Thursday, April 14th, 2011
Certified Copy
In the opening scene of Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy, an esteemed English essayist named Miller (William Shimell) arrives fashionably late to a speaking engagement at a modest literary society in Tuscany. Behind the dais, he apologizes for his tardiness with a variation of the same lame jest that the man who introduced him had made [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
Breathless
Metropolis was already a classic when Jean-Luc Godard made Breathless, in 1959. Godard would actually go on to cast Fritz Lang as himself—playing a frustrated movie director, quashed by the industry—in Contempt, a few years later. But Breathless, back for a very limited engagement, was one of the kickoffs of the French New Wave; and, [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Monday, July 6th, 2009
The Critic’s Criticism of His Critics
Of late, I’ve had the pleasure of reading some very negative comments made about my reviews. Because blogs are a newfangled, “democratic” medium, I respect my reader’s right to express him or herself that way, but I also reserve my right to respond—as lengthily (or douche-ily) as I please…
Comment 1:
Because God forbid we enjoy [...]
12 Comments » - Posted in obiter dictum by elliott
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
Up
These days, Pixar stands alone in being a reliable source for “family” entertainment that doesn’t leave any quarters cringing. It’s for this reason, perhaps, that I recoil whenever anyone self-identifies as a “Pixar dork”—as if it were unusual to appreciate something that’s both critically acclaimed and gobbled up by the masses. That peculiarly self-serving form [...]
5 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
The Class
Taking into account its extremely confined setting, The Class is one of the most comprehensive movies I’ve seen. Nearly all of the film—which won the 2008 Palme d’Or at Cannes—is set within a secondary school in a Paris banlieue, and a majority of our time there is devoted to the French class instructed by M. [...]