This week, Steve welcomes podcaster David Peck (Face2Face) and ScreenFish’er Julie Levac to talk about Dunkirk, Nolan’s latest epic that’s scoring with critics and at the box office. Emphasizing visuals and sound over dialogs is a new creative step for Nolan and the film benefits from his willingness to step out of his comfort zone. Still, is… [Read More]
And The Winner Is…or Should Be (Oscar Spotlight)
The Oscar races this year are absolutely clear cut… in my mind. Having seen fourteen of the nominated films (out of approximately sixteen films in the major categories), these are my favorites to win. At Best Actor, the portrayal of screenwriter and Communist Dalton Trumbo by Bryan Cranston put him in rare air, not that of the illicit drugs… [Read More]
Mad Max: Fury Road–Pursuing Peace (Oscar Spotlight: Best Picture)
Upon first glance, Mad Max: Fury Road seems out of place amongst its fellow best picture nominees. There’s no biographical dramatization, no outspoken activist star. There’s not even a subtitle in sight. But there is flame-spewing punk rock guitarist chained to a thirty-foot wall of Marshall amps on the front of a semi. In other words:… [Read More]
The Revenant: Humanity’s Best & Worst
The Revenant cleaned up at the Golden Globes – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Film Not in Matt Damon’s category. [Okay, I made that last category up… sort of.] But the truth is that while director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest film (he’s the artistic mind behind Birdman) dances gracefully, bloodily, across the fallen snow, the… [Read More]
The Revenant: Return to the living
Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant fits all the qualifications of a big film: star-caliber acting from Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, and others; astounding cinematography in gorgeous settings; and a story that seems to be larger than life.
Mad Max Fury Road: No Greater Love
I was skeptical of George Miller’s sequel to his Road Warrior films after so many years away. Seriously, he made Babe and two Happy Feet movies more recently than he told a Mad Max story. How could Fury Road be any good? But as I admitted here, I thought the film was the best I’d seen this year – and it’s still my… [Read More]
Mad Max Fury Road: Baptism By Water, Dust & Fire
When we meet Mad Max, he is wrestling with a vision of the past. He hears cries for help, and sees those he has lost along the way.
