Writer for Turner Classic Movies. Ex Daily Show/Colbert Report. Bring on the weird ones.
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The Adventures of Marco Polo 1938
Sometimes enjoyable, always ludicrous adventure movie. Gary Cooper is horribly miscast but typically stiff as an Italian stallion charming a parade of Hollywood actresses in yellowface with severely tweezed eyebrows. They can't help but make goo-goo eyes at the handsome explorer. Reminds me more of a Sinbad movie than anything (although don't mistake that for an endorsement because it’s nowhere as enjoyable as any Sinbad movie I’ve seen.)
Watched via Kanopy
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Friendly Persuasion 1956
I guess this is what passed for Oscar bait in the 1950s, an overlong, glacially-paced look at Quaker life with some gentle humor and watered-down tension that makes an episode of "Little House on the Prairie" feel like "The Sopranos." It's fitting Pat Boone croaks out the theme.
Watched via YouTube rental
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David Byrne's American Utopia 2020
Enjoyable repurposing of Talking Heads and Byrne solo music that offers up some political commentary that feels both hopeful and sad for a film made prior to the 2020 election and finally viewed by me in 2025. Sort of a broad theme/idea trying to tie it all together, but a lot of the Talking Heads songs are not really recontexualized and kind of just saying the same things they’d said 40 years earlier. Spike Lee does a pretty good job of letting the action play out while making it visually interesting, outside of a half-dozen shots with awkward zooms.
Watching streaming on Max.
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