Tag: movies
Casey Affleck’s I’m Still Here: Joaquin Phoenix and his celebrity-crazed, media-devouring public
You’re probably more up to date with showbiz news than I am. Your finger is probably more firmly on the pop pulse than mine and your flippage through celebrity gossip mags more frequent. If, by chance, you’ve never heard of the film I’m Still Here, I strongly recommend you stop reading now and hire it…
The Westerns of Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott: A Film Primer
I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I am a latecomer to the six Westerns that make-up the collaboration between Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott. (There is a seventh, but I’ll do them the courtesy of pretending it doesn’t exist). These six films, released over the course of just five years between 1956 and 1960, mark…
Reconciling with Cinema: Never Enough Time for Catching Up
Sometime in the late 1990s, cinema and I came to terms with the inevitable. We’d been drifting apart for some time and now it seemed that the distance between us had become too great. It should have been a painful wrench. I’d grown up with movies; they’d been a still point in a peripatetic childhood.…
One Film Critic’s Week in Review: From Beasts of No Nation to The Last Witch Hunter
For film fans, the time period from late October through New Years is like one extended Christmas morning. All the big movies that you have been hearing about for the past year have their releases clustered together so that they can maximise their award-season potential. But for a film reviewer, you feel more like an…
Understanding the Gap Between ‘Freeheld’ and ’99 Homes’
I recently went on line to buy some socks and bought a big screen TV instead. No value judgement here. They are both fine products which I needed. (Yes, I needed the big screen TV.) I only mention it to point out how we sometimes begin a day with one destination in mind and end…