Any year-end “best of” simply has to account for the brilliance of Errol Morris’s Wormwood. My sense is, we’re looking at something potentially game-changing. Here are a few thoughts about how to watch it. On a stylistic level, Wormwood depends on frames. And frames within frames–ultimately, a rectilinear design. And this motif is so rich, one…
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Prequels + 1: My Take on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)
I haven’t posted my thoughts on recent releases for some time. Here begins my effort to play catch-up! * * * Clearly the worst of the Disney-era Star Wars movies, The Last Jedi is a crazy quilt stitched together from a half-dozen Big Moments that are bound to become iconic and a stack of bad…
Composition of the Day: EISENSTEIN IN GUANAJUATO (2015), directed by Peter Greenaway
I’ve never before seen a dolly-zoom like this one. Unlike the locus classicus of the technique in JAWS (Spielberg, 1975), it is executed slowly and has little to do with shock or even with giving the viewer access to character subjectivity. The camera begins in an extreme long shot (fig. 1). After simultaneously tracking in and…
More on LUCY: “Hidden Hands at Work” and VFX
Periodically, I will take the opportunity to provide copies here of some of the scholarly pieces I’ve published. I will also offer further insight into the question posed in the piece or make a revision or two. What kinds of decisions do filmmakers make and how can the historian use them to explain the look…
Last Act Fatigue: A Review of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (Gunn, 2014)
Guardians of the Galaxy has certainly earned its spot as the most overrated of the ten-film Marvel Studios run–which is not to say that the movie’s a failure. It isn’t. The world-building is extraordinary. The jokes and gags bring the characters alive (although the nostalgia bit is neither as funny nor as touching as the filmmakers…
The Lost Art of the Well-Timed Turnabout: Review of OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL (Raimi, 2013)
When it comes to Oz the Great and Powerful, just ask the kids. And this big old kid loved the damned thing. The scene where China Girl’s legs were mended was touched with the kind of emotion that only blockbusters (or A pictures) do well–the compassion for the maculated (like the Scarecrow ripped apart in…
Malick’s Deepities: Review of TO THE WONDER (Malick, 2012)
To The Wonder is not only a lesser work by a major filmmaker; it’s almost entirely devoid of interest. The failures are manifold. Malick’s signature devices–“deepity”-laced fragmented narration and a plot that explores emotional and physical confinement (à la Pocahontas in the final act of The New World)–never manage to lift the Olga Kurylenko character…
DOWNPOUR (Bahram Beyza’i, 1971) and the 70s International Style
From June 2013: I saw this delightful Iranian movie last night at Montreal’s new Phi Cinema, as part of Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation restoration series. The house was packed! Beyza’i, I am told by Iranian friends, is the most Iranian of directors–more so than Shahid-Saless, Kiarostami, the Makhmalbafs, etc. Why that is remains unclear to…
WORLD WAR Z (Forster, 2013) and le cinématographe
From July 2013: World War Z is just a well-made movie. And that’s no small thing. A tidy script that hits all the beats and ties things up in a satisfying way, and Marc Forster deserves credit for understanding that, at the stylistic level, zombie flicks trade on spatial relations–on trajectories of and obstacles that…
THE CONJURING (Wan, 2013) and Women in Horror: A New Twist?
From August 2013: I’m not sure if it’s a “new trend” just yet, but the recent spate of horror flicks where the central conflict is between women is injecting a little life and emotional weight into the genre. The hilarious Drag Me To Hell, the spectacularly gory Evil Dead remake, the imaginative Mama and now…
Moving Patterns 