4 May
In this episode, Tyler and Josh discuss James Gray’s The Lost City of Z and Barry Levinson’s Bugsy.
EPISODE BREAKDOWN
00:00:50- Intro, International Christian Film Fest, Worth Watching, A Fish Called Wanda, Thimblerig’s Ark
00:03:30- The Lost City of Z
00:54:00- Bugsy
01:25:00- Episode wrap-up
2 May
I was not a big fan of the first Guardians of the Galaxy. While many people praised its offbeat tone and crazy characters, the whole thing seemed surprisingly conventional to me, especially when one considers director James Gunn’s previous work. The film certainly had the distinction of changing the way superhero movies would be marketed, using classic rock and witty banter to show that these films could have a sense of humor about themselves, but that hardly redeems it (in fact, it might actually condemn it all the more). So, as I walked into Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2, I was trepidatious. It seemed to me that Marvel would have a hard time not doubling down on the successful elements of the first film and simply serving up more of the same. Thankfully, the studio seemed to see the success of the first film as license to allow James Gunn to cut loose and tell a truly unique story, realized with some genuinely gorgeous visuals and several exciting action (and comedy) sequences.
1 May
I’ve usually found that, when it comes to the kind of comedies I enjoy, most fall into one of two categories. Some are well-constructed with strong characters and give me some solid chuckles throughout. Others make laughs their biggest priority and are only concerned with things like characters and story to a minimal extent. Just enough to have something to hang those laughs on. A Fish Called Wanda is that rare and wonderful movie that is the best of both worlds. It is brilliantly constructed, filled with richly drawn characters, and it is also laugh out loud funny the whole way through.
26 Apr
Wes Anderson’s films are often most memorable for the little moments. He can find the humor and the sadness in the smallest gestures and inflections. His detractors feel that his films tend to be too crafted and controlled. That he gets too caught up in set and costume design and loses focus on characters. While I feel that some of his films (this one, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel) are more effective than others (The Darjeeling Limited, Moonrise Kingdom), all eight of his features have ranged from pretty good to exceptional. A lot of little things add up in all of them. Still, 17 years after I first saw it (just weeks after I graduated high school), Rushmore stands as my favorite.
25 Apr
Horror films of the 30s and 40s are so iconically branded by the films of Universal Studios that it can be easy to forget other studios were also capitalizing on surge of box office interest in horror features.
One such potentially-forgotten classic – distributed by the lower-ranking Majestic Pictures – is The Vampire Bat from 1933, directed by Frank Strayer and starring Lionel Atwill, Melvyn Douglas, Fay Wray and the legendary Dwight Frye. The film is, by all possible standards, a cash grab, having been rushed from concept to production in little more than a month. Leasing sets from the Universal backlot, The Vampire Bat looks and feels almost as good as any Universal picture, even if doesn’t quite measure up to those standards of narrative quality.
25 Apr
24 Apr
As anyone who watches a lot of movies can attest, many of them feel like variations on movies we’ve seen several times before. I doubt anyone could say that about Colossal. It’s no wonder that the marketing for the movie sold it as more of a comedy than it really is. When the premise involves a woman realizing that her actions when standing in a certain place at a certain time of day (thank you, Dr. Jones) conjure up an enormous Godzilla-like creature in Seoul, South Korea, it’s hard to know how to sell that as a drama about the destructive nature of alcoholism.
22 Apr
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?…”
This portion of Robert Browning’s poem, “Andrea del Sarto,” directly referenced in the final moments of The Lost City of Z, sums up both the film’s form and its function. For it is James Gray, directing with his usual grace and manners, that leads us by the hand for two and a half hours, imploring us to reach for the ineffable each time Percival Fawcett, the title character upon whose real story this movie is based, does. Like Fawcett, the reach for heaven ultimately fails, but in the way Samuel Beckett (“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”) would approve. It’s the sort of failure one can expect to learn much from.
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