During undergrad art school my classmates quoted and referenced this film incessantly, but despite being a fan of Dan Clowes I never got around to watching it until now, on the eve of my return to this strange dimension.
Given that this is based on a short comic that has no plot or characters to speak of, I wasn't really sure what to expect beyond a few laughs, but I was pleased to find that the film is in fact…
Beautifully written, beautifully acted. The explicit three-act structure works perfectly in the context of the story as well. The third act in particular I found incredibly moving, probably some of the best film writing that I've seen in recent memory.
I was a bit disappointed in the shot composition and score, though, both of which seemed like an afterthought.
But don't let that stop you from watching this one. The script and performances shouldn't be missed.
Someday I'd like to see a film about Jesus that never posits his divinity. And one with less egregious, inexplicable misogyny.
But it does have Harry Dean Stanton as Paul and David Bowie (of all people) making a brief but very charismatic appearance as Pilate.
Keep an eye out for some of the most unenthusiastic extras of all time.
Classic source material. Incredible set design. A cast and crew of incredible talent like Robert Altman, Jules Feiffer, Robin Williams, and Shelly DuVall. And yet somehow, this is not so much a jolly sea adventure as it is a beached whale.
Popeye is big, long, and mostly boring. The iconic characters are barely recognizable. The songs are tedious and annoying. The jokes land about as well as a drunken ostrich. And our title character doesn't even eat a single bite…
Visually speaking, this is probably the most creative animated film that's come along in quite a while.
But that said: Your effects artists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.
What I mean is that there are a lot of moments, and indeed entire movie-wide aesthetic effects, when this film decides to emulate a comic book without really considering why it's doing so. Comics are a restrictive art form that use…
The photography felt very uninspired to me, but other than that this is a pretty great film. The characters are well-written and diverse, and the performances are excellent, especially a young Daniel Day-Lewis as a gay teenage hoodlum. The script is human, funny, and sometimes suspenseful. It's well worth a look if it sounds like your kind of thing.
What can I say about Lost Highway? It's David Lynch playing in his usual sandbox of inexplicable weirdness and shifting identities, and as such you get the same things you've come to expect from him. The intense electric guitar score is a bit of diversion from his usual Badalamenti jazz, but it's fine in its own right. The characters are somewhat less defined or interesting than in many of his other films. At times it feels like a dry run…