Directors

Certified Copy (2010)

8.5/10 – Grilled Seal of Approval

Turkish auteur Abbas Kiarostami’s first film outside of Turkey is a pleasant commentary on the changing state of relationships over time. When I watch one of these films (and by “these” I mean films with middle aged actors trying to figure out why their relationships went wrong or how to spend the rest of their lives or any number of other midlife crisis problems) I can’t help but wondering how my reaction to them will change over time.

I am currently young and able and as experienced in love and sex and relationships as one normally is at 25, so I look at these “midlife crisis” films from the far off perspective of an outsider. I can identify with the feelings and the situations, sure, but I will never truly understand the content until I have lived through it and have made similar mistakes and have had similar successes and conquests.

(more…)

Animal Kingdom (2010)

9.5/10 – Grilled Seal of Approval

Oh yes. Oh Hell Yes.

David Michod is a director on the rise and this is a very, very good film.

Hey, you know me by now, right? I make some jokes, I talk a lot of bullshit, I generally speak in terribly grammatically incorrect circles and tangents, but I’m not going to do that for Animal Kingdom. I’m not going to do it. I want to do it, but I can’t and I won’t. The movie is just too good to do anything except give it a proper standing ovation. The film is sort of like going to a monster truck rally when you are eight and being all excited to both see giant machines crushing and crashing into each other and waves upon waves of mullets and then, to top it all off, the lights drop off the earth, the engines become machine guns of explosion, and the trucks fly off their jumps and into the stratosphere,

(more…)

Frances Ha (2012)

9.5/10 – Grilled Seal of Approval

Truly the kind of film you want to live inside, with the people you want to know, and doing things you want to do. Greta Gerwig is excellent excellent excellent. The whole cast is excellent. Adam Driver is becoming reliably excellent. Noah Baumbach is becoming one of my favorite directors. Ooooooooh. And also, on this day (which is actually the 14th not the 6th as I am still trying to catch up), on this day – my FIRST OFFICIAL PAYING ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED. So, fuck yeah! Dreams of Brooklyn nights and skyscapers and hobos huddling together in the cold and stepping carefully through half thawed pools of sludgy sludge ice and snow and salt and grime mixture and the wind whipping down through the long corridors of my buildings, up my coat, through my hair and back into the sky like a hawk flitting through the air after a kill. Brooklynnnnn. Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, Brooooooooooooklyn stand up! When I move you move (just like that?), when I move you move (just like that?), when I move you move (just like that?) hell yeah mutha fucka now bring that ass back!

(more…)

“The Ones Who Knock”

a-better-tomorrow-part-1-movie-poster-1986-1020197391

No flashlight? No worries!

When I was a kid I decided I wanted to be a counterfeiter. I’ll just get your next thought out of the way and let you know that, no; I am not currently perusing job boards looking for my way into the secretive business of currency forgery. I left that dream behind around the time I entered the lair of the mid-teen years. But let’s go back to that time anyway. Back to the days of watching movies until sunrise, back to the days of arranging my basement couch cushions into a movie worshiping throne, and back to the days of giving my heart and soul and mind to the idols on the fat CRT in front of me. Young Dom watched a lot of movies and he dreamed and he day dreamed and he dreamed dreamed and he found himself living in the (he supposed) coolest place that ever was – late 1980s Hong Kong.

(more…)

Stay Out of Trouble

It’s been said that I can be a, “pain in the ass to watch a movie with.” I’m not going to attribute that quote to any one particular person, partly because I made up the quote, but also because I can imagine any of my exes telling me that. The sentiment, either in those words or similar ones, would be carried out in an exasperated tone and I would scribble a mental note to keep myself from falling into a similar situation again. I have some very particular preferences for enjoying a film, all of which are related to losing yourself inside the created piece for the entirety of its duration. So, no lights, no talking, and absolutely no questions will be permitted during the film. I’m not a masochist though, so I usually just watch movies that I don’t feel the need to invest myself in if there will be others in the room. Therefore, if Anchorman is on the screen, quip away, quip away. Comedies are fine, terrible movies are fine, mediocre movies are fine, Hollywood movies are definitely fine; in fact, the majority of movies that people usually want to watch are fine. The problem is I don’t usually watch the movies that are most often watched. I’m watching bizarre foreign films, indies, and strange experimentals that may require more than one viewing and at the minimum at least a fully attentive audience to fully understand.

(more…)

Pressure, Time, and Shinya Tsukamoto

“Pressure and time. That’s all it takes really, pressure and time.” Red, from The Shawshank Redemption, was referring to Geology – the study of the Earth and the changes that act upon it and also one of Andy Defresne’s favorite pastimes. Pressure and time and a rock can be transformed, transfigured into something else – maybe something more, maybe something less, but always something different. The life of a human is that of applied pressure and a constant ticking of the clock. We slip in and out of fantastical realms as the Buzz of the alarm steadily announces its presence. “Wake Up. Wake Up. Wake Up. Wake Up,” it whispers again and again, annoyingly consistent. The volume of the irritation increases, but we learn to tune out the noise and delay, delay, delay until finally opening our eyes, squinting, rubbing out the night crust and misplaced eyelashes, only to discover the day has already passed. Our lives have slipped on by. We chose the comfort of our womb-like beds and deferred something slightly disagreeable. We slept through the Buzz of life, but there’s no escape from the pressure. It can be delayed, postponed, or rerouted, but the pressure grows unrelentingly. The pressure will be released, violently if need be, and no amount of walking through life zombified and unconscious will relinquish its hold.

(more…)