One of the most satisfying things about film festivals can be the sidebar of retrospectives or, in the case of the LA Film Festival, the intermittent “Films That Got Away”. There was only one such this year, but it was a good one – Wakamatsu Kōji’s follow-up to United Red Army (2007), and his penultimate […]
LA Film Festival: ‘Jimi: All Is By My Side’ (d. John Ridley)
Jimi: All Is By My Side is a film with multiple problems serious enough that the couple of very good things it has going for it stand little chance of compensating. As written and directed by 12 Years A Slave scribe John Ridley, the narrative sets off down familiar musical biopic lane: musician discovered; gains […]
LA Film Festival: ‘Frank’ (d. Lenny Abrahamson)
A provincial young man dreams of writing songs. He is not very good at it. A chance encounter with a touring American band with an unpronounceable name leads to his stepping in for their sectioned keyboard player, travelling to Ireland to spend a year of musical experiments and recording and, through slightly underhand methods, getting […]
LA Film Festival: ‘The Great Museum’ (‘Das groβe Museum’) (d. Johannes Holzhausen)
Behind the scenes of the great Künsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, as a close pan up Breughal’s Tower of Babel at the end of Das groβe Museum suggests, there are a lot of people doing a lot of work. This is in fact the only moment akin to commentary in this hands-off documentary – without talking […]
The Urge To Be Cool Begins To Undermine Its Very Self In Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’
It seems to be of little concern to Jim Jarmusch, the common journalistic shorthand that labels him as some “high priest of hip.” He seems actively to be courting the title in fact, with Only Lovers Left Alive, the most languorously cool movie of his career (amidst stiff competition). It is a love story, intrinsic […]