The American Spirit One of the strongest influences in how a society imagines itself is film, and of films the strongest are where the characters are most abstract. Abstraction can be through cartoons or cartoonizing, stereotyping or extreme dramatizing. But the most elegant to my mind is when everyday creatures or objects become the character.… Continue reading Bingo (1991)
Tag: f1991
Films released in 1991
Bedhead (1991)
Good kids You know what is really fun? Choose a director you like, then trace the ideas you like about him back through two paths: the films by others that surely influenced him, and also back through his own earlier work. I like Rodriguez. I do. I like the risks he takes, his proclivity to… Continue reading Bedhead (1991)
Barton Fink (1991)
I’ll Show You the World of the Mind Any Coen film is worth traveling to see. All of them are enterprises about the enterprise of film-making or writing, but you never know what little side voyage we’re going on, what creases of creation we’re exploring. In this case, instead of playing with a genre, they… Continue reading Barton Fink (1991)
At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991)
Multiple Stadia Sometimes I would rather have an ambitious project that fails rather than something simple that succeeds. But that is not the same as comparing something incoherent to careful focus. This project tries too much, has too much narrative, opens too many levels and integrates poorly among them. There is a case to me… Continue reading At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991)
Flirting (1991)
A Caning for Love Heavens be thanked for how Australians and New Zealanders have revived the acting element of film. Everything in the country seems set up to produce performing artists, even talent writers that understand acting, where Brazil produces soccer players and the US lawyers. Here you have three your actresses in essentially their… Continue reading Flirting (1991)
Impromptu (1991)
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 wrote when he was with Sands are a touchstone… Continue reading Impromptu (1991)
JFK (1991)
Conspiracy of the Simple I have my own theory about film. There is always an explicit acknowledgement that what you are seeing is a film, distinct from reality. Many films incorporate that recognition into their being; the simple ones are just films about films and filmmaking, but there are other sophisticated ways of self-reference. It… Continue reading JFK (1991)