Asteroid City
SimilarI ♥ Huckabees (2004), Stalker (1979),
Watch afterIndiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023),
Oppenheimer (2023) The Flash (2023),
StarringFisher Stevens, Willem Dafoe,
About twenty miles or so outside of Marfa, Texas, there’s a mural dedicated to the production of George Stevens’ Giant. Big wooden standees display James Dean with his arms draped over a rifle, framing him in the iconic Christ pose which would be the last image to represent Dean in the public consciousness before he died. Giant is about a great number of things, though, fittingly, what resonates all these years later is its ideas about the passing of time. Continue Reading →
The French Dispatch
SimilarBed and Board (1970), Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006),
Boys Don't Cry (1999) Driving Miss Daisy (1989), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Natural Born Killers (1994), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004),
Watch afterDune (2021), The Power of the Dog (2021),
StarringFisher Stevens, Owen Wilson, Toheeb Jimoh, Willem Dafoe,
StudioSearchlight Pictures,
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Chicago International Film Festival. Continue Reading →
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
The characters in Mira Nair’s films walk along a knife’s edge of great change. On one side: what was; on the other: what could be. In Mississippi Masala, a young woman of Ugandan Indian heritage and a Black American man fall in love, a relationship that causes a scandal among the conservative in both communities. In Monsoon Wedding, the chaos of a gigantic Indian wedding teases out familial secrets about infidelity and abuse. And in The Namesake, a married couple who are practically strangers move from India to America and start a life together, adapting to the strange rhythms of a new country and each other. Continue Reading →
The Manchurian Candidate
Every month, we at The Spool select a filmmaker to explore in greater depth — their themes, their deeper concerns, how their works chart the history of cinema and the filmmaker’s own biography. For February, we’re celebrating acclaimed genre-bender Jonathan Demme. Read the rest of our coverage here.
Objectively, remaking The Manchurian Candidate seems a wild proposition. The 1962 version was met with strong critical praise and audience support upon its release. Furthermore, Angela Lansbury’s depiction of Eleanor Iselin has only grown to near-mythic standards of appreciation since. On top of it all, the movie was also a deeply faithful adaptation of the novel. How and why does someone re-adapt/remake something that was both universally praised and hewed so close to the source material as to make being less faithful the only option?
The most compelling answer lies in Jonathan Demme’s particular fixation on humanism. As has been well-established, the director has long been considered one of the most humane directors of the late 20th and early 21st Century. Through films like Something Wild, Rachel Getting Married, Beloved, and even Ricki and the Flash, the director has time and time again created empathetic portraits of people struggling through life. Continue Reading →