Blog

CINEMA COMFORT FOOD PT 2: Conclave (2024, dir by Edward Berger, 120mns, Digital, UK/USA)

Like our review of Jason Reitman's SATURDAY NIGHT, Edward Berger's meticulous, engrossing CONCLAVE, about a fictitious election of a new pope beset by mystery, scandal, and intrigue, is a kind of cinematic comfort food.

And again, that's not a bad thing. CONCLAVE is an excellent movie that smuggles in intriguing ideas under the cloak of a 70's style Alan J Pakula (ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, KLUTE) thriller.

It's also …

Read More
Craig Hammill Comments
CINEMA THANKSGIVING PRAYER by Craig Hammill

As we gather ‘round the cinema family table for Thanksgiving 2024, we find a cinematic family in flux.

Some at the table say the family has disbanded. Some say the family will never die. Some say viva the family! Each feels the truth of what they say in their hearts. Who’s right? Is everyone right? Is everyone wrong?

Will this Cinematic Thanksgiving devolve into tense family squabbling? Will the cinematic Turkey be dry and overcooked? I hate an overcooked cinematic Turkey!

Well, I’m gonna stop the extended allegory train before it crashes and focus it down.

I’d like to offer a little Cinematic Thanksgiving prayer if I could.

Thank you …

Read More
Craig Hammill Comments
THE FRUSTRATION OF INTENT: DISCLAIMER (2024, Apple TV, dir by Alfonso Cuaron, starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sasha Baron Cohen, Lesley Manville, 7 eps, approx 350 minutes)

DISCLAIMER is a worthy, interesting, pointed work. It is full of committed performances, incredible technique and craft, and important themes. And yet, in some ways, it feels like a missed opportunity.

Alfonso Cuaron is one of the most talented and daring of the current crop of world cinema masters. Each new movie is a cause for celebration. Each new work is an experiment in genre, form, narrative. Yet each movie coheres to a continuum of Cuaron concerns…

Read More
Craig HammillComment
NOIR AS SOCIETAL MIRROR: Julien Duvivier's PANIQUE (1946, dir by Julien Duvivier, based on a novel by Georges Simenon, starring Michel Simon, France)

First off, please watch this movie (it's available to stream on CRITERION). It's a masterpiece that somehow has slipped through the cracks of the more talked about canonical movies of the time.

PANIQUE, based on a novel by master existential mystery/thriller author, Georges Simenon, directed by the famed Julien Duvivier, and staring the incomparable Michel Simon (one of the best actors to have ever practiced the craft), is brutal.

And unfortunately, in our strange and uncertain times, maybe a brutal “it can happen here” wake up call is what we need.

It tells the story of a mistrusted loner…

Read More
Craig Hammill
Body Horror, Technology, and You. Part II: Your Future Is Metal By Joey Povinelli

Some films are like a punch to the face. It’s a good feeling. Rarely does, a project come along that hits all over your body for the entire duration. This is frenzied filmmaking, held together through sustained energy. Tetsuo: The Iron Man is like driving through an hour-long carwash full of fists, an assault on the senses that doesn’t let up. This would be trying if the approach wasn’t so electric. 

Tetsuo: The Iron Man uses…

Read More
Craig HammillComment
Body Horror, Technology, and You.  Part I: The Video Word Made Flesh (VIDEODROME, wri/dir by David Cronenberg, Universal, Canada 1983, 89mns) By Joey Povinelli

The vessel that houses our perspective, desire, and identity is a flawed mechanism. Vital functions operate in silence and impact waking life. Some fixate or make changes out of necessity but there’s a population with a fractured relationship, living as a sort of floating head. Bodies are uncomfortable to think about because …

Read More
Craig Hammill
HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: BODIES BODIES BODIES (dir by Halina Reijn, 98mns, USA, 2022)

It's hard to tell where the hilarious satire/dark comedy of BODIES BODIES BODIES ends and the self-conscious drive to be a movie of the moment begins.

The two herk and jerk in awkward dance movements throughout. But still, in the final analysis, the movie is mostly a fun, interesting take on the excesses of current American culture and thinking through the metaphoric lens of black comedy and horror.

A group of ...

Read More
Craig HammillComment
THE PRICE OF VISION: Francis Ford Coppola's MEGALOPOLIS

MEGALOPOLIS does not work. MEGALOPOLIS does work.

MEGALOPOLIS contains laughably horrible sequences. MEGALOPOLIS contains filmmaking as good as anything Coppola has ever done.

MEGALOPOLIS takes a left turn (among constant left turns) at the start of its final third that lead this writer to think the movie, which had been wobbling the whole time, had totally come off the potter's wheel.

Then it turned out it still had a few more things to say. And it ended with a shot that...

Read More
Craig HammillComment
The Epic: One of Cinema’s most difficult and rewarding genres by Craig Hammill

It may be with some cheek that we write a short(ish) piece on the movie epic-one of cinema's most difficult and rewarding genres.

Where do you start? Where do you end?

We are even more perverse as to leave out some of the highest watermarks-2001, Lawrence of Arabia, The Sound of Music, The Godfathers Pts 1 & 2-get no mention here (as much as we love them). They're so talked about as to risk becoming white noise.

The movie epic is endangered. It runs the risk of extinction. We can not let that happen. 

Because the movie epic is, in some ways, cinema's cathedrals. When you watch a great one, you...

Read More
Craig HammillComment