4 Best Movies To Watch After Amarcord (1973)
Nebraska
Long overshadowed by Sideways, we’re giving this understated dramedy its due for depicting Midwest with the specificity Hollywood rarely gives it. Alexander Payne’s Nebraska is as unassuming as the regular Midwestern folk it depicts. Even though this small, quiet, black-and-white comedy was flooded with nominations during the 2013 awards season it won almost none of them. Ten years on, it remains overshadowed by Payne’s more popular works like Sideways and Election. But this odd little dramedy is not only one of Payne’s finest films to date, it’s also his one true love letter to his home state of Nebraska and the Midwest itself. Elderly alcoholic Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) has fallen for a Publisher’s Clearinghouse–style scam and is convinced he’s won a million dollars. Determined to collect the cash in person, son David (Will Forte) ignores his mother and brother’s pleas and agrees to drive him all the way to Lincoln, Nebraska. On the way, the pair get waylaid in Woody’s hometown of Hawthorne, giving David a glimpse of not just who his father is, but how a place and the people in it shaped him. Continue Reading →
Inspector Sun y la maldición de la viuda negra
I love detective stories. Tales of how, as Sara Gran would say, "truth lives in the ether." Explorations of people and places and how they shape each other. The journey down the streets towards a hidden truth. Dennis Lehane's Darkness, Take My Hand, is my favorite book. Rian Johnson's Brick and Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone are movies I think the world of, never mind all-timers like Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep and Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. And, of course, the immortal Who Framed Roger Rabbit? from Robert Zemeckis. Any time there's a new detective film, whether it be an affably bleak comedy or an action-driven character study, it's a treat. Continue Reading →
Goldie
Sam de Jong's vibrant, raw indie offers an effortlessly dynamic showcase for its model-turned-actress star. On the 1979 song “Stars,” Sylvester belts in his signature falsetto “You are a star / everybody is one / and you only happen once.” Over forty years on, these lyrics seem like a prophecy, where stardom is just one viral video away. Even though it seems so easy, true success as an entertainer is more out of reach than we like to believe. In his sophomore feature, Sam de Jong’s Goldie highlights the divide between dreams of fame and fortune and reality. Vivacious teenager and aspiring dancer Goldie (Slick Woods in her film debut) is unexpectedly thrust onto the streets of the Bronx when her mother Carol (Marsha Stephanie Blake, The Photograph) is arrested and the family is kicked out of their shelter. With her young sisters Supreme (Jazmyn Dorsey) and Sherrie (Alana Tyler-Thompkins) in tow, she sets out to find a place to crash until she can strike it rich with her breakout gig as a dancer in a music video. With the help of her friend Elijah (George Sample III, Cronies), she sets off across New York City trying to score some cash and keep her sisters out of child protective services. And like a beacon in the dark, a gold fur coat calls to Goldie; she knows that if she can buy it, she’ll be recognized as the star she is. Continue Reading →
Calmos
A look at some of our favorite movie & TV characters who used body & brains to get what they want -- even if it killed someone. Last year for Valentine’s Day we talked about our favorite horror-romance movies. Now we’re writing a love letter to some of pop culture’s greatest femme fatales, those one of a kind women who use their sharp wits and killer bodies to get what they want from dumb-with-lust (or just dumb) men. Sometimes they have a specific end game in mind, sometimes they just do it for fun. Whatever the case, they do it with style, purpose, and while fully in charge of their own sexuality, and those are all admirable qualities. It’s a shame that sometimes people end up dead because of it. Alice Morgan, Luther Because every Holmes needs a Moriarty, it felt right that Idris Elba’s detective John Luther would need a corresponding criminal mastermind. Played with a dangerously cool allure by Ruth Wilson, Alice is brilliant and beautiful as the stars she studies, and just as cold and empty. These two are perfectly matched in every way, attracting where they should repel. In one memorable scene, Alice describes a black hole to John in a way that Hannibal Lecter might describe the curve of someone’s thigh: “It consumes matter, sucks it in and crushes it beyond existence. When I first heard that I thought that’s evil at its most pure. Something that drags you in, crushes you, makes you...nothing.” His greatest enemy and closest confidant, Alice is the only person who truly understands John, and vice versa. The lines get so blurred between hunter and hunted they disappear altogether. The fact that John is still standing at the end proves the old adage that you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Continue Reading →