BY MATT PRIGGE FILM CRITIC Inland Empire looks like ass. It is also one of the best films released last year — and yet, for reasons that continue to elude me, this film has yet to be booked into an area theater. Maybe it’s the three hour running time, incomprehensible plot or the fact that it’s shot on video and, again, looks like ass. You could almost hear one of Malcolm Gladwell’s fabled Tipping Points make a thud when David Lynch — one of celluloid’s all-time bestest friends — declared a few months ago that not only was his latest […]
DUNE (Directed by David Lynch, 1984)
A curious blend of the sublime and the ridiculous, and depending on what cut you get either an epic bore or a truncated mess bordering on slapstick. Still, it contains some of the most bizarre and arresting images ever committed to celluloid.
You’re A Good Man, David Lynch
David Lynch on Product Placement WARNING: F-bombs.
ROY ORBISON: In Dreams
A candy colored clown they call The Sandman.
FILM: ERASERHEAD NOW 1977-2007
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC By now, after 10 feature films, assorted shorts and TV’s weirdest nighttime soap, we have mapped many of the dark recesses of the psyche of writer/director David Lynch. We know just what provocations push his buttons. We can relax into a comfort zone now while Lynch unleashes his expected tropes — the bugs twitching underground, the violent sex, the ironic old pop songs, the flashes of gore and morphing identities. Yet somehow, despite his mannerisms becoming ever more familiar, the years have done little to dull the effect of Lynch’s debut masterpiece, 1977’s sleepwalking vision […]
MOVIE REVIEW: Sherry Baby
Sherrybaby (Directed by Laurie Collyer) A standard issue dress-down act from Maggie Gyllenhaal, which I suppose she had to get around to sooner or later. (Please resist, La Zooey.) ‘Raw’ and ‘non-judgmental’ and ’empathetic, even when our protag — an ex-junkie trying to regain custody of her son — does the exact stupidest thing she could do at any juncture, which is a bit too often for my tastes. Should be needless to say that it doesn’t contrast well with Clean, with which it shares a near-exact premise (and a lead named Maggie!). Olivier Assayas did everything he could to […]
EDGY: From The Makers Of HUSTLE & FLOW Comes This Twisted And Torrid Slice Of Southern Gothic Pulp
BLACK SNAKE MOAN: Starring Samuel L. Jackson and his chain, Christina Ricci and her panties, and Justin Timberlake and his big fuckin’ gun.
REVIEW: ALPHA DOG (Directed by Nick Cassavetes, 117 minutes)
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Now that he’s brought sexy back, snagged Scarlett Johansson and popularized the gift-wrapped penis, you have to ask, what can’t Justin Timberlake do? Sorry Haters, but you won’t find the chink in this pop phenom’s armor watching his big screen debut in Alpha Dog, a surprisingly effective freewheeling crime drama from director Nick Cassavetes that opens today. Based on true events (bah, whatever) Alpha Dog tells the story of the pot-dealing gangster-wannabe Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch) and his posse of hard-partying buddies. With the rap videos constantly playing on their big screen TV, these who […]
REWIND 2006: THE YEAR IN FILM
BEST PICTURE OF 2006: Because it held a cracked mirror up to the thing that is killing us all: ignorance and all its byproducts — fear, hate, superstition. Because fuddy-duddies may complain “Borat” is mean or crass or contrived, but the fact is nothing is made up, everything is true, sad to say, just exaggerated with industrial-strength absurdity for potent comedic effect. Because Sartre said ‘hell is other people’ and “Borat” is full of ‘other people.’ Because Borat played the MSM like a violin, with the wacky Khazhakstani becoming a constant ghost in the news machine for months before and […]
APOCALYPSE WOW: Why Do My Favorite Films Of 2006 Make Me Hate Myself And Want To Die?
BY DAN BUSKIRK, FILM CRITIC APOCALYPTO (2006, directed by Mel Gibson) CASINO ROYALE (2006, directed by Martin Campbell) DEATH OF LAZARESCU (2005, directed by Christi Puiu, Romania) DELIVER US FROM EVIL (2006, directed by Amy Berg) THE DEVIL & DANIEL JOHNSTON (2006, directed by Jeff Feuerzeig) I AM A SEX ADDICT (2006, directed by Caveh Zahedi) THE KING (2006, directed by James Marsh) LITTLE CHILDREN (2006, directed by Todd Field) MUTUAL APPRECIATION (2006, directed by Andrew Bujalski) WASSUP ROCKERS (2006, directed by Larry Clark) Is not gloom in the very air we breathe, or am I seeing the world through […]
REVIEW: He Coulda Been Somebody
ROCKY BALBOA (2006, directed by Sylvester Stallone, 102 minutes) BY DAN BUSKIRK As the press cheers the return of Rocky Balboa to the big screen, you have to ask yourself: Is the public really crying out for another round with this mug, after 30 years? If the Riverview, the only movie theater in South Philly, draws only a three quarters-filled house at the advance screening, I’d say signs point to this fighter’s legs finally giving out. Hearing the promising advance word, I’ll admit to being vaguely optimistic that, against all reason, the man who wrote the arm-wrestling epic “Over the […]
TRIBUTE: Goodnight Mr. Ertegun, Wherever You Are
Somebody Hip: Ahmet Ertegun, 1923-2006 ED KING REMEMBERS: Growing up in love with rock ‘n roll and its extended family, images of Atlantic Records founders Ahmet and Neshui Ertegun and their team of hipster producers, such as Jerry Wexler, were burned into my impressionable brain. I never learned exactly what this group of hitmakers did beside put together the right people in the right places and then get photographed having cocktails with the Beautiful People of the 1970s pop culture scene, but the Erteguns were there in the grooves with every record I loved by The Coasters, Aretha Franklin, Otis […]