Cinema

Campion’s Triumphant ‘The Power of the Dog’ Will Be Award Season Contender

December 6th, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Master filmmaker Jane Campion, notching a fresh Silver Lion win for Best Direction at the recent Venice Film Festival, returns to the screen after a twelve-year absence with “The Power of the Dog,” a handsome and potent Western based on the 1967 novel of the same title by Thomas Savage.

The 67-year-old’s last feature, the lovely John Keats/Fanny Brawne romance “Bright Star,” stands among Campion’s most accomplished movies. “The Power of…

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​Middleton and Spinney Look for ‘The Real Charlie Chaplin’

November 28th, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

With almost surgical precision, filmmakers Peter Middleton and James Spinney dissect the life and work of “The Real Charlie Chaplin,” a worthwhile addition to the many studies of one of the most recognizable screen performers in cinema history. Their documentary functions partly as critical biography, using Chaplin’s narrative preoccupations as the basis of a psychoanalytical reading of the man’s oeuvre -- and vice versa. But the film also…

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​Collecting Movies With Kathleen Loock

November 23rd, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Kathleen Loock teaches American Studies and Media Studies at the University of Hannover. She writes about remakes, sequels, reboots, and seriality. Her recent publications include “Just When You Thought It Was Safe … : The Jaws Sequels,” “On the Realist Aesthetics of Digital De-Aging in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema,” and “Reboot, Requel, Legacyquel: Jurassic World and the Nostalgia Franchise.” Her video essay “Reproductive Futurism and…

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​Penny Lane Explains Why We Should Be Listening to Kenny G

November 20th, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Filmmaker Penny Lane follows her thought-provoking examination of the Satanic Temple with a subject many would anoint as the Devil of Smooth Jazz: Kenneth Gorelick, known to millions of record-buyers as Kenny G. Far from a straightforward biographical profile, Lane embraces G’s decades-long divisiveness to elaborate on questions of taste, appropriation, and genre.

And the musician’s participation in the documentary only adds to the film’s…

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​Mia Hansen-Løve Goes to ‘Bergman Island’

November 7th, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Had a home video copy made its way into his eclectic collection, one cannot help but wonder how Ingmar Bergman might have rated Mia Hansen-Løve’s utterly delightful “Bergman Island.” The French director’s first English-language movie is a bold and satisfying metanarrative that uses the legendary Swedish auteur as the starting point for a dreamy consideration of life, art, romance, loss, regret, and the many challenges of the creative…

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​Wes Anderson Publishes ‘The French Dispatch’

November 1st, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun

First, a note to the naysayers and cynics and grumps and sourpusses and killjoys who would dismiss Wes Anderson as a suffocating ironist infatuated with his dollhouse miniatures and his own cookie cutter formulae recycling the same set of actors within his symmetrically composed frames: GET LOST, GO AWAY, SHOVE OFF. “The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun” is not for you.

But…

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​The Spice Must Flow: Villeneuve Takes Us to ‘Dune’

October 24th, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

The many media attempts at Frank Herbert’s epic space fantasy “Dune” speak to its lasting appeal and its potent impact. David Lynch’s movie, defended by the filmmaker’s most ardent supporters but excoriated by a larger chorus disappointed in the heavy hand applied by House De Laurentiis, marked the end of a lengthy journey to the screen that defeated the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Ridley Scott along the way. Dreams of what might have…

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​Bharoocha Flexes ‘Golden Arm’

October 17th, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Maureen Bharoocha’s “Golden Arm” applies the irresistible combination of long-haul trucking and competitive arm wrestling in the tradition of Menahem Golan’s 1987 Sylvester Stallone cult nugget “Over the Top.”

Close friendship replaces father-son bonding as the emotional heartbeat of the story, and Bharoocha, working from a very funny screenplay by Ann Marie Allison and Jenna Milly, capitalizes on the opportunity to imagine a cartoonish…

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​Collecting Movies With Anthony Strand

October 10th, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Before she introduced us, mutual friend Morgan Davy told me that Anthony Strand had the uncanny ability to remember the exact running time of every movie he had seen. And he has seen a lot of movies.

Strand was born in 1984, under the sign of “Amadeus,” “This Is Spinal Tap,” and “The Muppets Take Manhattan.” He currently lives in Roseville, Minnesota, with his wife Rosalynn and their two children. He is a school librarian in Farmington,…

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​David Chase Tells a New Sopranos Story in ‘The Many Saints of Newark’

October 3rd, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

I love “The Sopranos.”

I have spent many hours with the show, re-watching favorite episodes, reading popular and academic books and essays deconstructing the series, queuing up clip playlists on YouTube to numb the pain of months in pandemic-imposed isolation.

Like many others for whom David Chase’s vivid universe is “our thing,” I awaited “The Many Saints of Newark” with an equal amount of excitement and trepidation. I hoped that it…

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