<—four faves from my Personal Canon (edited January 9, 2024)
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On the Rocks 2020
The Winter 2023 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is out — and my latest piece, on romantic comedies, is in it. I spin a shotgun history of the romantic comedy in films— and propose an alternative and expanded canon. Take a read at the link. I’m on pg 180. You can read my piece — and the great issue of GQ — here:
gagosian.com/quarterly/2023/11/17/essay-kiss-me-stupid/
"And so we come to a not-really-rom-com comedy of romance. Perhaps Sofia Coppola’s The Sacred Fount? Let…
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Babylon 2022
"I don’t think I’m very good for you..."
Or: Vincente Minnelli Jr.'s 3 Hours in Another Town ...
"I knew Proust, you know..."
(UPDATE: Dec 30, 2022: I’ve consolidated my two initial reviews into one, here. I say “initial,” for there will be many more responses to BABYLON from me in the future — in review form, in fiction form, in film form — and this should obviously not be taken as an exhaustive read on the brilliances, the stupidities,…
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Pride & Prejudice 2005
Too much talk, too much plot, needed an explanation for what was happening every 5 minutes. Lubitsch frowns. Brenda Blethyn!
“You have bewitched me body and soul” is good though.
That’s all. Sorry, I’m too dumb for this movie 😞
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Model Shop 1969
To see and experience and be reduced to weeping while watching Model Shop — and not just to log it on this site, not just to say "I have seen a Demy film" — is to talk about cars. That goes for the rest of the films Demy made in the 1960s. It's not enough to have your mind evoke the pastel costumes, the musical numbers, the tone of daft fantasia: to have a position risks detouring us down the…
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Oppenheimer 2023
So, to recap: INTERSTELLAR, Love conquers all 🥰; DUNKIRK, Home is where the heart is 🏡 ; in OPPENHEIMER, it’s complicated 🤷🏻
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If I wanted the Wikipedia article, I would just read it.
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Needs more Albert Einstein randomly barging in Kramer-style.
Two hours spent obscenely building up suspense of a vile image: the explosion of the A-bomb? two minutes of a tossed-away announcement that the bomb was dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? dumb corny Marvel-y…
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It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World 1963
I had one of the most exciting encounters at a movie theater EVER yesterday, so bear with me.
Yesterday, I re-watched It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World (Bland-ley Kramer, 1963) in glorious 70mm at LACMA! It's gotten a lot of hate around these parts for being cataclysmically unfunny. And while I can see why people would think so (Kramer has an awful eye for comedic direction, and the sheer pomposity of his statement that he would make "the comedy…