The Movies of 2014: The Year of Seeing Fewer Movies
As I keep saying, partly to remind myself to go back to working on it, 2014 is the year I finish the progressive rock history that I’ve wanted to write since I was 20 or so. And 2013 was the year I...
View ArticleMessages in a Bottle
Locke (Stephen Knight, 2014) Not quite sure what all the fuss is about. Locke is a “bottle” movie, set almost entirely inside the car of the eponymous Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy), as he drives from...
View ArticleLovesick Teenagers
The Fault in Our Stars (Josh Boone, 2014) Hollywood’s romance with Young Adult novels, which have remained plot-focused while the grown-up kinds have gotten more abstruse, produced this faithful...
View ArticleApocalypse Pretty Soon
Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014) If you have not yet seen Ken Burns’s documentary about the Dust Bowl, then go, do. It’s a little shy of four hours long, but all of those hours are on Netflix,...
View Article2014: The First Annual Only Culture Awards That Matter
This year, like every year, I consumed a bunch of #content. Less than usual, and far fewer books than usual, as I have trouble committing to a long read when I’m finishing up my own. I saw roughly half...
View ArticleInk-Stained Wretches
Truth (James Vanderbilt, 2015) and Spotlight (Tom McCarthy, 2015) As I finish my book about the progressive rock movement — or, more to the point, as I procrastinate by spending 20 minutes writing...
View ArticleGhostbusters (2016)
The first “Ghostbusters” was a formative movie experience for me, but not a sacred one. I saw it on TV or VHS sometime before 1989, i.e. when I was 7 or 8 years old. (I know this because I saw the...
View ArticleLittle Furry Things
Zootopia (Howard/Moore/Bush, 2016) A terrifying and unrelenting vision of a world long after the apocalypse, where only mammals survived, and built their own civilization with all of the mistakes that...
View ArticleMovies of 2017
It was a busy year, for reasons no one on the Internet needs remembering. The version of me that could watch 75+ new movies in a year is gone, long gone. The version that actually was around for first...
View ArticleI am a Letterboxd boy now
Every year and every break-up — but I repeat myself — brings a new burst of pointless creativity. This year’s burst has been spent on Letterboxd, the handy film website that turns your experience into...
View Article