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The Fifth Wave (2016)
Protect Your Own
Filmmaker(s): J Blakeson

16-year-old Cassie Sullivan tries to survive in a world devastated by the waves of an alien invasion that has already decimated the population and knocked mankind back to the Stone Age.

Water Films made for kids, by kids. It seems safe enough: use a best seller from the YA bookshelf. Have some reasonable action scenes. Hire a known kid actor. Insert a romance and a twist, and take the money. It should not be fair for me to...


Published July 1, 2022
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Chef (2014)
Starting from scratch never tasted so good.
Filmmaker(s): Jon Favreau

When Chef Carl Casper suddenly quits his job at a prominent Los Angeles restaurant after refusing to compromise his creative integrity for its controlling owner, he is left to figure out what's next. Finding himself in Miami, he teams up with his ex-wife, his friend and his son to launch a food truck. Taking to the road, Chef Carl goes back to his roots to reignite his passion for the kitchen -- and zest for life and love.

Street Audiences I watched this with the presumably self referential Nic Cage movie. I found that film far less self-referential than advertised, and this far more so. Favreau denies the connection that I am making here, but it hardly matters whether he intended the connection or not....


Published July 1, 2022
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In Good Company (2004)
He's rich, young and handsome. He's in love with you and he's your dad's boss.
Filmmaker(s): Paul Weitz

Dan Foreman is a seasoned advertisement sales executive at a high-ranking publication when a corporate takeover results in him being placed under naive supervisor Carter Duryea, who is half his age. Matters are made worse when Dan's new supervisor becomes romantically involved with his daughter an 18 year-old college student Alex.

Weitz Up? Beginnings are everything. Almost no film has a good ending and few do much in the middle. But we let it all slide if we are given a good beginning. That’s because the whole enterprise of film is about creating an artificial world. Much...


Published June 5, 2022
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In the Cut (2003)
Everything you know about desire is dead wrong.
Filmmaker(s): Jane Campion

Following the gruesome murder of a young woman in her neighborhood, an English teacher living in New York City — as if to test the limits of her own safety —propels herself into an impossibly risky sexual liaison with a police detective.

In There Jane Campion has a tenderness that is so attractive that if it did not come with warnings, I would build a romantic dreamworld around it. Because that is what we do with deep soft urges. Her films seem always to be about the edges,...


Published May 23, 2022
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In My Father’s Den (2004)
Filmmaker(s): Brad McGann

Paul (Macfadyen), a prize-winning war journalist, returns to his remote New Zealand hometown due to the death of his father, battle-scarred and world-weary. For the discontented sixteen-year-old Celia (Barclay) he opens up a world she has only dreamed of. She actively pursues a friendship with him, fascinated by his cynicism and experience of the world beyond her small-town existence. But many, including the members of both their families (Otto, Moy), frown upon the friendship and when Celia goes missing, Paul becomes the increasingly loathed and persecuted prime suspect in her disappearance. As the violent and urgent truth gradually emerges, Paul is forced to confront the family tragedy and betrayal that he ran from as a youth, and to face the grievous consequences of silence and secrecy that has surrounded his entire adult life.

Spatial War, Redhead Landscapes, Image and Word Woven Together Apart Australia is vital to my life in film. From an American perspective, New Zealand is normally clumped in there as well — something that annoys Kiwis to no end. At least in terms of film, they...


Published May 23, 2022
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Impromptu (1991)
He's about to fall in love with the most scandalous woman of his time.
Filmmaker(s): James Lapine

In 1830s France, pianist/composer Frédéric Chopin is pursued romantically by the determined, individualistic woman who uses the name George Sand.

Fluid, Woven Passion Sometimes you just like a movie. I admit I was prepared to like this. It features Chopin, and he is a large part of my musical world. His stuff really is magical, but only when flowing through a rich vessel. The things he...


Published May 23, 2022
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The Stunt Man (1980)
"If God could do the tricks that we can do, he'd be a happy man..."
Filmmaker(s): Richard Rush

A fugitive stumbles onto a movie set just when they need a new stunt man, takes the job as a way to hide out and falls for the leading lady while facing off with his manipulative director.

Citizen Crane There are quite a few movies like this, films that reference films and that also aver that the drama within can bend the reality without. The kernel of this idea was ‘Citizen Kane’ but it seemed to flower after John Fowles published ‘The Magus'...


Published May 22, 2022
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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
The man with the hat is back. And this time, he's bringing his Dad.
Filmmaker(s): Steven Spielberg

In 1938, an art collector appeals to eminent archaeologist Dr. Indiana Jones to embark on a search for the Holy Grail. Indy learns that a medieval historian has vanished while searching for it, and the missing man is his own father, Dr. Henry Jones Sr.. He sets out to rescue his father by following clues in the old man's notebook, which his father had mailed to him before he went missing. Indy arrives in Venice, where he enlists the help of a beautiful academic, Dr. Elsa Schneider, along with Marcus Brody and Sallah. Together they must stop the Nazis from recovering the power of eternal life and taking over the world!

The Penitent Man I had to come back to this, because I’m puzzled. I wonder what it is about Spielberg. It is easy to criticise his mawkish sentimentality and his theatrical sweeps. But I think it is more than that. After all, we happily tolerate that and...


Published May 21, 2022
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Destricted (2006)

A compilation of erotic films intended to illuminate the points where art meets sexuality.

Holy Most of the films in this collection are simply silly. One is at least artistic in the old, wan sense of visual oddity. There is one interesting one, though. Larry Clark’s “Impaled”. It is rather clever: young men seeking to get into the “business” are...


Published May 20, 2022
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Imagining Argentina (2003)
Filmmaker(s): Christopher Hampton

Set during the unsettling disappearances in Buenos Aires during the dictatorship of the 1970s, the film involves theater director Carlos Rueda and his wife Cecilia. Shortly after Cecilia writes an editorial commentary questioning the mysterious abductions, she is herself abducted and taken into police custody.

Until the Next Time I am pretty sure that it is not possible for someone other than an Argentine to make a film about this subject and have it matter. These are people who at the beginning of the terror supported it wholeheartedly. The military simply...


Published May 20, 2022
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