Something must be a “satire” if it’s somewhere between difficult and impossible to suspend disbelief. (This is the case with that great satire, Dr. Strangelove.) With Her, the futuristic trajectory of where…
The Bling Ring (dir. Sofia Coppola, 2013) – Quick, flashy, blingy, the counterpoint to Somewhere (in terms of editing). Sofia is still very interested in celebrity culture and young women/girls. They’re…
The film achieves something unusual and delightfully nuanced: a kind of secondary identification that subverts the typical male POV by rendering it merely a proxy of women (or in this case,…
The opening credits sequence is all slow-mo, glorying in a static frame long shot of LaMotta warming up in the ring alone, distanced but surrounded by spectators. Occasional flashes…
The Shining (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980) – Even just the abstracts of the “interpretations” that have been performed on this film are exhausting. (And note well: these are performances.) Some of them embody…
Breathless (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1960) – Other than obligatory and ubiquitous clips, have probably only sat through Breathless twice. What can you say about it that hasn’t already been said ad…
Magic Mike (dir. Steven Soderberg, 2011) – Despite a lot of time trying to find reasons to validate this film from a critical perspective, it seems mainly noteworthy for being…
Skyfall (dir. Sam Mendes, 2012) – Really want/need to see it again, but here’s the first of the Craig-era Bond films that tries to get away from the Bourne legacy…
Dark Water (dir. Hideo Nakata, 2002) – As horror films go, this is good. It’s about the terror, not about the gore. Pretty clearly by the same director who did…
Nashville (dir. Robert Altman, 1975) – Amazing how much you can forget about a film in five days. Nashville came across as so much more scathing this time around than…
Precious Bodily Fluids 