Cinephile; luftmensch; dad; husband; progressive; agnostic; filmmaker; UCLA '94, MFA '99.
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Dogfight 1991
The 20th anniversary of the American Invasion of Iraq struck me as the perfect moment to revisit this film, one of the best of the post Platoon wave of films about America’s first “Bad War.” This was Nancy Savoca’s second film and probably her best. The late screenwriter Bob Comfort had only written for TV and nothing like this excellent script. He deserves a lot of credit here: he was born in 1940 and gives this script an authenticity that…
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The Hunger 1983
In the past I would have said this was a visually striking but vapid film with no ideas coasting on the preternatural beauty of its lead actors (and killer cinematography by recent ASC lifetime achievement honoree Stephen Goldblatt). But this time I surrendered to the film and accepted it on its own terms. No vampire film is less concerned with the usual mythology and rules than this one. The vampirism is pure and unsubtle metaphor. It’s impossible in retrospect not…
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Everything Everywhere All at Once 2022
Look. I get it. It’s been a hard two years and we all need our feel good. Sure. And I am very very very happy for Michelle Yeoh (who should have been an American megastar 20 years ago), the comeback of Ke Huy Quan, seeing James Hong finally get his figurative flowers (and literal star on the Walk of Fame), seeing Jamie Lee Curtis have fun and be the monster for a change, and Stephanie Hsu is major discovery…but this…
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The Last Black Man in San Francisco 2019
Beasts of the Northern Wild. Aims to be an elegy for San Francisco but felt to me like a hairshirt for guilty gentrifiers. It almost came off as apologia for gentrification since the main characters Quixotic quest is so absurd the gentrifiers seem sober and sensible by comparison. The main character’s backstory, a compendium of Black dysfunction and downward mobility may be based in truth but it felt like misery porn. His suffering makes him “authentic” and “real” but when…
