You’ve Come a (Long?) Way, Baby
Oh, we like to congratulate ourselves in the West (and America in particular) that women have more rights than they did at some indeterminate time in the past or in some repressive culture with which we can compare.
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Screen Door Jesus (Davis, 2003)
Part Short Cuts, part Lone Star, part Saved!, with a pinch of Flannery O'Connor thrown in for good measure, Screen Door Jesus will delight a few, infuriate a few, bore a few, and remain unseen by a multitude.
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Equiano in Africa (Young, 2008)
It is an eleven minute short film with Equiano's text read over images of contemporary life in Benin
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Lake of Fire (Kaye, 2006)
To call Lake of Fire uncompromisingly sober is to call a roundhouse kick to the kidney bracing.
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Inglorious Basterds (Tarantino, 2009)
You should know the resulting film is one where the titular Basterds are not the focus, where two-thirds of the film is subtitled French and German, and where nearly all the scant action scenes already appeared in the trailers. But misleading trailers aside, the resulting film left me stunned. This movie is going to make some people angry and shocked, but Tarantino succeeds in making the movie I never imagined, but maybe actually always wanted. It's an audacious, dizzying, beautiful cinematic fever dream.
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Buffy The Vampire Slayer
The main reason I'm posting about the show, however, is that noted scholar and Buffy enthusiast Elizabeth Rambo has begun a blog project rewatching the show and blogging individual episodes at The Painful Nowning Process. Dr. Rambo is one of the co-editors of Buffy Goes Dark, and she brings a broad foundation of literary knowledge and cultural insight into her writing. If you've ever wanted to try out the show or think more deeply about quality television, consider this a master class with an individual tutor and--here's the best part--no tuition!
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Julie & Julia (Ephron, 2009)
In fact, there may be the tiniest hint of feminine fantasy in the film's stew of supportive masculinity--made all the more suspect by the knowledge that Powell's second memoir (forthcoming) chronicles her extra-marital affair.
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John Huston
Huston said of directing: "[...] I try to direct as little as possible. The more one directs, the more there is a tendency to monotony. If one is telling each person what to do, one ends up with a host of little replicas of oneself" (260).
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Forgiving Dr. Mengele (Hercules, 2006)
The act of reviewing carries with it a strain of judgment, and when reviewing a documentary it is hard not to feel as though one is judging the subject and not just the artists' presentation of him or her. Which of us would dare judge Eva Moses Kor?
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Waltz With Bashir (Folman, 2008)
Several times while watching Waltz With Bashir I thought about the notion that by the measure we judge we shall be weighed, and I don't doubt that contributed to my dissatisfaction with the film.