In hindsight, Bottle Rocket, the low budget genre mash-up that catapulted Wes Anderson and the Wilson brothers to fame, fits nicely into Andersen’s oeuvre. Anderson has progressively raised the scope and vision of his films, but I believe Bottle Rocket is his true masterpiece. The film not only stylishly refutes the media’s portrayal of downer Generation X, it also manages to be the best romantic comedy of the last two decades.
We are excited to announce our new weekly feature: NEW CLASSICS. Each week, our IWA contributors will nominate two movies made since 1980, and will write short pieces explaining their pick and the importance of that film. Our definitive list will included fifty such classics. On Saturday, we (and hopefully, you the reader) will be able to vote on which five films deserve to be added to the canon. Any reader may leave a vote in the comments section and it will be counted against our own! Come give us hell.
Here is a preview of week one’s picks: Read more »
When people bring up these so-called “death panels,” I can’t help but chuckle. I think opposing heath care reform for fscal reasons is perfectly valid, but this ubiquitous idea of death panels seems to rely heavily on individuals’ imaginations; specifically, an imagination weaned on the filmic treatments of future dystopia. I am putting forth here that America is so media and movie saturated that we can no longer imagine the future without using the sci-fi movies of the 70′s and 80′s as reference. Read more »
This past week I had the pleasure of catching Alien on the big screen. It was playing at the Music Box Theater in celebration of its 30th Anniversary. The film is as fresh as ever, but in some ways it feels way older than that.
The sound design largely forgoes music, instead surrounding the audience with distant clanks and cavernous echoes. As a result, watching the Nostromo crew (minus Ripley) slowly realize their fate as alien food, you, the viewer, feel quite trapped. The tension builds steadily, and when the monsters are finally revealed, it’s terrifying and cathartic cinema.
Director Ridley Scott’s use of such measured pacing in the first half of Alien firmly sets this film into the category of Old Classic.* Which brings me to my rant, i mean, mission statment Read more »
Kathryn Bigelow first came to my attention during my teenage years, when her film Strange Days loomed large in my imagination. It was one of my most viewed VHS tapes; I inhaled the film’s heady combination of millennial dread, racial tensions and problematic techlogical advances.
According to a recent article in the NY Times, this is the year for female directors. I welcome any advancment in the gross lack of directorial jobs afforded to women, but the real tests for any mainstream American filmmaker are at the Box Office and the Oscars. With the Academy’s history of awarding bronzed mea culpas to artists whose past classics were ignored, could this be the year that Kathryn Bigelow is nominated, and wins the Best Director Oscar for Hurt Locker? Read more »
This past Tuesday was the closing night of the Chicago Outdoor Film Festival, and they picked a classic, “Tootsie.” I am a little ashamed that I had not seen this film previously, and befitting its reputation, it is very, very funny.
The cast, centered around Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange, have great rapport, and script builds the pre-AIDS -era gender-bending mix-ups to hilarious crescendos.
Watching the film, in Grant Park, surrounded by thousands of enraptured film buffs, I could’nt help but feel a little sad. Never in a million years would the Hollywood of today create such a ballsy and thematically problematic comedy. It is sorta weird to see Dustin Hoffman empowering actual career women while in drag. I will still take that any day over the heroines of today’s sex comedies, whose feminism makes them shrill spinster who are reduced to waiting for Matthew McConaughey to thaw their frozen vaginas. Read more »
The Edukators, starring Daniel Brul, starts well enough, introducing the audience to a trio of idealistic young Berliners who stick it to the man by stacking rich people’s furniture in their living rooms while they’re on holiday.
But that’s about it in terms of plot. Of course, stuff goes terribly wrong and the they almost become hardened terrorists, but in the end, they just go to Spain and have a threesome-no biggie.
The creators of this film obviously sympathize with the young trio, (who call themselves “The Edukators”) and share their hatred for poverty and Nikes. Strangely, the kidnapped capitalist becomes the most likable character. Brul and Co. so act irritatingly irrational (deciding to strip and make out at the most inoportune times, say during a car chase), I was hoping they would be caught and jailed.
I support the idea for a moratorium on the use of “Halleluyah” by Leonard Cohen, in any form, in the soundtrack to the movie. “The Edukators” has a high production value by German, standards, but they must have shelled out big time to score Buckley’s version of that song, because they milked it on and off for the last twenty minutes of the movie. While song is playing, the actors stare thoughtfully in the distance, learning invisible lessons. *
Having no moral center, The Edukators wants to invoke the spirit of the 60′s, but settles for numerous montages and good intentions.
*I still refuse to see Watchmen because I have heard they use that song in a sex scene. Shiver.
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