December 2011
9 posts
25 tags
Psychos, Cannibals, and Dragon Tattoos: The...
Or, The AFI List Project, #73: The Silence of the Lambs
When David Fincher’s latest serial killer movie, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, came out earlier this month, it was the subject of heavy awards speculation. Viewed from the perspective that it is ‘a David Fincher film,’ that may not be surprising: Fincher has had two films nominated for Best Picture in the past five years, including a film...
7 tags
DailyLounge.com: What the Golden Globe Nominations... →
Head over to the Lounge to see my article on the potential impact of the Globe noms on this year’s Oscar campaigns.
16 tags
The Week in Review: "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"
These days, when we get adaptations of old novels or classic stories, they’re almost always brushed off and shoehorned into modern re-creations – not even Shakespeare is safe. It’s surprising and a little refreshing, then, when a director takes the literal path and maintains the setting of his source material without using any sort of modern anchor point.
Such is the case with Tomas Alfredson’s...
19 tags
The Year in Review, Part I: The Worst Movies of...
I thought I was going to hold off on putting out any ‘Year in Review’ posts until we’d formally closed out 2011, but, looking at my slate of movies from now ‘til New Years, I just don’t see what’s going to crash my Worst-of-the-Year picks. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo? By some reports, it’s overlong and a little dull, but no worse than that. The Iron Lady? But how bad can a Meryl Streep...
14 tags
The Week In Review: "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of...
I thought I knew what I was getting myself into with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which was something along the lines of the first one but with more explosions, bromance, and absurdities. Well, consider those boxes checked. What I wasn’t expecting was that it would be, well, kind of good.
Don’t let me mislead you. This isn’t a searching examination of the human spirit, or even a...
17 tags
The Importance of the Ending
Or, The AFI List Project, #38: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
About a year ago, I read an article in the New York Times in which the writer was discussing his reaction to Schindler’s List. Unfortunately, the name of the writer and the exact content of his article have been lost to my memory, but the salient point was that he remembered not liking the film even though his wife assured him...
14 tags
The Week in Review: "Shame"
Shame has been making waves ever since it premiered at the Venice Film Festival, mostly for its insistence on raw sexual honesty, if ‘honesty’ is taken to mean ‘nudity.’ I’m not sure, though, that its NC-17 rating is anything other than a way to draw attention. Could this movie have been made without showing us Michael Fassbender’s penis? Frankly, yes. Though given that Shame is an...
21 tags
The Farmboy, the Princess, and the Hooligan:...
Or, The AFI List Project #13: Star Wars
What is there to say about Star Wars that has not already been said? It’s probably the most famous movie ever made, and its parade of creatures, spaceships, and quotes have permeated the cultural consciousness to the point that to hear that someone hasn’t seen it arouses not so much surprise as confusion.
Amidst the avalanche of toys,...
17 tags
Story Second: The Film As Thematic Argument
Or, The AFI List Project #49: Intolerance
You’ve probably heard of D.W. Griffith, because he directed one of the most famous — and justly infamous — films of all time. It was the first cinematic epic, the first blockbuster, and also, despite James Cameron’s best efforts, the most unashamedly racist movie ever.
That movie was called Birth of a Nation, and it is not the work by...
