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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Cairo Station 1958
Wonderful, audacious start to our African Cinema Marathon, mixing neorealism and noir to often thrilling/disturbing effect. Qinawi's breaking point scene is a formally dazzling descent.
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Oppenheimer 2023
Nolan takes a towering, paradigm-shattering American figure and produces a towering, paradigm-shattering 'great man' biopic.
It hurts my brain too much to think about where I'm going to put it on my Nolan ranked list, but it's in the conversation with those top four.
Josh and I haggle over some of the details - and the overall level of achievement - on Filmspotting #929 (July 28).
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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.
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