Burn After Reading.

Righteous Kill.

The Women.

Momma's Man.

In Search of a Midnight Kiss.

Trumbo.

Cthulhu.

The Seattle Channel's arts fandango, Art Zone in Studio with Nancy Guppy, has returned from hiatus; I talk with Nancy about The Women and briefly wear a crown: watch here.

On KUOW-FM, I talk with Jeannie Yandel about Burn After Reading and In Search of a Midnight Kiss; the movie talk begins at 33:57. Listen here.

The Women (Diane English, 2008). It's as mixed up about itself as the Cukor movie, but Annette Bening remains peerless. (Full review 9/12)

Momma's Man (Azazel Jacobs, 2008). If you can hang with the occasional longueurs, Jacobs' portrait of a man who can't quite leave his parents' house is affecting. In its D-I-Y single-perspective approach, it's kind of like Frownland with depression substituted for mania. (Full review 9/12)

Them! (Gordon Douglas, 1954). On revisiting this, one is struck by how many freaking giant ants were constructed and destroyed--no skimping on the animatronic Buick-sized bugs here, unlike subsequent cheesefests that used this as a template. It's also good. Douglas directed a lot of enjoyable movies, including (also in 1954) one of my favorite Sinatra films, Young at Heart. Horror directors should study the first bug sighting in this--the ant lurching into view in the background of a shot, no vulgar cutting necessary.

A review of Frownland, from a couple of months ago: http://heraldnet.com/article/20080627/ENT/1093143&SearchID=73328931057837

Frozen River - Rated R, Drama, 1 hour 37 minutes (Sony Classics)

Vicky Cristina Barcelona - Rated PG-13, Comedy, 1  hour 36 minutes (MGM)

All three of the above films will be shown at:

Friday to Sunday - 1pm, 3:10, 5:20, 7:40 & 9:45

Monday to Thursday - 1pm, 3:10, 5:20, 7:30 & 9:30

Girl Cut In Two - Unrated, 1hr 55minutes,  SUBTITLED produced in French (IFC)

Elegy - Rated R, 1 hour 46 minutes (IDP)

These two films will be shown at:

Friday to Sunday - 2pm, 4:30, 7pm & 9:45

Monday to Thursday - 2pm, 4:30, 7pm & 9:30

Coming soon to Malverne, "Duchess" ,"Transsiberian" & "Burn After Reading"

MOMMA'S MAN

Azazel Jacobs, 2008

Clearly, it is tough being Ken Jacobs’ son. Ken Jacobs’ son Azazel Jacobs says so himself – however obliquely – in this, his first major work. A radical departure from his father’s pioneering avant-garde work (but, like, of course), this somewhat solipsistic navel-gaze is actually far simpler and a little more universal than its narrative stasis belies: ‘Mikey’ visits his parents (actually played by Ken and Flo Jacobs, actually in the Jacobs’ family home) and decides to stay indefinitely, much to the incremental bewilderment of his wife in LA and his subsequently concerned parents.

Speaking in some ways to the listlessness of fat and aged teenage angst, its plotlessness kinda begins a melancholic though repetitious display of dullish developmental arrest – new parent Mikey gorging himself on all manner of teenage ephemera and losing himself amongst his parents’ various gadgets and materialist practices - but soon becomes a dullish portrait of nostalgia gone retarded, only subsequently lifting its head out of this mire to occasionally inject fleeting moments of dull dramatic contrivance into what could only loosely be called ‘proceedings’, capped by an hilariously literal and visually redundant Battle With The Stairs.

With Mikey’s stagnancy and its ultimate entropic denouement this work’s sole tenet, Azazel’s approach reaches its symbolic apex with Mikey ‘shaving’: the protagonist/proxy standing in front of the mirror lathering his face, only to become waylaid by the idiotic sensory pleasure found in his endless fondling of the lather’s texture; the subsequent finale – facing his child - a questionably one-dimensional summation of these themes. Sometimes ‘simple’ and ‘unresolved’ is merely a simplistic void of resolution.

Já está disponível aqui, no Rascunho, a crítica ao filme Momma's Man, de Azazel Jacobs. Um filme com muitas particularidades e que é um dos mais fortes concorrentes na Competição Internacional deste Indie Lisboa.