Low-hanging fruit but fruit nonetheless—I stand by (or slink past) my title. I’ve been down on story/plot lately. My reviews have highlighted style and bemoaned our dot-connecting obsession. Fair enough, but narrative has its uses, chief among them parody. The adage is that you have to know the rules to break them—Picasso and all that. Just so, subversion of expectation only works if you have expectations. If McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) is your first Western, John Wayne’ll be quite... Read more
Someone remarked to me recently that Mick Foley, the ex-professional wrestler, may be among the greatest two or three living Americans. The question came up because I mentioned his debut novel, Tietam Brown (2003), which I began reading not long after finishing the first volume of his memoirs, Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks (1999). The autobiography alone gives you the sense that he belongs in our annals (slim as contemporary pickings may be). The large... Read more
Help me find the golden mean. One end, draped in the ole stars and stripes and buttressed by the Hollywood money machine, resounds with a chittering, echoing ad infinitum: “superhero movies are our modern-day myths!” On the other side, a portly gourmand and his rail-thin, mustachioed compatriot, clap their hands together gently but with feeling: “an exercise in style!” I’m with Scorsese more than not on this one, I think. But it’s worth investigating that commonplace, the idea that we... Read more
My distaste for director Ari Aster’s movies is, if not well known (because who would care?), at least unhidden. I thought Hereditary (2018) was sub-par but inoffensive. Midsommar (2019) made me apoplectic, most likely because I have poor self-control and because it’s a bad movie. I haven’t seen Beau is Afraid (2023), but both the title and Eileen Jones’ review make it unlikely I’ll spend 3.5 hours of my life on Joaquin Phoenix screaming at his dad’s penis or whatever... Read more
Dungeon and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) crystallizes just about everything about moviemaking in our time. We’ve got a well-worn piece of intellectual property that’s already got a (failed) cinematic trilogy under its belt. The IP itself once represented all things grim and unsightly (I, for example, recall a woman at a block party telling me that her young adult boyfriend had been driven to suicide by the game’s demonic magic). Now, like nearly all “nerd culture” it’s been commodified... Read more
Jeff Baena’s Spin Me Round (2022) is a work of décollage. But of what? Romantic comedies, since we follow Amber (Alison Brie) on work retreat to gorgeous Tuscany, where she hopes to meet Mr. Right (hot, rich, European). People, however, keep disappearing, even as Craig (Ben Sinclair), the group’s Italian-speaking minder assures them everything is bene. The movie’s ever-building tension, abetted by a developing mystery, starts to recall What Have You Done to Solange? (1972) or The Red Queen Kills... Read more
I caught some flak for trashing Barbarian (2022). I’m not surprised. I hated the pilot of The Last of Us (2023) too. I’m not exactly a Pez dispenser; I seem to have more vinegar these days than honey. Just the day before I wrote that review, I taught a class on reboots, revivals, and adaptations. Our case study was The Twilight Zone (original run, 1959-1964), which has been revived for TV three times (never mind the short story collection, feature... Read more
You can rip his pair of striped pants off and slash away his mustache, but I guess the barbarian always remains. Or at least that’s how I feel after watching Zach Cregger’s Barbarian (2022). I had hope. It was well reviewed, seemed pulpy, even promised to bring in contemporary issues without just throwing in the “uh, all the cell phones just don’t work right now” excuse. My hopes were dashed, my paltry desire to see a good horror movie come... Read more
In 1959, bit TV actor and anti-Lee Strasberg workshop founder John Cassavetes filmed a 16mm, largely improvised movie about race relations in contemporary New York. That work, Shadows (1959) seems to attract admirers mostly because it ends with a (then-surprising) note about its improvisation—a triumph of independent cinema, the ill-attended foundation for Marty Scorsese and New Hollywood. It’s, the consensus is, an artefact for contextualization, a bauble to be praised by weirdo enthusiasts and snooty cinephiles, a 20th-century Ormulum. It... Read more
When I went to summer camp in New Jersey in the late 90s and 2000s, we heard about Cropsey. The legend left only a broad impression—a man, a fire, a daughter, the woods. We learned the story on Initiation Night, when the oldest campers slept over in the woods behind what we so-lovingly called “The Pavilion,” a large wooden bandstand with a roof, surrounded by forest on one side and a large grassy field on the other. Many of us... Read more
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