Shelf Life: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

I have a fondness for Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and did a brief review of it  at Movie Mezzanine for my weekly recommendation. Weighed down by some integral flaws, sure, but the film is nevertheless a giddy display of imagination from an artist who knows that the fakeness of CGI cannot ever be fully hidden and thus can offer bold new visual treats by embracing its falsity.For that and its surprisingly touching tribute to the late Heath Ledger, it belongs closer to the top of Gilliam's films than the bottom.

Head over to Movie Mezzanine and check out my piece.

Netflix Instant Picks 2/15/13—2/21/13

It's that of week again where Corey and I post our favorite picks for Netflix Instant. This week, I celebrate finally getting the chance to watch the Comedy Bang Bang show, big up my favorite PTA movie and remind myself to finally watch Me and Orson Welles before it drops off streaming.

Check out our full post at Movie Mezzanine.

Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)

Over at Movie Mezzanine, I wrote some thoughts about Anthony Mann's stirring 1958 masterpiece, Man of the West, starring a perfectly cast Gary Cooper as a man whose attempts to leave behind a life of crime will only bring him back from whence he came. It is a harrowing film, one of the bleakest in a viciously bleak filmography, a vision of violence as a self-perpetuating cycle that consumes all who fall in it and offers escape only in a bloody death. One of the greatest Westerns of all time.

My full piece is up now at Movie Mezzanine.

Something Old, Something New: Déjà Vu / Resident Evil: Retribution

More belated links. At Movie Mezzanine, I compare two great Vulgar Auteurist pieces, Tony Scott's Déjà Vu and Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil: Retribution. Check it out.

Netflix Instant Picks 2/1/13—2/7/13 and 2/8/13—

Since I forgot to link to last week's Netflix picks, I'll just post links for that one and the one that went up this morning.

Netflix picks 2/1/13—2/7/13

Netflix picks 2/8/13—2/14/13

Trash (Paul Morrissey, 1970)

Man, I've got to get better about updating this place with links. My review for Paul Morrissey's excellent, transgressive Trash (my first Blindspot entry of the year) has been up for some time at Movie Mezzanine, but I forgot to link to it here. Suffice to say, it's a brilliant, blistering film that also finds an empathy through its actors that the camera otherwise would not communicate. Highly recommended.

My full piece is up at Movie Mezzanine.

Palette Cleansers: Canyon Passage

I debut a new feature this week at Movie Mezzanine that elaborates on the use of color in a film in establishing mood, character, narrative, themes, and the like. The feature will be called Palette Cleansers, because puns. Anyway, our first selection is Jacques Tourneur's superb, somewhat neglected Canyon Passage, his first Western and first color film. The film has many qualities worthy of recommendation, from its sparse storytelling that belies a dense plot of character relationships and racial politics to the terrific performances it gets from its cast (especially Dana Andrews, who gives one of his finest here). What stands out most, though, is Tourneur's use of color, every bit as subtle but showy as his shadow work and capable of deftly delineating the multiple leaps in perspective and POV. The handful of stills featured are only a fraction of the aesthetically beautiful but meaningful shots in the film.

My full piece is up now at Movie Mezzanine.

Netflix Instant Picks 1/25/13—1/31/13

Apologies for the lateness of this post, but last Friday's Netflix picks can be found at Movie Mezzanine. For this installment, I promote the birthday of one of the great American independents, the densest work of another, and a crackerjack new French thriller that made my honorable mentions for 2012.

My full post is up at Movie Mezzanine.

Something Old, Something New: The End of Evangelion / It's Such a Beautiful Day

I watched Don Hertzfeldt's masterpiece and Hideaki Anno's nihilistic OAV within days of each other, and I could not help but be drawn by each. Not simply for their respective demonstrations of avant-garde, uncompromising animation, but for the cosmic sense imparted through mental illness in each. They are great films, among the greatest works of modern animation, and I jumped at the chance to write more about either.

My full piece is up now at Movie Mezzanine.

