Dormant Last read · last published · next check
Read 5 hours ago and current, but nothing has been published for 5 years.
Behold! The list of all Muriel Award winners, 2006 through 2020! Golden Muriel Award for Best Film Before Midnight (2013) Boyhood (2014) The Departed (2006) First Cow (2020) First Reformed (2018) Holy Motors (2012) Inglourious Basterds (2009) Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) No Country For Old Men (2007) Parasite (2019) Paterson (2016) Phantom Thread (2017) The Social Network (2010) The Tree of Life…
“Kelly Reichardt movies always starts with absences, voids, unknowns. A woman without a home or a past to which we have access. A lawyer without stability, a young woman without a social life, a woman without the love of her family. A western caravan with no past and no future. These are the terms on which maybe America’s greatest director not named Martin Scorsese stakes her vision. Behind you? A…
“Rooted in the social and the sensual, Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock got right to the heart of global unease with open arms and womblike bass, a liberating simmer for the pressure cooker of the newest Plague Year. “The joy of human contact. The experience of a dance party where all the drama is in the streets outside, and in the yard, and in the socioeconomic structures looming above and behind…
Alas, there wasn't time in a single weekend to announce all our 2020 awards with written pieces. Here are the remaining awards for this year. Best Direction: 1. Kelly Reichardt - First Cow [80/12] 2. Steve McQueen - Lovers Rock [76/13] 3. Charlie Kaufman - I'm Thinking of Ending Things [48/7] 4. Chloé Zhao - Nomadland [46/7] 5. Pedro Costa - Vitalina Varela [38/6] Best Screenplay: 1. I'm Thinking…
“When, on Saturday, November 7, 2020, all of the major news networks finally called the presidential election in favor of now-President Joe Biden, it was easy, in the moment, to celebrate what felt like the impending end of a terrible era: a presidency that had trafficked in fear-mongering, racism, and nationalism to lay bare America's long-standing social inequities and divide the country even…
“Charlie Kaufman makes movies about death and the ways we try (and usually fail) to make our own meaning. While his screenplay for I’m Thinking of Ending Things is largely faithful, story-wise, to Ian Reid’s book, it’s also a perfect vehicle for his preoccupation with how we use art and pop culture to try to give our own lives context. Adaptation and Synecdoche, New York are about artists…
“The acute realization of hearing loss is wrought with shocking consternation as one sits in a booth where perfunctory queries are made to a patient reduced to guesswork. Hearing loss is largely an inevitable consequence of age and genetics but it could also be brought on by bad living choices or a profession that increases the odds of long-term or as in the case of Sound of Metal an…
“2020 seemed to be a year even more than usually crowded with high-profile documentaries ( Collective! Time! Boys State! Dick Johnson Is Dead !), each one practically sweating with desperation to be seen as more innovative and relevant than the last. Leave it to the nonagenarian Frederick Wiseman to deliver—handily and modestly, with no fanfare—a film that makes the lot of them feel like mere…
“In Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, the director makes the boldest homages of his career. In every one of his joints, Lee wears his cinematic influences on his sleeve, from the nods to Minnelli and The Band Wagon in Malcolm X to the evocation of NYC crime dramas like Dog Day Afternoon in Inside Man. These elements are never hidden; Lee knows you know what he’s doing and it frees him to graft his points…
“Eliza Hittman’s films exist in some parallel place. She creates universes that feel familiar but are also totally singular: the time period is indeterminate, the film grain leaves a textured plane one wants to reach out to touch like a thick, inviting sculpture, the characters feel like the person next door but also massive symbols well beyond human form. The film is stylistically otherworldly…
