Birth (2004)

Operatic There’s a scene in this that will be a feature of film school classes for a long time to come. Nicole is an uneven actress, only sometimes rising to the world class of Kate and Cate and the young Julianne. The smallest part of this is the process of inhabiting a character, rare enough… Continue reading Birth (2004)

Billy’s Balloon (1998)

Inflated This is a replacement comment. The original bothered a diligent reader, so I have made some expansion. Animation is like any film type: artists ally to certain philosophies, perhaps without realising it. In the case of animation, it bumps up against that great American invention, noir. That’s the notion that there is a world… Continue reading Billy’s Balloon (1998)

Bewitched (2005)

Tricky Folded narrative is all the rage among Hollywood writers now. And the Ephrons are hip, so they go along and here we have a simply folded story. Simple folding, the kind anyone can do, is based on the simple device of a show within the show, and then some simple tricks to blend the… Continue reading Bewitched (2005)

Being Julia (2004)

Unaware This is a well made movie. Such things are rare, and when they come around, we celebrate them. Many extend this celebration to Bening, who is similarly competent. But something is ajar. The project is based on a familiar device: we see a film (really a play) which has a character who is an… Continue reading Being Julia (2004)

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

Shoot Me When I’m Dead John Hughes. What a sad case: is it drugs? He started his career with huge promise: he made films that showed he knew how to dramatise the teenage world without using teenage bluntness. These were sensitive little things that impressed not by what they were but by how gently they… Continue reading National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

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)

Alicia (1994)

Stillborn This is purely personal, but I have a few wickets through which a film must pass for me to willingly splice it into my imagination. I’m only talking here about films that present themselves as art. — It has to be competent, which for me can translates into the degree to which it exploits… Continue reading Alicia (1994)