Film – recycled paper clips

Flamekeeper: Great Musician, So-so Documentary.

Music documentaries often suffer from the same problem. Twenty different people saying the same thing. “He’s just on another level, man” or “There’s no one quite like him,” or insert platitudinous superlative here. It doesn’t matter how right they are, the same thing said over and over again (interspersed with performance clips) doesn’t make aContinue reading “Flamekeeper: Great Musician, So-so Documentary.”

The Politics of Rain Man

Rain Man opens with a scene which could be the picture definition of “toxic.” Toxic workplace, toxic masculinity. Tom Cruise, the wheeler-dealer son a multimillionaire is yelling at people in order to make a profit on some lamborghinis. The EPA (which stars more prominently as arch-villain in another Reagan-era hit: Ghostbusters) is holding things up.Continue reading “The Politics of Rain Man”

Will there be blood?

There Will be Blood is a piece of myth-making about America and about masculinity. The myth it tells about America is that it is the product of fanatical individuality, the fierce will of the strongest, that the problems with our society stem not from something systemic or collective, but from the tragic flaws of greatContinue reading “Will there be blood?”

Beanpole: 8/10

Beanpole is a strong film. The most obvious thing that makes it stick out is the choice to focus on the moment after the war. Like The Odyssey which portrays a survivor’s attempt to return to normalcy after the disruption of the Trojan War, so Kantemir Balagov chooses to set his story after the “end.”Continue reading “Beanpole: 8/10”

Dead Man

Dead Man A Review: 5/10 Dead Man, the 1995 film directed by Jim Jarmusch, is essentially a classic Western made more palatable to the 90s by a trendy admixture of decadence. The underlying myth, the fundamental ideology has not changed. It in no way challenges the traditional narrative, or acknowledges that narrative as problematic. OurContinue reading “Dead Man”