Was the world crying out for a sequel to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel? Well, we got it anyway. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel doesn't have nearly the amount of charm and humor as the first installment. And, oh lord, Dev Patel...... My review is up at Paste.
As a longtime Will Smith fan, I struggled with Focus, an ostensibly just-for-fun caper movie, for reasons I couldn't pin down. The problem, I finally realized, was that I simply found Smith so opaque in the film that I couldn't sense a human being up there on the screen. That made me think about his first major film role, in Six Degrees of Separation, where he played another charlatan. And that made me think about this essay on Smith's career, which is now live on Deadspin.
This week, Led Zeppelin celebrated the 40th anniversary of the release of Physical Graffiti with a spiffy new deluxe edition. Never a slobbering fan of the hard rock titans, I'd nonetheless like to play a deep cut off the double album, the endlessly beautiful and mysterious "Ten Years Gone."
You've got a movie that stars Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde and Donald Glover. So it's a comedy, right? Sadly, no: The Lazarus Effect is a horror movie about some scientists who discover they can bring back the dead. Of course, this turns out to be a bad idea -- for them and for the audience. I reviewed the film for Screen International.
Will Smith fans like me have been hoping he'll right the ship with Focus, his conman movie in which he stars alongside Margot Robbie. This is a genre I really enjoy -- we know we're being tricked, but we're not sure how, and so we try to figure it out, like watching a magic trick. But you have to pull it off just right, and Focus (for as much fun as it can be) sadly doesn't. I reviewed the film for Screen International.
'71 was one of the big hits from last year's Berlin Film Festival. This weekend, it finally opens in the U.S. The movie, a war drama, stars Jack O'Connell, who was the lead in Unbroken. (His best role so far remains his turn in Starred Up.) In '71, he plays a British soldier on the run in Belfast in 1971. Taut, tense, a little dry, '71 impresses without necessarily blowing you away. I reviewed the film for Paste.
Considering that Boyhood was my pick for 2014's best film, you can imagine that I was disappointed that it didn't win Best Picture last night at the Oscars. My other great sadness, however, came from the fact that Wes Anderson didn't walk away with Best Original Screenplay for The Grand Budapest Hotel, although that film did win four other prizes. (And, yes, Boyhood was also nominated in that category.)
I decided to reprint my speech I wrote for Anderson when I gave out the Los Angeles Film Critics Association's Best Screenplay prize to him back in early January. This encapsulates what I love about the film....
The Grand Budapest Hotel is about the stories we tell. Filled with characters who are authors or poets or simply old men reflecting on their lives over dinner, Wes Anderson’s film is consumed with the passage of time and how we chronicle it -- how we make sense of it through narratives, or personas that we invent for ourselves. Divided into novelistic chapters and spread out over different decades, The Grand Budapest Hotel may be Anderson’s most ambitious work yet. It is certainly his most poignant.
But that’s not what you think of first. What you remember about The Grand Budapest Hotel is how funny it is. Working from a story he co-wrote with Hugo Guinness, Anderson has given us one of his richest creations in Gustave, a concierge so impeccably elegant he never suspects how ridiculous he is. Played to comedic perfection by Ralph Fiennes, Gustave embodies many of the traits we have come to love in Anderson’s films: that proud sense of individualism; that defiantly optimistic view of the world that no amount of cruel reality can squash.
This is Anderson’s eighth feature, and one of his very best. If this film were a book, it would be a page-turner: part thriller, part war drama, part comedy, part romantic fable. The Grand Budapest Hotel is a splendid confection, an exquisite fantasy -- and to quote one of the character’s assessment of Gustave, Wes Anderson sustains the illusion with a marvelous grace.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in congratulating our Best Screenplay winner, Mr. Wes Anderson.
Will it be Boyhood or Birdman?One of the closest Oscar seasons in years winds down Sunday. Making my picks for Best Picture, Director and Actor was incredibly tough, and there's no guarantee I'm not wrong in a couple other categories. (Three of the eight major categories, though, seem like locks.) So, here we go.
