Building better

August 25, 2003

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Water Lilies, 2007 - ★★★★
December 26, 2024
On the occasion of watching my last (to date) Sciamma feature, I will applaud the way she frames humans against larger elements. There’s a scene in here where two characters are walking near some sort of large sculpture or something and it just perfectly captures how small their problems are against the world. Which, really, […]
Dawn of the Dead, 1978 - ★★★★½
December 25, 2024
Savage and self-aware, from the racist cop in the tenement opener to Peter Washington (Ken Foree) repeatedly explaining that it’s the zombies who are mindlessly drawn to the mall “because it was an important place to them.” He’s correct, he just won’t turn that clear insight onto himself. His performance was pretty good, on the whole. […]
One, Two, Three, 1961 - ★★★★½
December 24, 2024
I’m grouchily having a head cold for Christmas so I can’t promise I registered every staccato beat of yet another Billy Wilder masterpiece and even so, wow. Cagney was verbosely magnificent. About halfway through I thought well, there’s been a lot, we must be close to the climax. Nah: there was an hour left and there […]
Carry-On, 2024 - ★★½
December 22, 2024
Scripts that depend on precision planning should be precise. This was not; there’s too much concidence and too many plot holes for my taste. And the car fight would have been fun if it hadn’t been so CGI, which kills plausibility.On the redemptive side, it’s fun having action scenes in the back corridors of an […]
Seven Days in May, 1964 - ★★★★
December 22, 2024
I swear Aaron Sorkin has spent his entire career trying to make this movie. He’s not Rod Serling, though, and he’s sure not as capable a director as Frankenheimer. This is close to as good as it gets for classical liberal spirit.(Seriously, though… President Lyman? Probably the West Wing character’s name is just a coincidence.)This […]