More Than One Lesson

There’s a lot to love in Dustin Guy Defa’s 2017 drama, Person to Person. Immediately apparent becomes the film’s love for its space, its atmosphere, its characters. Like the very best of New York based filmmakers such as Woody Allen and Spike Lee, Defa sets a sophisticated-yet-somewhat-grimy filmic tone of concrete urbanism; a vibrant cinematic space cramped full of bustle and kinetic movement, all captured within considered framing and a vintage celluloid aesthetic, one keenly intent on reflective observation.

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More than 70 years after its conclusion, films set during World War II are still produced by the handful year after year. Some are good, some are not, but it’s not often even amongst the good ones that a World War II movie truly sets itself apart from a filmmaking perspective. Christopher Nolan however has been setting himself apart as a filmmaker for the better part of two decades. With Dunkirk he has made his first war movie and it is an astonishing feat. Even more than that, it may be his best film yet.

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Among the Living from directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julie Maury starts as what appears to be a coming-of-age nightmare, but takes a sharp left turn right around the last third. If you’ve read nearly anything by Stephen King, the premise of the film will feel familiar. Three boys from differing home lives decide to skip the last half of their last day of school to explore, rebel, and possibly get into a bit of mischief. They accomplish all three, unfortunately for them.

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In the very specific niche realm of horror documentary, there are few voices as compelling or effective as Rodney Ascher. His previous documentaries, Room 237 and (especially) The Nightmare were innovative and compelling examinations of not only what frightens us, but why it frightens us.

His directorial voice was therefore a natural for Shudder’s new original series (its first original content) called Primal Screen. The series focuses on the early and elemental encounters viewing audiences have with horror cinema and how those encounters can dramatically influence their most basic fears and – perhaps – the very direction of their lives.

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Edgar Wright’s excellent new film Baby Driver wastes no time pulling its audience in and sending us off on a thrilling ride. In one of the better scenes to open any movie in a very long time, we meet a young man named Baby (Ansel Elgort, The Fault in Our Stars) as he sits behind the wheel of a car outside of an Atlanta bank. While his associates (Jon Hamm, Eiza Gonzalez, and Jon Bernthal) are inside pulling off a heist Baby waits in the car with his headphones on listening to the pulse pounding rock anthem Bellbottoms by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. As the others pile back into the car the song serves as the soundtrack to his masterful getaway driving.

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“Chuck Norris vs Michael Myers”

It sounds at first like a fan film: the ultimate exercise in absurd alternate universes imaginings. But the difference here is that this film exists. It was made more than 30 years ago.

Directed by Michael Miller, Silent Rage could have housed exactly the tag line above. Because essentially the film combines the elements of schlocky 80s Chuck Norris action films with the horror stylistics perfected by John Carpenter in the first Halloween film.

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Whenever I see a top 10 list that has say… The Godfather at number 5 and The Godfather, Part II at 3 my face sort of involuntarily scrunches up. If they’re that close just put them together and free up a spot on your list. I also see this happen with Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back and there was no way I was going to have an entry for the original film immediately followed by one for Empire. For me they’re right on top of each other, so coming in at number 3 on my top 10 favorite movies list I give you a twofer.

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It is remarkably difficult to write about Sofia Coppola’s superb Southern Gothic film The Beguiled. How exactly does one lead off with a film like this? To talk about any particular element first is to suggest that this element is somehow more important than the others. But part of the brilliance of this film is how perfectly all of its elements fold together, feeding into each other, until the film is a seamless melding of narrative elegance, visual beauty, and thematic complexity. It is a deeply engaging film, and one that lingers in my mind like a morning fog.

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Of all the movies on my top ten favorites of all-time list I knew this would be the most difficult one to write about. Not because I have any less enthusiasm for it or anything less to say about it than the others, but because Network has been written about so thoroughly in the 41 years since it first arrived that it’s hard to find new things to say. We don’t need another article expounding upon how relevant the 1976 masterpiece is today. Seriously, just type “network 1976 relevant today” into Google and see what happens. Then after your computer has exploded go buy a new one and finish reading this article.

Instead of drawing parallels between the events of the film- which at the time were considered sensational and satirical- and the current landscape of television and online news, I’ll try to keep the focus on the movie itself.

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Before watching Tsunambee, the latest directorial effort by Milko Davis, I really wanted to enjoy it; above all, I was looking for the film not to take itself too seriously, hoping for a ridiculous but fun journey through the pleasures of cheaply made B-movie horror. During isolated moments, the film came so close to providing this; its set-up sounds like a terrifyingly camp dream I once had, and its advertising material feels appropriately exaggerated for such an extravagantly high-concept narrative. Yet the film, for the most part, fails to deliver on these promises, instead resorting to exposition dialogue in place of visual energy, and a half-baked faith narrative so awkwardly shoved-in that it almost becomes insulting.

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