BilmBlog500

It's been an eclectic and unusually fertile week of preview screenings at The Museum of the Moving Image.  After showing Bad Words earlier in the week, there was an unusual double feature today of Muppet Most Wanted and The Raid 2, both quite enjoyable in their own different ways. The best thing, and perhaps the only thing, that one needs to say about Muppet Most Wanted is that it's undoubtedly and undeniably a film Jim Henson could have made. I'm not sure any Muppet movie will ever equal the consistent delight of the memorable tunes from the original Muppet movie, but there's no denying the quality of work that Bret McKenzie is doing for the current Muppet films.  This movie starts with a production number where the Muppets celebrate the fact that they are getting to do a sequel (yes, Bunsen Honeydew does quite scientifically interrupt the song to point out that this is in fact the 7th Muppet movie), which features lots and lots of Muppets, happily breaks the third wal...

So having completed the live blogging for the Oscars, this is my Baker's Dozen best of 2013, in no particular order: World War Z: This is grading on a curve.  But basically, there are so many really shitty special effects spectaculars around these days that I feel an urge to give some recognition to a movie that's just a little bit different.  Also, since I keep asking authors to revise their manuscripts, it's nice to see something in the popular culture where revision works.  In particular, the ending of this major CGI-ridden summer spectacular release is quiet.  One setting, one main character, a place where small little things count, where the tension is real.  A place where the violence is earned, justified by the movie being what the movie is, and now entirely thrown in just because someone thinks it's fun to plow a starship into a building, or to destroy Manhattan for the 18th time and pretend like it isn't, like Superman didn't save Manhattan in Superman ...

My big sit two weeks ago really can't compare to seeing Django Unchained, Les Miz and Zero Dark Thirty back-to-back-to-back.  The good news, I guess, is that I saw all three in different theatres so I got some fresh air in-between. Django Unchained was kind of frustrating to me.  The writer/director Quentin Tarantino is an auteur, a student of cinema, a craftsman.  He does films that won't be confused with anyone else's.  This one is, as many of his often are, a bit wacko in the descriptions.  A German bounty hunter in the pre-Civil War south decides to buy a slave, teach him to assist in his job, the slave proves to be a natural with a gun, and then agrees to go to buy the slave's wife.  The slave is played by Jamie Foxx, the German by Christoph Waltz who was a deserving Oscar winner for Supporting Actor in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, the plantation owner who has Foxx's wife by Leonardo DiCaprio.  Quite a cast.  Kerry Washington is the wife...

Once upon a time when I reviewed movies for the Michigan Daily, I sometimes speculated on the idea of becoming a movie reviewer or film critic as a career. These days, I wonder had I done so if I would've kept to some real-world sense were I doing so, or if I too would have drunk the critical Kool Aid that makes critics dump on movies that are not necessarily good but are nonetheless entertaining, jump on the bandwagon for books that no person who doesn't watch movies for a living would ever want to see, and pad a Ten Best list with at least four films that never saw a broader release than the Nuart and Film Forum and had they seen a wider release would still not have been of interest to anyone. Would I have become a Manohla Dargis, whose first " essential movie " of 2010 is Sweetgrass, a documentary about bringing sheep up to their summer pasture? Would I have become a J. Hoberman, whose top ten list includes all of three movies that were given a broad commercial ...

Hunger, seen Saturday April 11 2009 at the IFC Center, Aud. #3.  3.5 slithy toads Sugar, seen Saturday April 11, 2009 at the AMC Empire 25, Aud. #5.  3 slithy toads. I saw these two films prior to heading off for London Book Fair, almost 2 months ago.  Sugar is still hanging around here and there, such as at the Cinema Village in New York City.   Hunger , you'll want to keep an eye out for on DVD.  I'd certainly recommend renting both.  Hunger is the better movie, but Sugar the more enjoyable.  I've been meaning to blog about both, but as you can tell from the small # of posts in May, it's been a busy time in the weeks since I got back from London, and the blog often feels the brunt of my busy-ness. Hunger is about a 1981 hunger strike in the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland led by Bobby Sands.  But while about Bobby Sands' hunger strike, the film makes an interesting and even courageous decision to NOT approach the story directly from Sands' poin...