January 2012
2 posts
Achievements of 2011
Awards seem more and more silly every year. This year, I’m thinking of skipping the Oscars and maybe watching the Independent Spirit Awards instead (though I don’t agree with all of their nominations either). That being said, recognition for outstanding artistry always seems appropriate and satisfying, if not mandatory. Here are my choices, in approximate order. Pictured are my clear...
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Best of 2011
1
Beginners Mike Mills
Like an ee cummings poem, Beginners is a beautifully unique and small film about life and love and everything and the world turning in your mind like memories that hold you tight, softly and like heavy air. It’s a perfect movie to see alone or with someone dear, a tender movie to fall in love with and savor. The actors feel like perfectly flawed people you...
September 2011
3 posts
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Drive
It’s hard keeping up with Ryan Gosling these days. He’s everywhere. He was amazing in Half Nelson, and amazing again years later in Blue Valentine. Both great films. Now he’s in every movie, and I can’t exactly tell what sort of career he’s creating (besides an obviously successful one) and which of his films are meant to be interesting. Sometimes it’s best to...
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Contagion
There’s a lot of blue and grey and yellow in Contagion. The film depicts a realistically disastrous present, full of cold science and cold shoulders. People are sad; angry too, but not in a red way - more of a resigned, wintery way. Blue. There are multiple perspectives, a multitude of realities at work, networked together like a mapping of our globalized modernity. Doctors rush to...
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Our Idiot Brother
Our Idiot Brother is a great little indie film masquerading as a big-budget, mediocre summer comedy. It’s the portrait of a care-free man, who, when put upon, holds a mirror up to our collective anxieties, here embodied by lovely actors who charm and delight throughout the well-structured narrative. I laughed; I cried. I loved it.
I expected it to be a lot clunkier and stilted than it is,...
August 2011
1 post
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The Future
Miranda July is an awesome, talented and interesting person that makes art and films about being rather ordinary. Her characters (in The Future, and in her amazing debut feature Me, You and Everyone We Know (2005)) are mopey hipster slacker types that might have her creative eccentricity, but certainly not her drive. I’m at odds while watching The Future, knowing that Miranda July herself...
July 2011
1 post
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Beginners
Beginners is movie about love, about emotions, about understanding and about becoming yourself. It’s a film about the passage of time, of life happening to you, through you, of you.
Beginners is a film of sweet and aching beauty, of sincere and humble vision and small, soft wonder, in which a despondent man is brought to life through his father’s lesson of living, and...
June 2011
3 posts
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The Hangover Part II
The Hangover (2009) is one of those films that totally nails it. It’s a blast. It has a cast that, at the time, was under the radar. Bradley Cooper, billed 14th in his best film role always and forever - Wet Hot American Summer (2001), was the lead. The only other big films he had starred in were Wedding Crashers (2005) and He’s Just Not That Into You (2009), and he certainly...
1 tag
The Trip
This fucking guy. Steve Coogan is a real piece of work. He’s unabashedly self-entitled and pompous, and downright hilarious to watch. The Trip is a brilliant film by Michael Winterbottom about a guy named Steve Coogan on a road trip with fellow actor Rob Brydon. They both play themselves, or at least, versions of themselves. Steve plays the egocentric, sullen, self-conscious artist type,...
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Midnight in Paris
Have you been to Paris? Oh, you’ve got to go. Ernest Hemmingway and Scott Fitzgerald are there, as are Pablo Picasso and his beautiful muse Adriana. They show up in your dreams, or hallucinations if you prefer, of a more perfect time in history, when art was more glamorous, romance more celebrated, life more lived. Gertrude Stein might go over your latest manuscript. Salvador Dali, Man Ray...
May 2011
4 posts
1 tag
The Tree of Life
In a Q&A with David Gordon Green, director of George Washington, All The Real Girls and Your Highness, I asked him to speak to the relationship between his earlier, quiet, contemplative films and his recent stoner comedies. Do we really need more Terrence Malick-type films? That was basically his response. Of course, the answer is yes. For me, a Terrence Malick film is a sort of dreaming, of...
