If "The Room" did not exist, film critics would have to invent it.
In a certain sense, they already have. Every time someone is discussing film, justifying their star rating system or whatever, they invariably invoke the concept of the "technically incompetent" film. But this idea is just a specter, a Platonic ideal. Of all the films that exist, only a vanishingly small fraction of them could ever be considered to be technically incompetent. Technically incompetent films simply cannot be…
Not the film I expected it to be, but not exactly a pleasant surprise for me, either. Colloquially, we've come to use the term "Rashomon" as a byword for the fallibility of memory, and how different people's recountings of the same events vary innocently. But the film isn't about misremembering; it's about lying.
"Rashomon" is deeply concerned with the maliciousness, or perhaps even outright evil, represented by people who lie on purpose. And yet, the whole thesis of the film…
Detractors of Wes Anderson have said a lot of nasty things about him. But one thing you can't say, at this point, is that the man is not self-aware. We no longer live under the old paradigm of celebrity, where the people in the pictures were untouchable and godlike, spoken of in hushed whispers like "Asteroid City"'s fictional star, Midge Campbell. We live in a world where people go on the Internet, and yell directly at celebrities. Anderson knows exactly…
Lately, there's been a trend to say that many business meetings could've been e-mails; here is a film which could have been a painting. It's a well-established and perhaps even tired criticism of this film to say that despite the arresting and powerful beauty of its Martian set pieces and costume designs, they are a disappointingly small part of the entire story--despite the outsized role they play on every cover, poster, or other advertisement for it. Most of the movie…
