55/100
A.V. Club review. The part of the film to which the title refers is quite strong; were Dorfman not a close friend of Morris', I think he would have recognized that it's not enough to sustain an entire feature.
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Fitzcarraldo 1982
76/100
Dragging the ship over the mountain occupies a much smaller percentage of the film's running time than I'd remembered—an hour and a half elapses before Fitz even announces/explains the plan. Nor does Herzog make this remarkable feat of engineering as visually spectacular as it might have been in the hands of a stronger formalist. Doesn't really matter, though, as there's plenty of awe to be mined from ordinary, everyday laboriousness. It's easy to forget, but utterly crucial, that nothing…
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The Wound 2017
59/100
Toxic masculinity, South African style. With the irrelevant exception of some extras seen in the final minutes, not a single woman appears in the course of this power struggle, which unfolds during the rite of passage traditionally undergone by young Xhosa males—an extended group camping trip, more or less, that begins with circumcision (performed sans anesthetic or even much prelude, just a quick and dirty snip) and continues until the boyz ii men have fully healed. For most Western…
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Law of the Border 1966
47/100
According to Bilge Ebiri's Criterion essay, Güney originally wrote Law of the Border as a down-and-dirty genre piece, and that's how it works best (mostly in its second half, which very nearly goes full spaghetti Western). Akad's efforts to reshape an exploitation flick as sociopolitical tragedy, while no doubt representing a milestone in Turkish cinema history, are considerably less elegant. Everything's right on the surface, without the character depth that might compensate for the schematism; Ayse the teacher just…
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In Transit 2015
56/100
A.V. Club review. No less pleasantly forgettable than any long train ride, really. R.I.P. Albert.
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The Beguiled 1971
58/100
Second viewing, nearly 30 years after the first* (and a few days after seeing the remake). I still find the basic premise of Cullinan's novel offensive—yes, it's a man being objectified for once, but in the service of depicting women as sex-starved maniacs who'd barely seem out of place in Shock Corridor's infamous "Nymphos!" scene. Siegel's openly lascivious approach creates a layer of distance that helps a bit, though, and McBurney's hold over the school is complicated here by…
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The Beguiled 2017
39/100
I remain The Unpersuaded re: Coppola, who here flattens a lurid, trashy melodrama about symbolic castration into Virgin Suicides II. Weirdly, she believes that she's inverted focus, like this is Grendel to Siegel's Beowulf:
Anne Ross, my production designer, a couple of years ago told me, “You have to see The Beguiled. You need to make a new version of it or make a remake.” And I was like, “I would never remake a film.” But I saw it,…
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47 Meters Down 2017
47/100
A.V. Club review. Admirably realistic until suddenly it's utterly ridiculous.
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The Book of Henry 2017
31/100
Las Vegas Weekly review. Only got 200 words, so there wasn't space to detail what makes this such a fun bad movie; I particularly relished its expansive notion of Henry's genius, which e.g. posits that a gifted child will somehow just know how to read an MRI (and generally have amassed medical knowledge that doctors spend like 10 years learning, in his spare time, apparently out of idle curiosity). On the other hand, there really aren't any words that…
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Limite 1931
54/100
Might have loved this had Peixoto gone fully abstract-experimental à la Man With a Movie Camera; as is, "Intermittently astonishing!" would be my pull quote. There are shots here so unusual and inventive that I'm not sure whether they really "work," even as I found them thrilling. Best example sees the camera circle a woman on a deserted country road, then follow her from behind as she walks away, then continue past her as she exits frame on the…
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The Lost City of Z 2016
52/100
Knew basically zilch about this going in—the book hadn't crossed my path, and I avoid reading anything at all about films I definitely plan to see. So I just assumed it to be an entirely original work, since that's all Gray had previously made (apart from Two Lovers being partially/vaguely inspired by Dostoyevsky, which I'd forgotten was even the case until I fact-checked this sentence). Sometime after Fawcett returns from his second expedition and resigns from the Royal Geographical…
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Alien: Covenant 2017
44/100
Doubles down on my Prometheus problem, which is that I just fundamentally don't give a shit about how xenomorphs originated. Especially not when the mythology seems increasingly geared toward folks who consider Ex Machina a masterpiece. (I do not.) Fassbender's having fun here, but he's surrounded by human characters who might as well be mannequins, which is tiresome even if one charitably assumes that's intentional/the point. Nor does this film boast a setpiece remotely as gripping as Prometheus' frantic…