It's been almost two weeks since Beck's Morning Phase beat (among others) Beyoncé's self-titled disc for the Album of the Year Grammy. I've been meaning to write about Morning Phase since it topped my 2014 Pazz & Jop ballot, an outcome that surprised me as much as anyone. (I never liked Beck's previous sad-songs acoustic album Sea Change all that much.) But rather than spend the time arguing why Morning Phase is one of Beck's deepest, richest and (most importantly) least mannered albums, I decided instead to dive back into Beyoncé, which the loudest people online think should have won.
I might as well say this from the start: I don't get Beyoncé. I should also say that I don't like not "getting" people, and I try my best to at least understand what an artist is trying to do, even if that particular thing does nothing for me. As far as Bey goes, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" is one of the best singles of the last 10 years, but her other (many) hits leave me mostly cold. "Crazy in Love" bites "Are You My Woman? (Tell Me So)" without adding much new, and tracks like "Halo" are so demonstratively dramatic that I feel like I'm being trampled by an invading army.
That feeling extends to her persona, which in pop music matters almost as much as the songs. The lustful fantasy of many men (and perhaps some women, too) and an icon of self-empowerment and resourcefulness for many women (and perhaps some men, too), Beyoncé has always come across as more businesswoman than artist. Listening to her songs, I don't connect on an emotional level: It's like getting really jazzed about your Coca-Cola stocks. In this way, she and her husband Jay Z are well-matched. Especially in his recent albums, Jay has been more about brand management than artistic discovery. (And it should be said that he has utilized her incredibly well in his music: duets on "'03 Bonnie & Clyde" and "Part II [On the Run]," nailing the hook on his and Kanye West's Watch the Thrones cut "Lift Off.")
But because it's more fun to love music than to shake your head at it, I've been re-exploring Beyoncé in the hopes that it'll finally click with me. Her most acclaimed record -- it's the only one to land in the Top 10 in Pazz & Jop -- Beyoncé is, if nothing else, a model of state-of-the-art production. Featuring world-class sonics, the record gives Beyoncé a chance to exert her carnal, ferocious essence, which she can do with aplomb. I can't say I get a lot of insight into the person behind the persona, but if Beyoncé is a sleek, pricey Vegas hotel, she fills every room with fantasy, decoration, escapism.
So now let's listen to the Beyoncé song I absolutely love, "Blow." I still don't understand why this wasn't a single. Well, actually, considering its coda, maybe I do understand: I'm not sure if the radio would be ready for this filthy of a Beyoncé. Never mind that it's about a healthy married sex life.
For the third straight year, I'm predicting the smaller Oscar categories over at Deadspin. (Tomorrow, Will and I will tackle the eight big prizes, including Best Picture.) So far, I have an 84% success rate, which I will no doubt jeopardize by even mentioning it. Oh well: Here are my picks for everything from Best Documentary to Best Production Design to Best Sound Editing to Best Live Action Short.
For Playboy, I made a list of 10 great actors, filmmakers or composers who have never been nominated for an Oscar. This is an embarrassing collection of talent that's never gotten its due from the Academy. You can read my appreciation of folks like Jim Carrey right here.
On Sunday, the 87th Academy Awards will be held here in Los Angeles. If I was a member of the Academy, this would be how I rank my Best Picture ballot. (As a reminder, the Oscars use a preferential voting system to determine what movie walks away with the top prize.) To be clear, this isn't a prediction of how it will play out, merely how I would vote if I could....
1. Boyhood
2. The Grand Budapest Hotel
3. Birdman
4. The Theory of Everything
5. Selma
6. The Imitation Game
7. American Sniper
8. Whiplash
Actual predictions will be coming later this week.
Mos Def hasn't put out a solo album since The Ecstatic, one of 2009's best records. Since then, he has changed his name to Yasiin Bey and hasn't done a ton of recording or acting. But last year, he resurfaced, sorta, when a snippet from the track "Twilite Speedball" popped up in an ad for the Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas. if you find the music intoxicating, introduce yourself to the song.
While we wait for Spectre, why not give Kingsman: The Secret Service a chance? Well, because it's not very good. This spy thriller-comedy starring Colin Firth likes to pat itself on the back for how clever it is. (This is the kind of movie that has its characters mention how movie-like their situation is, only to then assert that this isn't a movie.) Sure, the action sequences are pretty superb but, honestly, who cares? It's totally soulless without being witty about it. I reviewed Kingsman for Deadspin.
I've often said that the worst thing that can happen to a good movie is to win Best Picture. Once you've been given that Oscar, everybody complains that you're not that great of a film: The accolade simply invites people to nitpick. With that in mind, for Rolling Stone I decided to rank the 25 best movies that were nominated for Best Picture but lost. This is an enormously difficult task, by the way, which meant leaving off plenty of worthy contenders. Also, my No. 1 pick is going to annoy lots of folks. Hey, sue me, it's my list.
I couldn't have had a better time hanging out with Randall Park. The star of ABC's Fresh Off the Boat, he was in the news a lot last year because he played Kim Jong-un in The Interview, which made his life surreal for a bit. We talked about all that -- plus, why he loves MF Doom, one of the best undergrounds MCs out there. My piece is now live at Backstage.
When I told people I was going to be seeing Fifty Shades of Grey, I got a surprising amount of responses that ranged from "Oh god, why?" to "Well, good luck with that" to "Yeah, that's not my kind of thing." Putting aside for a moment the fact that I saw the film because, you know, it's my job, I was shocked how quick some folks were to assume that the movie would be bad. I then, of course, wondered how many people would be furious if a critic went into a movie with such strong preconceived notions. This is an occupational pet peeve of mine: Readers expect us to be open-minded (which I work very hard to be) but don't apply the same standard to themselves for films they assume aren't worth their time.
So, with that said, let me tell you that I found Fifty Shades of Grey to be fascinating -- and I don't mean that in a coy, condescending way. That rare Hollywood movie that deals (somewhat) seriously with its characters' sexual life, Fifty Shades stands alone among the studio blockbusters. (It's also just about the only "event movie" based around a love story in recent times.) There is much to discuss about this flawed, ultimately satisfying film, and I go into all of it in my Screen International review.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are the people who, among other things, put on the Oscars. But a few weeks before then, they also throw the annual Scientific and Technical Awards, or Sci-Tech. This show honors the latest in technical innovation, and it gets a cursory mention every year during the Oscar broadcast. I've always been curious to attend the Sci-Tech Awards, and for Popular Mechanics I finally got my chance. The event was this past Saturday, at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, which required me getting into a tux. What I found was an awards show, hosted this year by Miles Teller and Margot Robbie, that suggests the future of moviegoing. I had a blast covering the event, and I hope you enjoy this recap.
You may remember the other day I mentioned that The Dissolve had asked me and other critics to contribute ballots to their poll of the best films of the decade (2010-2014). (You can see the master list, with write-ups, of Nos. 50-26 here. Nos. 25-1 are right here.)
For those interested, I decided to publish my ballot below.
Doing some quick number-crunching, I see that 10 of my Top 20 films ended up in the overall Dissolve Top 50. If some of my picks surprise you, well, they surprised me, too -- but I decided to go by instinct and not overthink my choices. If nothing else, this will help give me a guide for "Best of the Decade" lists in about four years, which will be here quicker than you think.
1. Inside Llewyn Davis
2. The Turin Horse
3. The Master
4. Boyhood
5. City of Life and Death
6. Lourdes
7. Shutter Island
8. Elena (the Andrei Zvyagintsev film)
9. It's Such a Beautiful Day
10. The Social Network
11. The Clock
12. Compliance
13. Let the Fire Burn
14. Blue Is the Warmest Color
15. Shame
16. Leviathan (the Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel film)
17. Upstream Color
18. Take Shelter
19. Room 237
20. Before Midnight
Today, Andrew Sullivan closes down The Dish, a decision he has agonized over. It's no less difficult for all of us who loved reading his site. Between the loss of The Dish and The Colbert Report, I can't imagine how I'm going to get through the 2016 presidential election.
In honor of Sullivan, I decided I'd dedicate this week's Friday Video to him by choosing a track from his all-time favorite band.
Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore reunite for The Big Lebowski 2 ... OK, that's not what happened. Instead, they're in Seventh Son, a patience-trying fantasy-adventure featuring witches, warlocks, monsters and other creatures. Too bad it's all so darn boring. I reviewed the film for Screen International.
There are few pleasures quite like watching Kevin Costner in a sports movie. (I've written about this before.) But his latest, McFarland, USA, is almost a little too comfortable. It's based on a true story: In the late 1980s, a white football coach, Jim White, started a cross-country team in a small Latino community, bridging cultural divides in the process. Sure, it's inspiring, but it's also rather rote. I reviewed the film for Screen International.
You have to hand it to Lana and Andy Wachowski: Jupiter Ascending is a wholly original sci-fi film. It's not based on a comic book or a TV show or anything else. (Well, it's definitely inspired from older sci-fi films like Star Wars and Dune.) But in an era of play-it-safe blockbusters, Jupiter Ascending is undeniably bold.
Now, here comes the bad news: It's pretty terrible. Because the Wachowskis always have a sense of grandeur about their projects, Jupiter Ascending feels unabashedly epic, which can make for fascinating viewing. I flipped for the divisive Cloud Atlas, but I just sat there shaking my head with their new film. I reviewed Jupiter Ascending for Screen International.
The fine folks at The Dissolve polled me and others for our picks for the best films this decade (2010-2014). Compiling those ballots, The Dissolve has now unveiled its list of "The 50 Best Films of the Decade So Far." The first half of the results (50-26) can be found here, including my write-ups for The Turin Horse and Upstream Color. Tomorrow, The Dissolve will reveal the Top 25, and each critic's individual ballot. (Spoiler alert: Four of the movies on my personal Top 20 are included in the 50-26 roundup.)
(Update: Here's 25-1. Six of the movies on my personal Top 20 are included in this section of the countdown.)
I could have just as easily put together a list of the movies I wished I could have seen at this year's Sundance Film Festival: The End of the Tour, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, Going Clear, Diary of a Teenage Girl, The Forbidden Room, Tangerine, Experimenter, I Am Michael, The Stanford Prison Experiment, The Overnight....OK, you get the idea. (Plus, I have Don Hertzfeldt's acclaimed short World of Tomorrow waiting for me on my laptop. I cannot wait.) So consider the below ranking a snapshot of one person's experience in Park City. Five different critics could give you five different overviews.
I can't say I saw any slam-dunk stunners this year, as opposed to 2014 when I flipped for Boyhood and The Raid 2. You'll note my top two picks from the 2015 edition are actually films that premiered elsewhere but were included in Sundance's Spotlight section. I suspect a couple of the movies I didn't see on the list above might have competed for one of the top spots.
Looking at my rankings, I realize I'm less enthused about Brooklyn than many of my colleagues are. On the opposite side, I'm guessing I'm higher on The Nightmare than most. What's funny is that many of the best films at Sundance this year have an element of horror to them, whether it's the 17th century creepiness of The Witch, the school of the damned in The Tribe, the post-apocalyptic setting of Z for Zachariah, or the real-world terrors in the documentaries The Nightmare and Welcome to Leith. As for Eden, I bonded with two new friends at the festival because they responded to Mia Hansen-Løve's film as strongly as I did. It's not a horror movie, but it's a deeply felt character study that I haven't stopped thinking about since seeing it in Toronto last year.
On to the rankings. Links lead to individual reviews (some may be behind paywalls)...
I haven't seen every film in the U.S. dramatic competition, but I'm betting that Me and Earl and the Dying Girl wins the Grand Jury Prize. Emotional, precocious, in thrall with movies, the second feature from director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon concerns a high school outcast (Thomas Mann) who befriends a classmate (Olivia Cooke) dying of cancer. This movie is for people who think Wes Anderson's movies aren't emotional enough. I liked it, with reservations. My review is up at Screen International.
We've had Bad Santa and Bad Teacher ... now it's time for Bad Gymnast. Actually, the film is called The Bronze, but it stars Melissa Rauch as a former Olympic medalist still clinging to her athletic glory years later. Oh boy, is she mean and nasty! She says offensive things! Hilarity only occasionally ensues. My review is up at Screen International.
On today's Press Play With Madeleine Brand, I was on the show with USA Today critic Claudia Puig to discuss the highlights of this year's Sundance Film Festival. For me, that included Dope, Mississippi Grind and The Witch. You can hear the whole exchange here.
It was hard not to be concerned about A Walk in the Woods, the buddy road comedy starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte as old, long-separated friends who decide to trek the Appalachian Trail together. (It's based on travel writer Bill Bryson's book.) Look, if you're interested in this sort of thing, just see Old Joy, OK? I reviewed the dismal A Walk in the Woods for Screen International.
Phil Collins turns 64 years old today. As a lad, I was pretty familiar with his Grammy-winning 1985 album No Jacket Required. (I still remember the typically awful joke Mad made about its hit single "Sussudio," which, the magazine mentioned, he recorded in his stu-, stu-, studio.) But since my family only had the album on cassette, I never heard "We Said Hello Goodbye," which was a B-side that was added to the end of the compact disc. (I still recall a time when people didn't automatically call them CDs -- or a time when people actually owned CDs.) Anyway, only recently becoming familiar with "We Said Hello Goodbye," I have a certain fondness for its mannered orchestral elegance. Or maybe I just outright love it. I'm not even sure anymore.
When I got out of my screening of director Joe Swanberg's Digging for Fire last night, I told a colleague that I felt like he had made his version of Eyes Wide Shut. What did I mean by that? Well, the film (starring Jake Johnson and Rosemarie DeWitt) is about a married couple who end up having separate weekends, plunging them into unexpected, emotionally complicated situations. And it all kicks off with the husband discovering a human bone and a handgun buried in the yard of the home where he and his wife are house-sitting.
The more I think about this film, the more I like its ambiguous, almost subliminal resonance. I reviewed Digging for Fire for Screen International.
True Story, as you might imagine, is based on a true story. In 2002, celebrated New York Times writer Michael Finkel got himself fired for fudging the facts on a profile piece he was writing. Hoping to revitalize his career after the scandal, he discovered that a man in Oregon had been using his name while on the run. (He was wanted for the murder of his wife and three children.) Finkel decided to meet this man.
In the film, Jonah Hill plays Finkel and James Franco plays the man, Christian Longo. True Story is involving and intriguing -- but only to a point. I liked the movie, but it easily could have been better. I reviewed True Story for Screen International.
Directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden (Half Nelson, Sugar)like to play around in genres, not unlike Robert Altman used to do. So, it seems fitting that their latest feels like an Altman movie -- California Split, specifically. Mississippi Grind is about two gamblers (Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn) on a road trip to New Orleans. The movie has its limitations because of the conventionality of its narrative structure, but I really came to love these two characters. (Mendelsohn is especially terrific.) My review is up at Paste.
One of the hits of the festival has been Dope, writer-director Rick Famuyiwa's high-energy comedy-thriller about a young hip-hop nerd living in Los Angeles (played by Shameik Moore) who gets involved in a drug deal gone wrong. Dope may be a bit unfocused, but its propulsive forward momentum is something to see. Plus, Famuyiwa has a lot to say about racial inequality and media portrayals of African-Americans. Those messages are just as potent as the laughs and the throwback rap jams on the soundtrack. I reviewed Dope for Screen International.
Every Sundance has its share of indie comedies starring big names. They tend not to be very good, but The D Train has enough laughs and charm to make up for its shortcomings. Jack Black plays a dorky organizer of his 20th high school reunion who tries to coax the king of his graduating class (James Marsden), who's now an actor in Hollywood, to come back for the event. Both actors are funny, but Marsden is really terrific. I reviewed The D Train for Screen International.
One of the boldest experiments of this year's Sundance Film Festival, Last Days in the Desert stars Ewan McGregor as Jesus wandering the desert in search of peace before he must return to Jerusalem for, well, you can probably guess why. Even bolder, he also plays a demon tormenting our hero. This uncompromising, minimalist drama is short on plot and long on atmosphere. That comes with it certain limitations, but I deeply admired the effort from writer-director Rodrigo Garcia (Nine Lives, Mother and Child). You can read my review over at Screen International.
In Partisan, Vincent Cassel plays the leader of a closed-off community that preaches utopian principles while training its children to assassinate random targets in the nearby city. This Sundance offering, the feature debut of filmmaker Ariel Kleiman, has an intelligent, measured calm that's nicely unsettling. But the story's real focus is on Cassel's character and one of the community's children (a superb Jeremy Chabriel) who begins to stand up to him. I reviewed the film for Screen International.
Nicole Kidman gives it her all in Strangerland, an Australian drama where she plays a woman (married to Joseph Fiennes) whose two children go missing one morning. Were they kidnapped or did they run away? Director Kim Farrant turns this mystery into an overwrought morality tale heavy with thematic import. I admired the seriousness of purpose but really, really disliked the execution. I reviewed the film for Screen International.
Homesick sports a premise that will, to use a cliche, raise an eyebrow. A young woman (Ine Wilmann) decides to meet her estranged half-brother (Simon J. Berger), and soon they discover a powerful sexual attraction between them. But this romantic drama, from Norwegian director Anne Sewitsky, is less about shattering taboos as it is about exploring longing and identity. It's a modest heartbreaker -- and I reviewed the film for Screen International.
My most anticipated film of this year's Sundance, Z for Zachariah isn't as violently divisive as director Craig Zobel's last movie, Compliance, was. Still, I once again think I like it more than my colleagues do. A look at the end of the world populated by three mismatched individuals (played superbly by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie and Chris Pine), this low-key drama is very effective as a study of human behavior, a specialty of Zobel's. You can read my review over at Screen International.
In recent years, writer-director Noah Baumbach has turned away from the misanthropic comedy of his earlier films to embrace a rich warmth. Maybe that has something to do with his new creative and romantic partner Greta Gerwig. Like their Frances Ha, Mistress America explores the lives of young New Yorkers with affection but also insight. In the new film, Gerwig plays a super-confident woman showing her soon-to-be younger sister (Lola Kirke) around the Big Apple. It may be slight, but it sure is funny. My review of Mistress America is up at Screen International.
If you told me a film starred (among others) Ethan Hawke, Emily Mortimer and Julianne Nicholson, I'd be down. Unfortunately, Ten Thousand Saints is the second straight misfire from directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. (Their last was the rather unfortunate Imogene, which was later renamed Girl Most Likely.) The new film stars Asa Butterfield who's on a coming-of-age quest in 1980s New York. Lots of heart in this movie, but not a lot of memorable moments. I reviewed Ten Thousand Saints for Screen International.
Sometimes, you have to tip your hat at ambition. But that doesn't mean you also have to recommend the movie. Stockholm, Pennsylvania, from first-timer Nikole Beckwith, concerns a young woman (Saoirse Ronan) who has just been rescued after being kidnapped and living in a man's basement for 17 years. Can she adjust to life with her birth parents, whom she doesn't remember at all? And where will Beckwith take this story? In very unexpected places, it turns out. I wish I liked this character study/psychological drama better. I reviewed the film for Screen International.
As much as I hate using the word "buzz," one of the buzzier titles of Sundance 2015 is The Witch, from first-time filmmaker Robert Eggers. Playing in the U.S. dramatic competition, this is an elegant horror film about a luckless 1630s New England family living on their own out in the middle of nowhere. Oh, and there might be a witch in the dark forest just outside their property. Eggers' film may be little more than an excellent exercise in dread but, hey, it creeped me out mighty sufficiently. I reviewed The Witch for Screen International.
Historically, the opening night at Sundance isn't considered a hot bed of stunning cinematic achievement. (Translation: The movies tend to be only so-so, or worse.) Last year snapped that pattern with Whiplash, but this year's festival kicked off with the frustratingly pedestrian What Happened, Miss Simone?, a documentary about the beloved, acclaimed singer Nina Simone. It'll be playing on Netflix soon enough, but here's my review right now.
Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws turns 47 next week. Sort of a love song, sort of a deep dive into the darkness, "Christiansands" remains my favorite of his tracks.
I have had a very fun year interviewing the folks from Boyhood. First, I talked to Richard Linklater for a Backstage cover story. Then, I conducted a Q&A with Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette and Ellar Coltrane. (Sorry, no video for that.) Then, for the SAG Foundation, I spoke with just Arquette and Hawke. Then, in December, I conducted a Q&A with the film's casting director (Beth Sepko), co-production designer (Rodney Becker) and editor (Sandra Adair). (Sorry, no video for that.) And then on Wednesday, right before I left for Sundance, I chatted with Coltrane and Linklater for the SAG Foundation. I never get tired of hanging out with these people.
In this conversation, I wanted to talk about what the experience has been like for them since Boyhood premiered a little over a year ago at Sundance. Coltrane is especially interesting when he talks about how he's tried to cope with the rush of attention he's received. But both men are warm and engaging, as always. (And Linklater's right in his response to my observation that his movies celebrate families.)
This was a lot of fun: For Popular Mechanics, I (and Lauren Bans) wrote about some of the most impressive technical feats in cinema from last year. That includes The Grand Budapest Hotel, Foxcatcher, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Edge of Tomorrow and Under the Skin. We chatted with the wizards who brought these effects to life, which was plenty illuminating. I hope you enjoy.
Charlie Day, one of the stars of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (and Horrible Bosses and The Lego Movie), was a lot of fun to interview. For Backstage, we chatted about his long-running show, how he gets "into character" to play Charlie Kelly, and why he's still doing the sitcom after 10 years (with more years to go). That's just part of our conversation -- I had a blast with this one. Hope you enjoy.
First, an anecdote. I pride myself on being early to screenings. I hate being late for anything, but especially when it comes to my job, I don't like to make others wait for me. (Even worse, I don't want to miss the start of the movie if the publicists decide to start without me.) Last night, though, I was stuck in absolutely horrible traffic -- which was even more annoying because I had planned for that by leaving my home earlier than normal. I got to the screening of Strange Magic about 10 minutes late, but the very nice folks at Disney held it for me, which I so appreciate. (And maybe they didn't hold it just for me -- I don't have that kind of power, believe me -- but it was a nice reminder that, sometimes, stuff happens, and we need other folks to help us out.)
I say all that as a preface to my review of Strange Magic. The movie is terrible, and a reminder that any film billed as "from the mind of George Lucas" should be treated with suspicion. I didn't want to dislike Strange Magic as much as I did considering everything that led up to me seeing it but, hey, part of the job is to call like I see it.
Calling a festival preview a selection of "must-see films" is always risky. None of us have seen them, so how do we know if we truly must see them? So for purposes of accuracy, let me just say that the piece I wrote for Deadspin highlights 10 films I'm most curious to check out while at Park City. They run the gamut from horror-documentaries to the latest from the filmmaker of Compliance. Here they all are.
On Tuesday, Sleater-Kinney release their first album in 10 years with No Cities to Love. Here's "The Fox," the volcanic opening track from their last disc, The Woods.
On Super Bowl weekend, Jason Statham returns to our theaters with Wild Card, a remake of the Burt Reynolds flick Heat. (That movie, of course, is not to be confused with Michael Mann's Heat.) I've long worshiped at the altar of Mr. Statham, but a movie like Wild Card makes me wonder about the wisdom of such devotion. It's not bad -- in fact, the film can be enjoyably loopy -- but it just doesn't add up to much in the end. I reviewed Wild Card -- spoiler alert, Statham's character is named Nick Wild -- for Screen International.
That's what the fine folks at Rolling Stone are here to find out, with a little help from myself and my colleagues. On the website, my editors ranked the 50 best science-fiction movies of the '70s, and I did the write-ups for Alien, A Clockwork Orange and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Enjoy!
Normally, a Michael Mann movie wouldn't open during the dregs of January. So, you can imagine the amount of curiosity and anxiety surrounding Blackhat, his cyber-thriller starring Thor star Chris Hemsworth.
I suspect I will be in the minority for liking it. To be sure, I like it with massive reservations but, good heavens, what a gorgeous movie. Three absolutely ace action sequences combined with a generally propulsive, hypnotic sense of mood and movement: That's (just barely) enough for me to recommend this otherwise disposable genre offering.
Almost 30 years after its release, Brothers in Arms is going to win Pazz & Jop. The War on Drugs' third album, Lost in the Dream, is my pick to top the annual music critics poll, whose results will be announced on January 14. I like Lost in the Dream -- its pretty guitar textures get to me when I'm in a certain mood -- but it mostly reminds me of Dire Straits' 1985 record, which I would describe as "elegant" and "accomplished" and "sophisticated" and "dreamlike" and "perfectly fine but also a bit much." (By the way, Brothers in Armslanded at No. 20 on that year's Pazz & Jop poll, just barely beating "Money for Nothing" guest vocalist Sting's first solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles.)
If Lost in the Dream does win, it'll be the first time a straight-up indie-rock band won the poll since Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilionin 2009. The War on Drugs' strongest challenger will be St. Vincent, the only good thing that's ever come out of the Polyphonic Spree.
Here are the rest of my predictions for the Top 10....
1. The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream
2. St. Vincent, St. Vincent
3. Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 2
4. D'Angelo and the Vanguard, Black Messiah
5. FKA twigs, LP1 6. Taylor Swift, 1989
7. Beck, Morning Phase
8. Angel Olsen, Burn Your Fire for No Witness
9. Aphex Twin, Syro
10. Sharon Van Etten,Are We There
I'll talk about my own ballot once the Pazz & Jop results go live Wednesday. But for now, I'll just say that two of the albums I'm guessing hit the Top 10 made my own album list.
(Update: Wow, I was wrong. I assumed that the very late arrival of Black Messiah at the end of the year would keep it from topping the poll. But D'Angelo is indeed your winner. I got the top five right, but in a different order. Overall, I was correct about seven of the top 10, which isn't too shabby. My own ballot is here.)
As you may know, Elvis Presley's birthday was yesterday. (He would have been 80, which means he's almost been dead now as long as he was alive.) No great expert on the man, I've always preferred this endlessly catchy bauble of his.
During a short span of time in the summer and early fall, I noticed that I was watching a handful of films in which the bad guy was always the Internet, be it in the form of social media or YouTube. So I started wondering why. For The Dissolve, I look at Men, Women & Children (pictured above), Chef and Birdman to compare/contrast their portrayals of the World Wide Web -- and why their attitudes toward the Internet say more about Hollywood than it does Twitter. I hope you enjoy.
Happy New Year: It's time to start thinking about the films in 2015 we're all excited to see. Will and I put together a list of our 20 most-anticipated titles for Deadspin -- and should you require more words on the subject, I contributed to Rolling Stone's massive 2015 preview, which features movies as well as TV shows and music.
To my ears, the best metal and rap albums of 2014 were Sun Kil Moon's Benji. Of course, no one would classify Mark Kozelek's latest singer-songwriter effort as either genre. But consider this: Benji is emotionally brutal like the best hard rock and dazzling in its wordplay like the finest hip-hop.
A dizzying onslaught of austere arrangements and twisty panic attacks, Benji has so many words on its 11 tracks, so many stories it's anxious to tell. Recalling lost loves, his bad back, the parents he deeply loves, his difficult friendship with Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard, Kozelek spews narratives all over the album, but the specificity of his memoiristic tales makes them oddly universal. Aging, failure, family: They're at the heart of Benji, and we can all relate.
"Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes" is about the notorious serial killer but, in typical Benji fashion, it's about a lot of other things, too. I can't even imagine what it would sound like coming out of Jay Z's mouth.
