Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
With the success of Knives Out and its upcoming sequel The Glass Onion (which will open the Mill Valley Film Festival on Oct. 6th), murder mysteries are back in vogue, and you can’t blame filmmakers for wanting to capitalize on the trend. But just because you can make a murder mystery doesn’t mean you should, and the new British whodunit See How They Run is a case in point.
Fox Searchlight has finally released Wes Anderson’s very long-awaited new film The French Dispatch, and this sentence pretty much sums it up: “Leutenant Nescaffier is emphatically celebrated among cooks, cops and capitaines, not to mention swindlers, stoolies and snitches, as the great exemplar of police cooking.”
If that sentence – with its very sneaky verb, its obviously overbalanced serial commas, its all too visible use of French terms, and finally, its curious “police cooking”- makes you smile, laugh, giggle, catch your breath, or even tingle, then this is your film. If not, then there’s nothing I, or this review, can do for you.
Spinning Platters film critics Carrie Kahn and Chad Liffmann each share their ten favorite films of 2014. Here is Carrie’s list, presented in alphabetical order. And you can see Chad’s list here.
Filmed intermittently over 12 years, Richard Linklater’s film chronicling a boy named Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from ages six to 18 in real time is both a technical marvel and a cinematic masterpiece. There has been nothing like it before on screen, and there will no doubt be nothing like it again. Utterly unique in scope and vision, the film lets us watch a life develop in front of our very eyes, with all of its attendant hopes, dreams, achievements, and disappointments. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke play Mason’s parents, changing and growing right alongside him and his older sister (Lorelei Linklater). An absolutely dazzling achievement that will leave you breathless and awed, Linklater’s picture is sure to be the one to beat for Best Picture come Oscar time. (You can also read Gordon’s full-length review here).
Continue reading “Film Feature: Carrie’s Top 10 Films of 2014”
Wes Anderson is one of those polarizing filmmakers whose films are either loved or hated. His legions of fans delight in his highly stylized artistry, whimsical storytelling, and quirky characters, while his detractors deride his pictures as pretentious at worst and lightweight at best. Anderson’s newest offering, The Grand Budapest Hotel, however, should satisfy his fans and critics alike, as it melds his trademark fairy tale sensibility with an undercurrent of melancholy and solemnity that keep the picture from being too cloying or precious. Continue reading “Film Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel”