I know Mr. Blum’s commercial instincts are demonstrably uncanny, but there’s a baffling question at the center of this project: why purchase this dusty IP to begin with? Does it mean something to his Millennial target audience? (It does not.) Are there legions of “Fantasy Island” fans out there, waiting to be serviced? (There are not, and if there were, they would be disappointed by its deviations.) Why not just rip off the concept and go on your merry way,…
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Cane River 1982
It plays now like an oasis, during one of the driest periods of African-American filmmaking; part of the reason Spike Lee’s 'She’s Gotta Have It' (a film with some of the same flaws) was received so enthusiastically four years later was because independent black film was all but non-existent, and portrayals of black romance and sensuality were even rarer. 'Cane River' has both, within a vivid portrait of small-town, working-class African-American life – something we still, sadly, rarely see in the cinema.
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Joker 2019
My favorite thing is how they introduce his diary but *don’t* have him voice-over from it, as if THAT was the thing that would make us all notice they were ripping off TAXI DRIVER.
Anyhoo I fucking loathed it, and not because it’s particularly provocative or irresponsible; it’s too stupid to be. It’s just a dipshit lunkhead bro’s idea of how to make an Extremely Serious Movie. That score!
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The Disaster Artist 2017
Here’s a weird thing that happened: a sold-out SXSW audience saw a “work in progress” cut of 'The Disaster Artist', James Franco’s film adaptation of Greg Sestero’s first-person account of the making of Tommy Wiseau’s legendarily bad movie 'The Room.' And it’s a very funny film about a very weird and untalented dude, and we all had a great many laughs at the expense of this guy and his terrible film. But we were also watching it with Mr. Wiseau…
