Category: Threes

Lucy in the Sky The critics hated it. The public stayed home. But I liked this. A lot. It is cinematic. Powerful cinema. And I am telling you I liked this with a bit of surprise on my part. That’s because it has two actors who often play this introspective game, where they let you… Continue reading All the King’s Men (2006)

Fabrications I admit, I find the story of the Mankiewcz brothers to be one of the most interesting in all filmdom. Part of the allure is their experimentation in narrative perspectives and the nature of fabrication. Here, the fabrication is extra sweetly dimensional. We have a movie about movies, actresses portraying actresses with resonances among… Continue reading All About Eve (1950)

WETA Gold There are only three ways to turn on your mind. The third is too dangerous to even sketch. The most common is to allow it to do what it wants, tracing known pathways and presenting known patterns. All imagination comes home to rest. But then there is art, which in my book is… Continue reading The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

The Chosen I am usually offended, retroactively offended by Ivory – Jhabvala films. They have a quiet, deep consistency that draws respect the same way a cathedral does. But the uncomplicated emotional links and the sentimental world in which they exist gets to me, and taints dreams for days afterward. Good news. Here is that… Continue reading Jane Austin in Manhattan (1980)

Sex, Drugs and Crime William Powell is responsible for a huge element of our loves, the smoothness that has comic irony behind it. He invented it. There are a few of his movies that are essential viewing, but those are after the government thugs decided what movies should be like in “moral” terms. So you… Continue reading Jewel Robbery (1932)

Timothy Leery I was happy to be able to find this old gem. In the early 70s, there was brief window when porn was where many cinematic experiments were happening. Some of them actually had some promise for being important. Perhaps the oddest is the porn musical. This is the most interesting from a historical… Continue reading Danish Pastries (1973)

Suffrage, Suffering I’m fickle, I admit, about context and films. Sometimes I watch them as they come to me today, and sometimes the other way around, as they (I imagine) appeared in their original context. This one is the rare project that prompts both. I’m seeing it 67 years after it was made. It was… Continue reading Jezebel (1938)

Used Record Store There are movies that are well done; there are movies that satisfy; there are those that work, those that stick, those that transcend time to become classics and those that change lives. None of these measures necessarily has anything to do with each other and any can produce a movie worth watching.… Continue reading Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)

A Vast Profitmaking Enterprise. The big division in films for me is whether it nourishes me or not. We build our lives from stories, lucidly if we are lucky. Films are the bath in which we rejuvenate — some films. All other film experiences are to be taken apart for profit, to tell me why… Continue reading Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Flight Assembly I am not a student of Hong Kong martial arts movies, just someone who dips into the accessible ones. My interest is in the cinematic experience, and that depends to a large extent on how the camera is choreographed. It doesn’t matter to me how elaborate the effects of the people and objects… Continue reading Iron Monkey (1993)