Author Archive
Bird Watching – Lone Scherfig’s “Italian for Beginners”
I had never known anything about the film Italian for Beginners, except that I remember seeing it in the video store back in the Blockbuster days and immediately dismissing it as a rental possibility based on the hideous box art alone. This is shallow of…
READ MOREBird Watching – Claire Denis’s “White Material”
Here is what I did immediately upon finishing the film White Material (2009), from French director Claire Denis: I started it over. This was a film that was at once so absorbing and so disorienting that I had to go through it again to feel…
READ MOREFilm Review – Bill Cunningham New York
What must it be like to really have a calling? To make it your 80s and feel like you’ve spent your life doing what you were meant to do? This wouldn’t mean you didn’t make sacrifices—quite the opposite, really. True dedication requires giving up other…
READ MOREBird Watching – In Defense of “Marie Antoinette”
It saddens me that the prevalent thought is that Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006) was a disappointing follow-up to her career-making Lost in Translation (2003). In box office terms, yes, it very much underperformed. And it didn’t storm the awards season as Translation did. But…
READ MOREBird Watching – Cheryl Hines’s “Serious Moonlight”
One might, in general, think that a bad way to get someone to love you is to throw a flower pot at their head, knocking them unconscious, then duct tape them to a chair so they wake up unable to move. Louise, played by Meg…
READ MOREFilm Review – Kill the Irishman
The makers of Kill the Irishman, which opens in Seattle today, must think you will watch any piece of crap if it is about the mob. They have to believe that the very fact that the film is about a bunch of people trying to…
READ MOREBird Watching – Adrienne Shelly’s “Sudden Manhattan”
What an oddly sad experience, watching the quirky little film Sudden Manhattan (1996), from the late actress, writer, and director Adrienne Shelly. In her film, Shelly stars as an aimless 30-year-old woman named Donna, living in Manhattan, who has just lost her job, and thinks…
READ MOREDialogue Review – Win Win
Brandi Sperry: Thomas McCarthy has developed an interesting career for himself. He’s an actor with the qualities and the resume of a “that guy”—as in, “hey, it’s that guy…you know, that guy from the last season of The Wire.” Likable and talented, but not a…
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