For cinema studies majors seeking a thesis, “The Use of Music in the Films of Cameron Crowe” would be a worthy subject. Even in his non-music-centered films, each selection is chosen with layered precision, as revealing as it is iconic. When Jerry Maguire hits the open road after signing his first client, and Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” soars on his car radio, it’s a moment … [Read more...]
The View From Home: Classic noirs make Blu-ray debuts
Just in time for another sultry summer, this month marks a wave of film noir Blu-ray premieres from Kino Lorber, with lurid, screaming titles like The Web (1947) and Larceny (1948). Two others offer eccentric takes on the genre’s traditions. In director John Farrow’s Alias Nick Beal (1949), Ray Milland plays the title character, a suavely dressed, black-hatted figure … [Read more...]
‘Roadrunner’: Biopic of Bourdain absorbing, painful
There are times, while watching Morgan Neville’s Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, that you almost forget its subject is dead. As on his groundbreaking TV series A Cook’s Tour, No Reservations and Parts Unknown, Bourdain’s voice dominates the documentary, whether through excerpts from audiobooks, old interviews, TV appearances or behind-the-scenes musings. He still … [Read more...]
Vampirism as disability: ‘My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To’
Like many families caring for a sick relative, the brother and sister we follow in My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To revolve their entire worlds around their younger sibling. Thomas (Owen Campbell), anemic and hermetically sealed from outside society, burns instantly from sunlight, and can only survive on human blood. It’s up to Dwight (Patrick Fugit) and … [Read more...]
From Tel Aviv with love: ‘Sublet’ a masterful exploration of life and identity
When we meet Michael, in the opening shot of Eytan Fox’s tender and insightful seventh feature, Sublet, he is frozen on a motorized walkway at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, drifting toward his destination. Embodying both progress and stasis, it turns out to be the ideal form of transportation for a character at a personal crossroads: He’s moving forward, but he’s standing … [Read more...]
The View From Home: Stanley Kwan’s beautiful, disruptive biopic “Center Stage”
As intimate as it is lavish, Stanley Kwan’s landmark 1991 biopic Center Stage has finally received the illustrious Blu-ray release it deserves, thanks to the tireless efforts of Film Movement and its specialty Classics imprint ($29.99). Like the screen icon it depicts, this transfer positively glows, shimmering with memory, criticism and the very foundations of cinema … [Read more...]
‘Enfant Terrible’: Biopic of Fassbinder focuses on his evil, not his art
Of the three major postwar German filmmakers — Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder — the latter presents the most fecund material for a biopic. A gay man in a time when it was dangerous and transgressive to be one, Fassbinder was also a drug addict, an alcoholic and a workaholic, completing more than 40 films, two television series and 24 plays in less … [Read more...]
In ‘Percy vs. Goliath,’ film finds worthy fighter in Walken
The thing about Christopher Walken is that, like Nicolas Cage and other personality actors who have settled into comfortable self-parody, he always seems to be playing Christopher Walken. This perception is reinforced with every supporting role or cameo appearance in whatever example of disposable studio dross he can fit into his seriously insane working schedule, to the tune … [Read more...]
‘Together Together’: Non-rom-com charms with wokeness, warmth
In Together Together, Ed Helms, much matured since his Hangover bacchanals, plays Matt, a lonely straight man stuck in a middle-age morass. With no romantic prospects but desirous of a family, and as if feeling the tick of his own biological clock, he makes the unusual decision to father a child through a surrogate. That’s where Anna (Patti Harrison), a single woman 20 … [Read more...]
‘Shiva Baby’: Sexual strength, psychic horror — and it’s a comedy
Imagine a female Benjamin Braddock who, unlike Dustin Hoffman’s rudderless graduate, has no trouble getting laid. That’s one way to introduce Danielle (Rachel Sennott), the neurotic heroine, adrift at the precipice of adulthood, in Emma Seligman’s promising debut Shiva Baby. At the shiva where nearly the entire film unspools in more or less real time — the deceased is a … [Read more...]