WHY I LOVE MOVIE STILLS
I bought my first vintage 8×10 photo at a used bookstore in Hackensack, New Jersey when I was 13 years old. It cost 25 cents, which was just what I could afford. I’ve continued buying stills ever since, carefully…
OKJA: GO AWAY, PIGGY
Okja is one of the strangest movies of this or any year in recent memory. You may have read about its high-profile debut at the Cannes Film Festival. I can’t imagine what audiences there made of this strange hybrid of…
MISSING MOVIE REVIEWS
If you follow my posts, you know that my family and I will be attending the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic for the next two weeks. That means I’m not in Los Angeles to screen…
NEW AND NOTABLE FILM BOOKS: JUNE 2017
A GATHERING OF GUNS: A HALF CENTURY HISTORY OF TV WESTERNS (1949-2001) by Boyd Magers; forewords by James Drury, Robert Fuller, Clint Walker, Henry Darrow, Don Collier, and Will Hutchins (Western Clippings) For years I’ve been a faithful…
THE BIG SICK
I don’t know how someone puts his life story on film, playing himself without a trace of self-consciousness…yet that’s what comedian and actor Kumail Nanjiani has done in this disarming film, which he and his wife Emily V. Gordon wrote…
SCORE: A FILM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY
Score is the result of many years’ effort. Matt Schrader has been building a library of conversations with film composers, which he has compiled in a book and a two-disc DVD set. I find it remarkable that from this mountain…
‘BEATRIZ AT DINNER’ OFFERS FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Disarming in its simplicity, Beatriz at Dinner establishes a believable premise for a dinner party where things go terribly wrong. It’s a tribute to writer Mike White, director Miguel Arteta and their superior cast that this allegorical story never jumps the…
