Tag: criticaldistance
Critical Distance: Sofia Coppola's THE BEGUILED Raises More Questions Than It Answers
Just before Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, I revisited Don Siegel's 1971 version, starring Clint Eastwood. As I noted, Siegel's film "is more layered, even more problematic -- and open to interpretation and later repudiation...
Critical Distance: What Movies Have You Loved in 2017?
What movies have you seen that you loved this year? Anything? In wide release, I've quite enjoyed Logan, Get Out, The Belko Experiment, John Wick 2 and A Cure for Wellness. Logan lived up to my high hopes, a reminder...
Critical Distance: PATRIOTS DAY, How to Rewrite History
Recently released wide across the U.S., Patriots Day continues the cinematic tradition of rewriting history for fun and profits. The movie revisits the April 2013 bombing in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. that killed three people and injured more than 260. It...
Critical Distance: An Introduction, Inspired by DRESSED TO KILL
The last movie I watched in 2016 was Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill, which was almost a random selection from the numerous discs I've bought but haven't watched yet. I first watched the movie on broadcast television, sometime in...
Critical Distance: INFERNO, Why It's Good to See Bad Movies
The word is out on Ron Howard's Inferno. Only 20% of critics gave it a positive review, per Rotten Tomatoes. Visitors to that site were kinder, as 43% gave it a positive nod. Yet audiences in general were not interested...
Critical Distance: My Scary Movie Nightmares
Watching Walt Disney's Darby O'Gill and the Little People gave me nightmares. It wasn't so much the movie itself as it was the specific image of a banshee that appears at one point. The ghostly, flowing creature terrified me as...
Critical Distance: In This Movie, Your Sweet Is My Sour
In 1979, I drove a 1965 Chevrolet Corvair from my family home in the San Fernando Valley to my job in the Wilshire district of Los Angeles every day. Depending on traffic, the commute took 30-45 minutes. My car only...
Critical Distance: Things I Learned At SXSW 2016
A funny thing happened on the way to the Paramount Theatre. The theatre, built in 1915, seats some 1,300 people. It is elegant, it is classic, and it is a miserable place to watch a movie. Naturally, it serves as...
Critical Distance: In Praise Of The Ridiculous
The Academy Awards do not have a category for ' best achievement in ridiculousness,' but if they did, Gods of Egypt would be a shoo-in next year. I don't mean the description "ridiculous" like Adam Sandler probably intends it in...
