Review: Everybody Wants Some!!

Eric here, with unhappy thoughts on the new Richard Linklater film. Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!!  promises a two-exclamation-point experience, but it unfortunately delivers as more of an ellipsis, in the true Greek meaning of “falling short”.

Now would be the moment in a review where one encapsulates the plot, but hands up on that, because Everybody is plot-free (self-consciously so).  Let’s say it’s structured around a freshman (Blake Jenner) arriving at college three days before classes start in short-shorts (happy 1980!). We follow him through those three days with his baseball-team-cum-frat-brothers in the pursuit of the game and the girls... 

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TV @ The Movies: "Damien" Flashes Back

Though I know not why it's so, considering I prefer original material in nearly all mediums to rehashes, I sample nearly every TV series that's based on a movie. Not that the interest tends to last. So it was that I binge watched the first four episodes of A&E's new series Dam♰en.  The Omen (1976) was the first horror film I ever watched that didn't involve vampires (I was really into vampires for some reason as a little boy, even though I was never a horror film aficianado). I snuck watched The Omen one night during one of its television airings in the early 80s.

Though the new series never mentions Damien's birthday, the wee Antichrist's birthdate was June 6th in the original movie (6/6 natch) which is also my birthday. Little me actually ran to the bathroom to make sure there was no mark of the beast on his scalp after the movie. (He had so many nightmares that week, poor little guy.)

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Review: Francofonia

The question at the center of Alexander Sokurov’s rich, meditative Francofonia is a rather complex one: would France be France without the Louvre? Would our civilization, for that matter, be a civilization without museums? Focusing on that existential premise, Sokurov crafts a cinematic essay that deals with the seeming randomness of what art is preserved for posterity, the question of fate when it comes to the Louvre’s existence, and even a chronicle of France during the Occupation. Those looking for a plot to follow beware, for the film not only makes do without one, it also invites us to explore it with the open mindedness with which we would wander inside a museum.

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Doc Corner: Nora Ephron and Mike Nichols Get Posthumous Tributes on HBO

Glenn here. Each Tuesday we bring you reviews and features on documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand. This week we’re looking at two biographical HBO documentaries about cinema legends.

Despite a resume that reads as limited, Nora Ephron's reputation over film and pop culture general looms large. Directed by her son, journalist Jacob Bernstein, there is likely little this new biographic documentary Everything is Copy that won’t be familiar to fans of the witty essayist/author/screenwriter/director’s work – not least of all when featuring old clips of Ephron narrating her own books directly the camera. But thankfully Bernstein’s film isn’t simply a rehash of his mother’s life, rather he occasionally finds minor nooks and crannies of her life that she herself hadn’t written about at length. Helped by words from her sisters and friends, an image of Ephron is formed that while no doubt glowing allows for us to learn even more about her than her famously candid words previously allowed.

Beyond all of that, first and foremost, Everything is Copy is an entertainment. A breezy and bright glimpse of a woman whose wit was matched by her scathing honesty and who left behind many works of cultural significance that are worth parsing over. 

New York movies, Nora's death, and a conversation with Mike Nichols after the jump...

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Review: Batman v Superman (aka the Dawn of Wonder Woman)

This review originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

Just over a hundred years ago the movie serial was born. The stories were divided up into small chapters and kids would return each week to the movie theater to see how the cliffhanger endings were resolved. And then they’d watch the feature presentation. Cut to: March, 2016. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is now open in theaters. There’s no serial preceding it but it is one. While Warner Bros, the studio that owns the DC heroes, has several superhero shows on television and stresses that they’re unrelated to the movies, the lines are ever blurrier betwen the two mediums. In fact, Batman and Superman actually both had movie serials in the 1940s. The most popular movies seventy years later are all what you’d call “franchises”. That’s code name for a very expensive serial which doesn’t air weekly but annually. And you have to see them in movie theaters.

With serials/franchises/TV shows you’re perpetually aware that there will be another episode. So the heroes are never really in danger; contractually they’ll be back next episode/season. But let’s not leap tall buildings in a single bound into the future. Is Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice a worthy movie or satisfying episode on its own?

Spoiler alert: It’s not. Many reasons why come after the jump...

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