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 →
High-Rise
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn't exist. Continue Reading →
Landscape with Invisible Hand
Similar2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), 9 Songs (2004), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Annie Hall (1977), Apocalypse Now (1979),
Blade Runner (1982) Boys Don't Cry (1999) Contact (1997), East of Eden (1955), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991),
Jackie Brown (1997) Manhattan (1979), Mars Attacks! (1996), Mary Poppins (1964), Metropolis (1927), Predator (1987), Random Harvest (1942), Solaris (1972), Stalker (1979), The Elementary Particles (2006),
The Name of the Rose (1986) The Outsiders (1983), The Science of Sleep (2006), The Silent Partner (1978), The Thirteenth Floor (1999), To Die For (1995), War of the Worlds (2005),
Watch afterBarbie (2023) Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023), Shortcomings (2023), The Equalizer 3 (2023),
StudioMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
Cory Finley is obsessed with money. His characters have nice things or want them. They live in beautiful houses or enviously plot to get them. Even in the year 2036, with aliens living on (or, more precisely, about two miles above) planet Earth, people still fret over money and try to make scads of it. That’s the state of things in his latest, Landscape with Invisible Hand. It’s a title with the same bespoke aestheticism as the stuffed ocelots and oversized chess pieces his characters own. It feels seemingly designed to scare off less curious viewers. While the film has an awful lot of plot, the undergirding is the same. As in his 2017 debut Thoroughbreds, his follow-up Bad Education, and even his episodes of the abysmal miniseries WeCrashed, the drama comes from the idea of what money does to the soul. Continue Reading →
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
SimilarEdward Scissorhands (1990),
Rebecca (1940) The Science of Sleep (2006), True Romance (1993),
It’s easy to feel like time’s been stuck in an infinite loop recently. Especially when two movies are released within a year of each other that both ask the question, “What if we remade Groundhog’s Day, but with two people instead of one?”. Unfortunately for The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, a Y.A. drama streaming on Amazon Prime, it’s now the Volcano of time loop romances (the superior Palm Springs is the Dante’s Peak, of course). Continue Reading →