1 tag
Bridesmaids
It’s just so great to see comedic genius being given a chance to shine. It doesn’t feel like it happens that often. Recently, it’s happened for Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover, and Rob Corddray in Hot Tub Time Machine. It’s happening for Louie CK on his FX show “Louie”. It happened for Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld on their show(s) (though sometimes Larry...
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Everything Must Go
Good title, but generic. Decent movie, but forgettable. Lots of very good photography, but it doesn’t look as good in my mind when recollecting it. The story is an interesting one, on paper anyway: man loses job, loses wife, loses house. She puts his stuff out on the lawn. (What a bitch.) What does he do? Drinks, mostly. Then slowly picks up the pieces, duh.
Will Ferrell is a brilliant...
1 tag
Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D
The Chauvet cave of Southern France is a natural wonder that was completely sealed off even oxygen for tens of thousands of years, until 1994, when some explorers re-discovered it, and the paintings inside that date back to the Paleolithic era. These paintings are the oldest known forms art we have. As such, the cave itself is safeguarded like a vault. Werner Herzog was granted unprecedented...
April 2011
4 posts
1 tag
Win Win
Win Win is a fine movie I guess, if you love television. Sort of dull, about a pretty dull struggling lawyer, surrounded by others struggling even more, who lean on him like he was a savior. He’s a decent guy, and everyone basically is, and life is struggle but we’re in it together and there are some good things to it, and little moments to cherish. This is what Win Win feels like....
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Your Highness
David Gordon Green and Danny McBride attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts together, where they would get high, come up with funny titles to would-be movies, then write treatments for such movies based on the title. Such is the genesis story of Your Highness - the tale of a stoner prince who reluctantly goes on a typical medieval adventure. It’s a fun, silly, rather...
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Certified Copy
Is a copy as good as an original? What are the actual differences? In the age of mechanical reproduction, it’s often impossible to even identify authenticity, let alone determine superiority. The camera has forever altered our cultural perspective on this subject: with film, infinite prints can be made from a single negative, and yet that negative cannot exactly be called an original,...
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Bill Cunningham New York
What have you ever done with your life? Bill Cunningham bears the distinction as the most important man in the world (as one particular fashionista puts it). Meanwhile, he’s never had a romantic relationship, or any sort of balance to a life committed to taking photographs of pedestrians. I find myself oscillating between envy and pity while watching the bio pic Bill Cunningham New York....
March 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Limitless
This is a limited movie with a limitless premise, and epically disappointing, considering how remarkably pedestrian it is to have the main character make a bunch of money on Wall Street once he taps into his full potential, as if that’s the most interesting or important thing one could do. I’m particularly offended that such an ambition is the will of a creative type - a writer...
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Battle: Los Angeles
Independence Day, Cloverfield and District 9, in various measures, did their part to contribute to the rich space-invasion science-fiction genre. Battle: Los Angeles recycles all of them, while adding nothing except running time. This is a forgettable waste of a film that squanders its special effects on underachieving apocalyptic set pieces. Even when in the mood for mindless entertainment,...
February 2011
3 posts
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On the 2011 Academy Awards
I went to see The King’s Speech on Chistmas Day - the height of awards season at the movies - with my parents and brother and great-aunt. I found it to be a great movie in that context: the emotional and psychological study of an interesting character trait, the overcoming of a flaw for the betterment of one’s self and the whole country, an uplifting quasi-heady crowd-pleaser for all...
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Exit through the Gift Shop
POINT-COUNTERPOINT WITH ROB KINNEY
Rob’s Point:
This is the most self-serving movie I have ever seen, which is saying a lot. The famous street artist/director Banksy casts himself as artist, pied-piper, enigma, mastermind and cultural force while he casts his “friend” Thierry as the obsessive, no-talent, parasite who dupes the art world (with the help of Banksy, of course). ...
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Rob Kinney's Third Annual Best Movies of the Year...
With 2010 wrapping up and the Oscar nominations recently announced, the time has again arrived for my annual review. So lets get right into it.
#5 - True Grit
I know what some of you may be saying: “Rob, you didn’t even see True Grit. How can it be your 5th favorite movie of 2010?” And I would answer by saying “you obviously did not read my review of the best movies of...
