There’s a question the billionaire investor Peter Thiel says he likes to ask candidates in job interviews: What’s something you think is true, but that very few people agree with you about? When thinking about this question, my answer is always the same, and it’s probably not one that’s going to land me a managing directorship at Founders Fund anytime soon: The 1984 David Lynch adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune is actually a good movie.
Or at least, it’s not…
The Safdie Brothers’ eye for detail about all things NYC-culture related, especially re: the outer boroughs and suburbs, continues to amaze me. Their previous film, Good Time, contained the best on-screen portrayal of a certain kind of Long Island trash criminal and the best location uses of NYC/LI in years. Only long after seeing it did I read about how the actor who played the role in question was in fact a Queens-born criminal, and sadly continued to go in…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
One of my favorite directors of all time is Peter Weir, an Australian who's best known in the U.S. for the films Dead Poets Society and The Truman Show. Weir's what I'd call a "mystical materialist," a guy after my own heart. The most powerful moments in his films are when the protagonists confront some sort of primordial abyss/eternity. In Dead Poets Society, it's Robert Sean Leonard contemplating suicide. In his first film, Picnic at Hanging Rock, it's the moments…
With The Irishman, Martin Scorsese breathes new life into a formula that had become stale.
Several months ago, Scorsese made headlines for confessing he didn’t believe Marvel movies were cinema, likening them to theme-park rides instead. In the weeks of controversy that followed, he penned an eloquent op-ed for the New York Times elaborating on his point of view. “For the filmmakers I came to love and respect . . . cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual…
