fi springboard: a space shuttle finds alien life on one of Jupiter’s...
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
To Made In Dagenham, An Apology
Now that Made in Dagenham has arrived in the US, I revisited my original review (here). I am quite disappointed in myself, in that I find it a bit patronizing, which absolutely does not reflect how I feel about the movie now, upon reflection, and it CERTAINLY does not reflect how I felt when I actually watched it. I loved it, and had never felt so full of positivity. And would tell anyone to see in a heartbeat. Again and again. The power of its story is more than enough to overcome certain stylistic choices.
That review was one of the earliest I'd written in this blog about 'new movies,' and I suppose I was trying to mimic the more sarcastic...
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Oscarbait 2010: The Kids Are All Right
Hug?
I used to love Julianne Moore, but it's no secret to those who know me that I think Julianne Moore's Boston accent to be the biggest travesty that 30 Rock has ever inflicted, and that happened in a season that was already fairly terrible. Since then, I can't really look at her without squinting angrily and thinking "I Hate You." So it certainly helped that she was sort of the villain of the piece here (inasmuch as this type of movie has 'villains.') Though her presence did give me the chance to spend an unnecessary amount of time wondering why someone had apparently left Julianne Lewis in an oven before shooting the film (JOHN BOEHNER...
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (Stephen Shainberg, 2006)
Nicole Kidman really gets a bad rap these days. While in many ways it's deserved (has any actress of quality made so many TERRIBLE career choices?), it saddens me, knowing how good her more left-field movies are.
Fur is Stephen Shainberg's follow-up to Secretary, and shows the same tenderness and respect to subjects that may disturb society. While Fur is ostensibly a biopic, Shainberg opts for a more fantastical approach, creating a fairytale imagining of what might have gone one in Diane Arbus's head when she shifted from being a moderately content housewife to developing a one of a kind career as a chronicler of the weird and wondrous.
Left...
Oscarbait 2010: The Social Network
I know that for many of the people in my generation (the so-called Facebook generation), the main reaction to the announcement of this film was "meh" and a shrug. For whatever reason, the establishment movie-sphere and media (at least 20 years ahead in age) are completely enamored by the topic, while for people my age it's just one tool that exists in our lives (and often a hassle requiring eagle eyes on privacy settings).
So when the critical hoopla about the film reached a fever pitch, I started to question why it was that I had no interest in seeing the movie (not in the theater, at least). Once I enumerate them, I will answer them in...
Rom-Com Central: L'Arnacouer
Rumors of the death of quality romantic comedy are greatly exaggerated. They're just not made in English. Romantic comedies are meant to be fun, which seems to be an element lost in the equation recently.
L'Arnacouer is essentially a heist movie, but instead of robbing banks, Romain Duris and his gang are in the business of stealing hearts. Specifically, concerned fathers and brothers hire him to break up relationships they see as unfit for their sisters/daughters. So while he is generally pretty successful in his business (providing us with lots of hilarious montage sequences showing his methods and his victims), he inevitable gets the one...
