FIrst Rule of Movie Club is: you don't talk about Movie Club. But you do share, because sharing is caring.
Knives Out has rekindled the public's love for Cinematic Whodunnits that blend mystery and comedy, recalling Clue (if you remember the 80's) and the comedy masterpiece Murder by Death (if you remember the 70's.) But before all of those fun movies came Joseph L. Mankiewicz's final film, a 1972 mystery based on a play starring … Continue reading Sleuth
Way back, when I was a wee lad, I watched a movie on TV about a crazy old man who dies, and leaves his inheritance to his four greedy relatives on the condition that they spend a month doing the one thing each of them hates or fears the most. Much hilarity ensued, at least … Continue reading Some Will, Some Won’t
Hermann Hesse's novels are like nothing else ever written: desperate, hungry attempts at getting right into the core of our existence, piercing through all the superficial B.S. that is society, shining a light right through the artifice in order to get at the reality that is being human, for all it's worth. As you can … Continue reading Steppenwolf
More than almost every other artistic medium, movies are eternally trapped within the era they were made. Despite being from a long time ago in a galaxy far away, Star Wars is clearly from the 1970's, Toy Story from the 1990's, and The Wizard of Oz from the 1930's. It's not just the technical qualities … Continue reading An Unmarried Woman
Anchorites are people who withdraw from society for spiritual reasons, choosing to live hermit-like lives of solitude in their ascetic pursuit of whatever it is they are searching for. What makes them anchorites, however, is their commitment to living, 24-7-365, in the same small space, never leaving, never giving in to the temptations of the … Continue reading El Anacoreta
Robert Altman developed a unique, instantly recognizable style that no one has ever come close to imitating well, with his enormous ensemble casts, consciously sloppy camera work and fly-on-the-wall sound design. Sometimes, that organized chaos ends up in a mess of a film Altman himself can't save, like Prêt-à-Porter, and sometimes it ends up as … Continue reading A Wedding
Some movies are wonderful. Others are terrible. And then there are those that fall under the category of "fascinating artifacts" - films whose value is primarily historical or cultural. Richard Brooks' Looking for Mr. Goodbar is pretty much that, but what a specimen. Sometimes it's a corny 70's movie with groan-inducing stereotypes: the hard-ass, overbearing … Continue reading Looking for Mr. Goodbar
I hate musicals. At least, as a general rule, I hate musicals for the obvious reasons that one should- they're silly, trite, melodramatic, offering all fluff and no substance. That mantra held true for a long while until I finally watched Bob Fosse's classic, All That Jazz, which uses the musical form to discuss the … Continue reading All That Jazz
Looking for a sci-fi epic with insane special effects? Then look no further, friend- step right this way to a little known Czech film from 1970, Na Kometě, which blows anything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe out of the water. It's hard to know where to start with this masterpiece by the great Karel Zeman. … Continue reading Na Kometě (On the Comet)
Quentin Crisp may have been somewhat forgotten in today's mainstream culture, even though a lot of mainstream culture owes its current shape to him. An unabashedly and flamboyantly gay man living in an era (starting with the 1920's) and a place (England) where such an orientation was not only unaccepted, but expected to be kept … Continue reading The Naked Civil Servant
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