Everybody has said so much about Stop Making Sense at this point that I don't how much I can add. The filmmaking, the music is obviously incredible. Instead, I'll use this an excuse to talk about David Byrne. Specifically, as someone who, like Byrne, is on the spectrum.
I've liked the music of Talking Heads for a long time, but when I found out that Byrne had come out in 2012 as having high-functioning autism (originally labeled "Aspergers" but not…
Probably my favorite Ridley Scott movie that I've seen?
Between this and Excalibur, I think the best depictions of fantasy in film are the ones with fanatic, possessed devotion to the rigid classical structure of their original texts. Freak perfectionism that takes the transgressive undertones of these original works to their extreme by technically being intensely faithful representations of generational folklore. I actually think the biggest issue with Robert Eggers trying to bring this genre back is that he isn't…
I kind of adore this high school riff on After Hours with its demented filmmaking choices (including a Tangerine Dream score) where none of the school alumni is identifiable outside of Philip Baker Hall, Jeffrey Tambor, and the villain from Kindergarten Cop.
“I would be a better emissary than Kissinger.”
- Dizzy Gillespie
I'm only streaming one film from Sundance online this year because every ticket is absurdly expensive. I went with the one that seemed the most up my alley, and luckily I chose right because this really blew me away.
The experience of watching Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat helped me realize the extent of the problems I had with another recent historical epic: Ava DuVernay's Origin. Both films involve…
It’s so clever in retrospect to create a story about a priest lost in a world that is both archaic and on the cusp of being modernized, and have him obsessed with photography; a (at the time new) process in its own way capable of granting its recipients eternal life.
Godland is cold and unsettling in a way I found totally enamoring. The cinematography presents these huge natural settings and spaces with this distance and precision that mimics the feeling…