January 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Toy Story 3
Immigration policy is a big deal. Controversy regarding various people inside and outside the United States seems to have been sewn into our constitution, as slaves from East Africa helped build colonial wealth on land taken from Native Americans, while people from all the world over flocked to the USA’s ideals. But the Dutch and English established an immediate sense of superiority, thus...
20 tags
Best of 2010
Dogtooth
Fascinating, bizarre, beautiful and surreal Greek film about a family that exists entirely in its own world. Less about its strange narrative, which concerns the most extreme version of home-schooled children imaginable, than about human behavior and the human condition. Reinvents how to look at film. Perfect.
Somewhere
Moody, sexy, delicious auteur work from Sophia Copolla....
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Most Disappointing of 2010
Inception
Dreams, the unconscious, collective memory, tortured spirits: they make for such unbelievably rich and wonderful subject matter, and Inception does nothing with it. No sex, no surrealism, no fucking imagination. No significant issues brought up, not much to add to the dream dialogue (except the cliché maybe we’re dreaming right now!). Instead, a regressive and monotone...
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The 52 Films I Watched at the Cinema in 2010
Crazyheart (2009)
Precious (2009)
The White Ribbon (2009)
Youth in Revolt (2009)
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009)
The Crazies
The Ghost Writer
Un Prophete
Alice in Wonderland
Greenberg (seen twice)
Hot Tub Time Machine
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
God’s Comedy (1995)
Exit Through the Gift Shop (seen twice)
Iron Man 2
Breathless (1960)
Sex and the City 2
Cyrus
Winter’s...
December 2010
1 post
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The Fighter
It’s hard to say anything bad about The Fighter, but I will try. It takes place in Boston, the least interesting of all major American cities, and it centers around a feel-good comeback story about a fraternal pair of down-and-out lovable losers. It follows the typical arc of most stories told, with your typical ups and downs. I feel like I’ve seen it a thousand times before, and...
November 2010
1 post
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The Social Network
I’m watching this film and wondering how old Jesse Eisenberg is, because I don’t quite accept him as 20. He was born in 1983, one year before Mark Zuckerberg, whom he plays. Okay, I’m looking at a 27-year-old. It would have been nice if the filmmakers found an actual college-aged actor for this role, and for the entire cast. I’m okay with many of the liberties taken in...
March 2010
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The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
I don’t want to write this review because I don’t particularly enjoy heavy doses of negative criticism. Really. But I looked at movie listings today and this terrible, terrible film is still playing somehow, so I want to insist that everyone stay away from it. Terry Gilliam has made some good movies: Brazil (1985), Twelve Monkeys (1995) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). Not only...
January 2010
1 post
3 tags
Best of 2009
Where the Wild Things Are
Inglourious Basterds
Antichrist
Food, Inc.
The Girlfriend Experience
Rip! A Remix Manifesto
Broken Embraces
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Bright Star
Bluebeard
A Single Man
The Hangover
Funny People
A Serious Man
Untitled
Up
Up In the Air
The Invention of Lying
Capitalism: A Love Story
District 9
In the Loop
...
December 2009
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Avatar
A lot has been said for Avatar. People go on and on about its technical achievements, its budget, the 3D extravaganza, etc. I can’t say I’m convinced at all that it’s a good film. In fact, I found it boring and offensive, despite my predilections for visual beauty, peace, environmentalism and a new age consciousness of energy, all of which this movie supposedly espouses. This will be a downer of a...
September 2009
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Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino is a filmmaker. I stress this obvious point because I appreciate very much how evident his films - this one in particular - are made. The first thing that the audience of Inglourious Basterds sees is the company logo for Universal Pictures, all grainy and retro and lush. We are looking at film; we are looking specifically at an older version of the now-glossy, shiny logo that...
January 2009
1 post
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Best of 2008
Paranoid Park Van Sant’s other movie from this year was the fourth and most accessible in a brilliant run of fiercely indie contemplations on death (following Gerry, Elephant and Last Days). I simply adored it. Felt very much like a music video ode to youthful excitement and confusion without being a commercial for something. Nostalgia, poetry and meditative serenity rush from the screen...