Author: Jonathan Eig
A Lesson in Film Structure: The Jolson Story & Humoresque
This is a story about film structure. At various times, I have tried to lecture on the subject of structure in screenwriting, and I usually am forced to admit that we teach structure, in part, because it is something that can be taught. There’s some sort of indefinable spark of creation in any work of…
Twilight Cinema: Three Recent Films About Ageing
Twenty-five years ago, Christopher Guest made a lovely little movie called The Big Picture. It is a mostly gentle satire about Hollywood, which features Kevin Bacon as a young film school graduate who has come out west to make his fortune. The movie he wants to make – the one that the whole industry is…
Reviewing ‘Foxcatcher’: Bennett Miller Does It The Old Fashioned Way
Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher does not feel like a 2014 movie. The drama chronicling the bizarre relationship that developed between the enormously wealthy and enigmatic John du Pont and a pair of world champion wrestlers, Dave and Mark Schultz, feels much more like a throwback to the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, when films moved at a slower…
Film Review: How ‘Laggies’ Loses Focus
I like Sam Rockwell. I really do. I would watch Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Moon over the better-known Adaptation and 2001 any day. And no one has ever played a fodder crewmember better than Rockwell did in Galaxy Quest. But his character Craig is not a realistic panacea for Keira Knightley’s Megan in…
The Fabulous Forties: 5 Short Films That Can’t Be Missed
Who decreed that feature films run two hours? Though there may be some organic rationale based on how two hours fits into an evening’s entertainment, there’s no rule that I know of that requires 120 minutes. The very first movies ran about 60 seconds, depending on how fast the camera was cranked, because that’s how…