Graveyard of Honor (Takashi Miike, 2002)

For this week's Shelf Life piece at Movie Mezzanine, I took a look at the Takashi Miike film that, more than the few others I've seen, makes me want to really explore his vast filmography. A stylish but muted yakuza thriller, Graveyard of Honor leaves the criminal element choking equally on its own blood and hypocrisy as they bring into their fold someone who shows just how absurd their codes of honor really are. One of the best gangster films ever. My full piece is up now.

Something Old, Something New: The Last Temptation of Christ / Lincoln

I knew I'd forgotten to link to something this week. Last Monday, my second Something Old, Something New piece went up, this time on the similarities that link Lincoln with another subversive, empathetic portrait of an abstracted icon, The Last Temptation of Christ. I'm quite happy with this piece, so I hope you read it. It can be found at Movie Mezzanine here.

Netflix Picks 1/18/13-1/24/13

It's that time of week again, where Corey Atad and I pick our favorite offerings on Netflix Instant. My own picks for the week are an Oscar-nominated documentary, the theatrical debut of one of our greatest modern directors, and one of the best and most influential TV series of the last two decades. Check 'em out over at Movie Mezzanine.

Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmak, 1944)

Over the weekend, I started a new column on Movie Mezzanine that picks a film a week for review, and my first selection was Robert Siodmak's dreamy noir Phantom Lady. Better, in my humble opinion, than Siodmak's later The Killers, Phantom Lady pushes Siodmak's use of shadow beyond the usual moral shadings of the genre and into an outright nightmare, where figures appear and disappear and a woman's quest to clear the name of the man she loves is gradually suggested to be the framework for what got him in trouble in the first place. Even its Hollywood ending takes on perverse, oneiric overtones, caught in a literal loop as the smiling face that closes the film starts to look leery rather than elated.

My full piece is up now at Movie Mezzanine.

Netflix Picks 1/11/13-1/17/13

This week's Netflix picks are up at Movie Mezzanine. This week, I single out the unexpectedly rewarding fourth installment of an uneven spy-action franchise, the film that brought Ryan Gosling to my attention, and a stellar, heady comeback from Monte Hellman.

The full post (along with Corey Atad's Canadian Netflix choices) is up at Movie Mezzanine.

Something Old, Something New: Lonesome / Girl Walk//All Day

I debuted a new weekly feature this morning at Movie Mezzanine called Something Old, Something New. In it, I take a film released within the last few years (and even more recent once the year gets underway some more and I have more to choose from than January offerings) and make it a double-feature of sorts with an older movie. My first post links Jacob Krupnick's infectious city symphony Girl Walk//All Day, with one of the first such movies New York received, Paul Fejos' sound-silent hybrid Lonesome. The two link up in a variety of ways, and I look forward to building out this feature.

My post is up at Movie Mezzanine.

Overtime (Matt Niehoff and Brian Cunningham, 2011)

Overtime starts as a vague Tarantino homage before turning into a silly pastiche of various clichés over the course of its 80 minutes. Ultra-low-budget, the movie has all the usual issues of a homemade film: bad sound, stiff acting and nonexistent effects. And yet, I kind of liked it; the movie is so off the wall ridiculous in its bounce from half-baked idea to half-baked idea that if it never adds up to more than (or even equal to) the sum of its parts, at least it has parts to be added.

My full review is up now at Movie Mezzanine.

The Best Blu-Rays of 2012

To go with my favorite Criterions of the year, I put up my favorite Blu-Rays of the year over at Movie Mezzanine. Check 'em out.

Netflix Picks of the Week 1/4/13-1/10/13

Every week at Movie Mezzanine, Corey Atad and I pick three movies on Netflix Instant (me for the US, Corey for Canada). These posts will go up every Friday and include a newly added film, one set to expire, and then one we just want to highlight. Our first post can be found here.

The Best Criterions of 2012

Up at Movie Mezzanine, I've put up a list of my 10 favorite Criterion releases from the past year. It was a bit of an off year for the company, but it still put out some of my favorite movies and introduced me to some stunning new discoveries.  So head on over and check out my article.