The important takeaway from GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE, and, if one is being blunt, the only reason for it to exist, aside from those delightful miniature Stay-Puft marshmallow imps, is the delightful discovery that Kumail Nanjiani may very well be the cinematic heir of Bill Murray. Certainly, they are the only ones who consistently seem to… Read More »
THE DEAD DON’T DIE
THE DEAD DON’T DIE takes the tropes, idioms, and beloved foibles of low-budget zombie flicks and, with a skillful flick of its auteur’s cinematic wrist, recontextualizes them into a stylized gloss on the new normal of 2019. Certainly the “Make America White Again” ball cap sported by the most reviled citizen (Steve Buscemi) of sleepy… Read More »
ALOHA
ALOHA is a glorious, unkempt disaster of a film. Individual elements are ambitious, even praiseworthy, but the narrative arc of this comedy-drama about Hawaiian legends, the privatization of space, and a hunky guy with commitment issues falls apart almost as soon as the whirl-a-gig ride begins. Credit where it’s due, though, writer-director Cameron Crowe is… Read More »
MOONRISE KINGDOM
MOONRISE KINGDOM is a piquant masterpiece that will be as fresh and as relevant 50 years from now as it is today. The ironic tone and the artificial conceit form a wry tension with the genuine sentiment at work here, forming a quintessence that parses the mystery and absurdity of the human condition with a… Read More »
HYDE PARK ON HUDSON
HYDE PARK ON HUDSON is an interesting rather than a compelling film. Based on the recently discovered diaries of Daisy Stuckley, it tells the behind-the-scenes tale of her affair with Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Bill Murray), her fourth for fifth cousin depending on how its counted, during the tumultuous summer of 1939. The Great Depression is… Read More »
LOST IN TRANSLATION
With LOST IN TRANSLATION, writer/director Sofia Coppola lives up to the promise of the potential she exhibited in GODFATHER III. This tedious vanity piece is enlivened only by the charm of its leading man, Bill Murray, and by the astonishingly haphazard way in which the film as a whole appears to have been slapped together. Murray plays… Read More »
COFFEE AND CIGARETTES
Are you a bug, Bill Murray? It’s an odd question, but in the context of Jim Jarmusch’s brilliant consideration of human interaction, COFFEE AND CIGARETTES, there is both genius and poetry to it. This series of vignettes filmed in glossy, nostalgic black and white examines ten different conversations that on the surface have nothing in common… Read More »
THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU
In THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU. Wes Anderson, of RUSHMORE and THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS fame, again works in a rarified atmosphere with his unique auteurs voice that will leave some viewers wondering what all the fuss is about and other flinging hosannas to heaven. He blithely flits from the sublime to the ridiculous and… Read More »
BROKEN FLOWERS
There are those of us who, with wild abandon and without apology, worship at the altar of Jarmusch. There is in his off-kilter rhythms and deliberately deadpan aesthetic a peculiar, and peculiarly resonant, insight into how it is that human beings conduct their lives. His films, including his latest, BROKEN FLOWERS, are peopled with characters,… Read More »
BROKEN FLOWERS — DVD
Jim Jarmusch’s BROKEN FLOWERS has been accused of being his most accessible film. Perhaps it’s because the narrative is more linear than his last film, the equally brilliant COFFEE AND CIGARETTES. Perhaps it’s because its star, Bill Murray, plays a character that is facing his mid-life crisis in a way that is more identifiable than… Read More »