Oscar voters have today to mail their ballots. Tomorrow is a holiday. Then they have the 2nd and the 3rd and that was all she wrote. It feels crushingly early, way too early, way too soon to shove so many objects into that tiny hole. Most of them, in fact, have long since been turned in. But here are ten anythings from me. Hannibal did it to amuse himself. 1. The...
In alphabetical order, these are the moments in film in 2012 that moved me greatly. Here are a few words about them. There are SPOILERS — fair warning. Amour I can’t really remember a more powerful or memorable moment in a film than Jean-Louis Trintignant finding a pigeon in his apartment. With his beloved, dying wife all but gone, the pigeon signifies letting...
Earlier this month, I sustained a hairline fracture of my left hip… That’s the bad news. The worse news is that medications have impaired my ability to write. Because there is curiosity about my list, I present this very abbreviated piece, with the promise I will later revise it, better written, as my ability restores itself. Here then, in alphabetical order,...
1. Wuthering Heights If there’s an element of Terrence Malick-like cinematic abstraction and landscape photography to this “Wuthering Heights,” it feels more pre-modern than postmodern, as if it’s trying to dig backward through all the costume-drama adaptations to the physical, elemental truths of life and love on the frigid moors of Yorkshire. As a visual and...
From The Atlantic: 1. Zero Dark Thirty (accompanying article worth the read) 2. Lincoln 3. Beasts of the Southern Wild 4. The Avengers 5. Moonrise Kingdom 6. The Master 7. Silver Linings Playbook 8. The Cabin in the Woods/Seven Psychopaths 9. Amour 10. Frankenweenie Honorary mention: Argo, Brave, Compliance, The Dark Knight Rises, Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Looper,...
He writes them in prose (“You provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war”) but begins: It’s possible that 2012 will be remembered not as the year of the auteur but as the year of inspired writer-director partnerships. The two strongest movies of the year—“Lincoln” and “Zero Dark Thirty”—would have been inconceivable without the extensive...