Tag: movies
Interview: Jedd and Todd Wider on ‘God Knows Where I Am’
Several years ago Rachel Aviv published an article in the New Yorker about Linda Bishop, a woman who had struggled with mental health issues for much of her life. In October 2007, having been recently released from psychiatric care, Linda began to suffer from paranoid delusions about being pursued. She broke into an empty New…
Message Movies: Liking Films Despite Their Perspectives
You’ve got to admit that CURNBLOG’s readers have a deep memory. Witness a comment posted by “Carlos” in response to my recent article on the movie The Promise (2016) and a statement I made in it that said this: I don’t usually urge cinephiles to run after movies with messages for altruistic purposes, as I,…
D.A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop: 50 Years on from the Monterey International Pop Festival
Held fifty years ago this month on the virtual solstice of the Summer of Love, the Monterey International Pop Festival was a dazzling counterculture coming-out party. Its infectious good vibes and series of revelatory performances that soon passed into rock ’n’ roll legend were captured by documentarian D. A. Pennebaker, fresh off the release of…
David Michôd’s War Machine works well as cautionary tale, not as satire
War is Hell, but War Machine is frustrating. David Michôd’s somewhat-satire of the Obama era’s continued efforts in the Afghanistan insurgency is far from a spirited successor to Dr. Stangelove; it’s more a nuanced look at the sobering complexities of the war through the eyes of fictional general Glen McMahon, based in part on Gen.…
Beware the Gonzo: Exploring Bryan Goluboff’s High School Fable
To get accepted into your dream university, what would you do? Scratch that: what would you do to get accepted into your dream university if you were an ambitious seventeen-year-old? Maybe you would study hard, but that’s boring. Maybe you would decide to spice it up; maybe you would be like Eddie “Gonzalo” Gilman (Erza…