Not quite a masterpiece, but undeniably the work of a master. It lacks the vitality of his previous works, but that's because it no longer feels like Kurosawa felt the need to complete this while he was still able. By now pushing eighty and suffering from poor eyesight, he also felt no pressure to bow to anyone's demands to make another epic, instead compiling eight ideas taken directly from his dreams (supposedly three more were cut for time) into the…

Originally written for the 2014 Muriel Awards Best Picture countdown.

In many ways, ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE is the film to which Jim Jarmusch has been building for his entire career. Since he broke through with STRANGER THAN PARADISE three decades ago, Jarmusch has trained his camera time and again on society's outsiders- inept pimps, down-and-out deejays, cab drivers of all stripes, accountants in the Old West, and self-styled samurai assassins. Here, he focuses on a pair of centuries-old vampires,…

This is exactly the kind of movie that seems like it'll be ideal for a Yesterday's Hits-style anthropological assessment in a couple of decades. Those elements that have made this so popular- the wall-to-wall CGI-based spectacle, the four-quadrant-skewing reappropriation of one of the classics of Hollywood cinema- will probably be what makes this look quaint and dated over time. Yet it also promises to be fascinating in a number of ways.

Most noticeably, this might be the first blockbuster I've…

For a while, I was sort of annoyed by Marion's tendency to narrate the events of her own life in such an on-the-nose manner. Then it hit me that OF COURSE Marion (Gena Rowlands, masterful) would do that- she's the sort of person who would want to neatly package all of her actions with a minimum of emotional fuss, just to "set the record straight," if only to herself. Once I got over that hump, the movie as a whole…