Category: movies
- Black Boys Looking BlueSouth to a Very Old Place, Stomping the Blues, The Blue Devils of Nada, From the Briarpatch File from Collected Essays & Memoirs by Albert Murray. The Library of America. 1049 pp. $45.00. Moonlight, a film by Barry Jenkins, with Mahershala Ali, Duan Sanderson, Naomie Harris. ***** I haven’t finished the last few pieces from Collected Essays ...Read more
- That Ain’t FunnyThe Hollars, a film by John Krasinski and James Strouse. With Margo Martindale, Sharlto Copley, Richard Jenkins, Anna Kendrick. * The phrase I use for my title is one my son often repeated when he was four and five years old. We had just moved to a working class Durham neighborhood that abutted a textile mill, ...Read more
- Glug GlugSully, a film by Clint Eastwood. With Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney. I’ve always thought of Clint Eastwood as the King of the Grade B movie. One sure sign of Grade B is prolonged footage of a car driving somewhere, and there was ample such footage in Play Misty for Me, the first movie he ...Read more
- Banks Robbing MenHell or High Water, a film by David MacKenzie, written by Taylor Sheridan. With Jeff Bridges, Gil Birmingham, Chris Pine, Ben Foster. ***** Sometimes people take a genre movie, which has elements that many movies have, and take it to a whole new level. Sometimes that movie is overlooked for that very reason. Hell or High ...Read more
- Equal Rights to Live in HellEquity a film by Meena Menon and Amy Fox. With Anna Gunn, James Purefoy, Sarah Megan Thomas, Alysia Reiner.****1/2 This is the best movie about Wall Street I’ve ever seen. It’s probably the first one I ever understood. That doesn’t have to do with the fact that it’s about women. It has to do with expert ...Read more
- Get Your Buns Over HereSausage Party, a film by Gret Tiernan and Conrad Vernon. With Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Edward Norton, and Salma Hayek. *** What a cast, right? Five Oscar nominees in one movie. Unfortunately, it’s an animated film about food products in the supermarket. The voices are great. But the cast doesn’t show its stuff. Apparently this ...Read more
- The Roaring FiftiesIndignation, a film by James Schamus. With Logan Lerman, Sarah Gadon, Tracy Letts, Linda Emond. Reviewed by David Guy. ****1/2 Indignation is a remarkable movie that completely stunned me and that I can’t recommend too highly. The problem is that it’s taken from a Philip Roth novel—even the title sounds rather Philip Roth—and as I describe ...Read more
- Captain FascisticCaptain Fantastic, a film by Matt Ross. With Viggo Mortensen, George MacKay, Frank Langella, Ann Dowd. ***1/2 The father figure in Captain Fantastic, a man named Ben (Viggo Mortensen), reminds me of a teacher and coach I had in secondary school. He was an extremely difficult but fair teacher, who got the most out of us ...Read more
- Angry Men and Wild Women12 Angry Men a film by Sydney Lumet. With Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam. ***** Ghostbusters a film by Paul Feig. With Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones. **** Last spring my wife and I saw By Sydney Lumet at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, and set about watching the work of ...Read more
- Two in the BushHunt for the Wilderpeople a film by Taika Waititi. With Sam Neill, Julian Dennison, Rima Te Wiata Why should we watch yet another movie about a grouchy old white guy who takes up with a minority youth and teaches him how to survive in a difficult world? For one thing, the old white guy is Sam ...Read more
- He’s the Best Friend I’ve Ever Had. He Does Fart a Lot. He’s Also Dead.Swiss Army Man. A film by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. With Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe. People say this about movies all the time, but in this case I feel fully confident: you’ve never seen anything like Swiss Army Man. Hank (Paul Dano) has somehow gotten stranded on the proverbial desert island. He has all the ...Read more
- Mommy and I Are So Damn BrilliantThe Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt. New Directions. 484 pp. $18.95 I can’t remember when I’ve had such mixed feelings about a novel. There is an assumption behind this book that people with higher IQ’s, or people who have more knowledge, are superior individuals, who don’t have to deal with the rest of us. There is ...Read more
- The Story We NeedFree State of Jones a film by Gary Ross. With Matthew McConaughey, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Mahershala Ali There are major disputes about what actually happened in the events that make up Free State of Jones, but any story is just a story—it’s not reality—and we seem to get the stories we want, or that we need. This ...Read more
- No But I Saw the BookBrooklyn a novel by Colm Toibin. Scribner. 262 pp. $15.00 Even I, a person who loves reading above all other pleasures, who believes the novel is the Great Bright Book of Life, was thinking I didn’t need to go back and read Brooklyn because I’d seen the movie. I loved it, figured the book couldn’t add ...Read more
- In a PickleMaggie’s Plan a film by Rebecca Miller. With Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke, Julianne Moore. **** The first thing to be said about Maggie’s Plan is that it is a comedy. I don’t care what Rebecca Miller has done in the past and I don’t care how serious the conversation seems at the beginning of the movie. ...Read more
- Get the Water Boiling and Melt Some ButterThe Lobster A film by Yorgos Lanthimos. With Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Jessica Barden *1/2 The first thing I should mention is that, in the extremely progressive and liberal-minded community in which I watched this movie, Asheville, North Carolina, where people will do anything for entertainment—they’ll stop and watch a guy playing a kazoo on the street—fully ...Read more
- Jane Austen Meets MachiavelliLove & Friendship A film by Whit Stillman, with Kate Beckinsale, Chloe Sevigny, Xavier Samuel, Tom Bennett. ****1/2 Love & Friendship centers on a single character—Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale)—and she controls the action the way a great conductor directs an orchestra. She is not only in almost every scene but is the focus of those ...Read more
- Beyond BeliefDon’t Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan’s Greatest Zen Master By Brad Warner. New World Library. 306 pp. $16.95. [This is the sixth in a series on Dogen’s Zen, inspired by Brad Warner’s new book paraphrasing fascicles of the Shobogenzo. This series has got to end sometime but hasn’t ended yet. Earlier ...Read more
- Stop Me Before I See More Movies!Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2016 Thursday The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith *** Forever, Chinatown **1/2 The 100 Years Show **** The Many Sad Faces of Mr. Toledano **** By Sydney Lumet ***1/2 Weiner **1/2 Friday The Black Belt *** Trapped **** Dancing for You ***** Dixieland ** Tarikat ***** Horizons **** Two Trains Runnin’ **** Saturday Following Seas ***** Life, Animated **** Raising Bertie ** Hours spent standing in line, sometimes ...Read more
- The Texture of Every DayJim Harrison 1937-2016 I’ve been haunted this week by the death of Jim Harrison, whom I’ve described for years as my favorite living writer and whose books I bought as soon as they came out, without reading a review or glancing through them. Only once did he let me down. I’ve wondered specifically if The Ancient ...Read more
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All Shook UpWhat's in a Song? IIWriting for his LifeWhat’s in a Song?Mixed Feelings
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (127)American literature (226)art (123)Buddhism (171)Christianity (132)creative process (262)death and dying (144)meditation (125)movies (167)music (42)race (110)religion (196)sex (187)spirituality (174)the art of narrative (266)Uncategorized (21)world literature (23)