Co-host/executive producer of long-running Filmspotting podcast and WBEZ radio show.
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977
In the doc that precedes the 40th anniversary release, director Denis Villeneuve suggests the movie is a personal one for Spielberg beyond his obvious fascination with the material. He says the movie is about movie-making too, which struck me as a little trite - and cliche - in the moment. I mean, how many directors and their films has this been / could it be said about?
And yet, watching this time, I was struck by Roy Neary's journey from…
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Before Sunrise 1995
If somebody had told 19 year-old me that one day I’d watch this intimate masterpiece with my 14 year-old daughter... after having a conversation with Ethan Hawke where, just like an Ethan Hawke character in a Richard Linklater movie, he oh-so-insightfully schooled me on the importance of giving said daughter permission to make mistakes, to break hearts and have her heart broken... well, I might’ve said that sounded like something from a Richard Linklater movie.
There is some kind of magic in this world.
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The Best Years of Our Lives 1946
Damn, William Wyler, you didn't have to go so hard in that bedtime scene with Homer and Wilma. I was already almost in tears 20 minutes in when the three returning soldiers ended up at the same bar that first night back home.
A 'they don't make 'em like they used to' hall of famer.
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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 2004
Saw it on home video in '04 and watched it again in 2010, yet somehow never fully appreciated just how meticulously constructed it is despite all of its messiness – the myriad complicated relationships, the structure that folds in on itself the way dreams do when they collide with memory. Like Tom Wilkinson's Dr. Mierzwiak relentlessly tracking down Joel and Clementine in Joel's unconscious mind, Gondry and Kaufman overlook nothing; every detail, no matter how insignificant seeming in the moment,…
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The Big Short 2015
Five stars? Yeah, five stars. Call me Standard & Poor's because I'm just tossing out AAA ratings.
A (frequently hilarious) crime movie where the American economy is the corpse, the entire financial system is the culprit, and the detectives all have bets on the body dropping.
But for the bearish take, you can hear Josh try to rain on my Adam McKay party on Filmspotting #566.