It’s Not You, It’s Charlie Kaufman
Ghosts Are Us: Charlie Kaufman’s new film is difficult and unique, but is it any good? Charlie Kaufman’s having a busy summer: his debut novel, Antkind was released in July and his latest directorial effort comes to Netflix this Friday. Kaufman adapted I’m Thinking of Ending Things from lain Reid’s novel of the same name. [...]
Nightcrawlers
This is a review of a documentary feature called Nightcrawlers. The movie makes its world premiere at the Defy Film Festival in Nashville, TN this weekend. This review originally appeared in print in The Contributor. In the opening scene of Nightcrawlers, a young man sits cross-legged on a bathroom floor. He glances at the camera [...]
Watching Over Brautigan
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29768619 In September of this year we’ll recognize 35 years since poet Richard Brautigan shot himself in the head, committing suicide at the age of 49 in 1984. I was thinking about Brautigan today because a link to the excellent Adam Curtis documentary All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace [...]
Once Upon a Time in Charliewood
I just bought two tickets to see Quentin Tarantino’s new film Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. It’s playing in 35mm at our local arthouse and I’m very excited for this one. I’ve grown to really like Django — especially Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance — but The Hateful 8 is probably my least favorite of Tarantino’s [...]
MIDSOMMAR BUMMER
The film Hereditary was scary successful last year. Writer/director Ari Aster’s feature debut delivered an incendiary performance by Toni Collette and a tightening noose of a story that gradually strangled viewers in supernatural sights, occult symbols, real life tragedies and heavy themes about the generational traumas that can ripple though family lines. Hereditary is a [...]
The Lavender Scare
Before Pride Month is over, I wanted to share a movie review I wrote for a Nashville publication a few weeks back. This new PBS doc examines a lesser-known civil rights struggle from the 1950s that found homosexual federal employees forced out of positions with the government for fear that their sexuality made them vulnerable [...]
Tolkien Speaks
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91603 I just got back from a preview from the new Tolkien film which tells the story of the life of J.R.R. Tolkien, the creator of Middle Earth and author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I’ll be reviewing the movie in next week’s Nashville Scene so no spoilers. Instead [...]
Coppola Now
The name Francis Ford Coppola conjures a cinematic career crossed by contradictions: he set out to be a “European,” personal, small filmmaker, before creating some of the most popular, successful films in American cinema; he’s a star auteur whose struggles for independence nearly ended his career more than once; he helped to define the New [...]
Mon Ami, Mekas
Filmmaker, poet, critic and philosopher Jonas Mekas passed away on January 23 at the age of 96. The wildly creative and willfully cantankerous Mekas was a champion of experimental cinema and a film critic whose taste and style was ahead of its time. Mekas is credited with getting Andy Warhol to try his hand at [...]
Gone Roeg
This week we lost the cinematic master, Nicolas Roeg. The British auteur practically defined cinematic counterculture in the 1970s and his groundbreaking filmography includes David Bowie’s turned as a lonely alien in The Man Who Fell To Earth, Donald Sutherland’s searing, anguished performance in the unforgettable Don’t Look Now, and the mysterious parable of Walkabout. [...]
