Reviews BABY DRIVER. Writer/director Edgar Wright — like Tarantino before him and Scorsese before him — has managed to make a successful career of being a tremendous movie nerd. Unashamed of his influences and unafraid to reveal them (Hot Fuzz, 2007 being a particularly pointed example), Wright synthesizes those myriad influences into colorful, comic creations […]
The Miniplex
Posted inArts + Scene
Boom
Reviews What makes a movie “American”? Is it patriotic or critical? Is it about identity, individualism, team spirit or oppression? Is it set in the Wild West or a modern metropolis? Does it even have to be made by an American? This is a big question and maybe even more subjective than whether a movie […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Girl Trouble
Reviews 47 METERS DOWN. I may have let out an audible groan when the title screen appeared: Johannes Roberts’ 47 Meters Down. If you’ve heard of Johannes Roberts, then you probably have a subscription to Fangoria, and I’m the asshole. While the director has more than a dozen credits to his name, there wasn’t a […]
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House of Horrors
Reviews IT COMES AT NIGHT. As the recent tidal wave of smaller, independent horror movies seems to have receded a bit, we have the opportunity to consider their merits and shortcomings. As I’ve remarked (probably too many times) before, there were within that group a few very pleasant surprises. As with anything of value, though, […]
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Who Run the World?
Reviews WONDER WOMAN. As much as we shouldn’t have to be talking about gender or gender inequality anymore, recent events support the notion that we do. Plodding progress continues to be made but the threat of a systemic course reversal looms. As we plunge blindly into the middle of the 21st century, humanity ought to […]
Posted inMusic
Kicking Off Summer
Thursday Electric-acoustic “mayhem” are on the bill this evening at the Mad River Brewery Tap room in Blue Lake at 6 p.m. Returning to the outdoor stage is Kaptain Kirk’s Kosmic Koncoction, which will be jamming the eclectic tunes free of charge. Three hours later, David Dondero — whom NPR hailed as one of “the […]
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Swim at Your Own Risk
Reviews BAYWATCH. Who, really, is to blame when something terrible like this happens? And I say “to blame” rather than “responsible” because there are a great number of responsible parties, from grips to craft services, who share in the responsibility of bringing a movie to the screen. And despite their pivotal role in the collaborative […]
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I’m With Her
Reviews ALIEN: COVENANT. I saw Ridley Scott’s ground-breaking Alien (1979) too young and imprinted on its visceral sci-fi horror like a duckling. Artist H.R. Giger, whose work calls to mind an Art Nouveau death cult, designed a beast that finally frightened us more than humans. Its oil-slick, black, eyeless bullet of a head, with its […]
Posted inMusic
Entertained to Death
Technology giveth, and technology taketh away. I’ve been pondering this thought for a while now. I won’t claim to be a fully out-of-the-closet Luddite, but compared to many — my children especially — I am far more wary of the trade off between what we get from technology and what we give to technology. Specifically, […]
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Throwaway Throwbacks
Reviews SNATCHED. When Amy Schumer, building on the success both of her stand-up comedy and subversive, hilarious TV show Inside Amy Schumer, made her first foray into the Hollywood mainstream, she did it like a cagey pro. Teaming with director Judd Apatow, starring and working from her own screenplay, she came out with Trainwreck (2015). […]
Posted inMusic
About Bob
My freshman year in high school, I’d hitch rides to school with my friend Cameron and his mother. Cameron and I would groggily listen to cassettes his older brother gave him: Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan. We listened to Dylan from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan up to Blood On the Tracks and anything […]
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Family Messes
Reviews THE DINNER. Elliptical awkwardness isn’t everybody’s thing and that’s understandable. In real life, it’s almost nobody’s thing, and those who enjoy it are challenging to be around, to say the least. But cinematically, a sort of rootless discomfiture can go a long way toward establishing tone, serving story and locating characters in context. Such […]