October 18th, 2011
There are two ways of looking at Drive, the recent Ryan Gosling noir. You can consider what happens on the screen—the plot, dialogue, and action, or you can consider what doesn’t happen—the many silences, distances, empty spaces, questions left unanswered, and motives left unclear. Which one you focus on will go a long way in determining how you feel about it. …more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 16 Comments »
August 30th, 2011
I remember being pretty casual last year about the illegality of theater-hopping on one ticket for an entire day, but this time around I arrive at the Boston Common 19 feeling nervous about the whole undertaking. …more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 7 Comments »
June 22nd, 2011
Terrence Malick gets points for sincerity. In fact, he gets all the points for sincerity, every single one of them. …more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 11 Comments »
November 19th, 2010
If the only thing you’ve seen of the new Robert De Niro/Edward Norton film, Stone, is the trailer, you may feel that your membership in the Robert De Niro Disappointment Club has been justified yet again. …more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 3 Comments »
October 15th, 2010
I hate Roger Ebert. This may not be the most tactful time to say so, what with his genuinely brave fight against cancer, his inspiring display of spirit and endurance, and the endless adulation all this has encouraged in the press …more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 116 Comments »
August 26th, 2010
I should say at the outset that while Bullet Park is a good book, and in my opinion a great book, it is not a sound book.
Cheever is rightly (though myopically) criticized for never having really solved the novel, and most of the five he wrote, including both Bullet Park and even the one generally considered his best, Falconer, show his struggle plainly: He was a peerless short story writer, and when he takes on the novel it’s a bit like a baseball player who never really learned how to swing a golf club. He may score well, but watching him, there’s always something off. …more
Posted in books | 2 Comments »
August 13th, 2010

How much bad Hollywood filmmaking can one man take in a day? With my wife and kids out of town for a week, I decided to find out. …more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 5 Comments »
July 29th, 2010

Here’s a little news worth sharing: Christopher Nolan does not shit solid gold. Like most people, he shits shit. Inception, for example.
Let me explain: …more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 34 Comments »
June 22nd, 2010
Something horrible is coming to 17 Cherry Tree Lane.
…more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 10 Comments »
May 14th, 2010
If the sight of a 10-year-old girl acrobatically and graphically hacking up a roomful of muscle-bound drug dealers makes you squirm, then Kick-Ass is not your kind of film. Also, we probably can’t be friends.
…more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 2 Comments »
April 8th, 2010
Egoyan skillfully balances a rote exercise in marital discord with a less-rote exercise in narrative suspense; but it’s hard to shake the feeling that the former exists only to distract from the shortcomings of the latter. …more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 3 Comments »
March 12th, 2010
When Scorsese makes a new film, the question is less whether it’s good than whether the decision to make it in the first place was good.
…more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 2 Comments »
October 16th, 2009
What is it with the Coen brothers, technical masters who tend to use their skills for no meaningful purpose? …more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 4 Comments »
September 30th, 2009
It’s funny, the word choice in the title of Jennifer’s Body, the gory horror-comedy from, improbably enough, the writer and producers of Juno, 2007’s teen pregnancy comedy. …more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 1 Comment »
September 15th, 2009
It must take guts to embark upon a film like 9, Shane Acker’s dark and thrilling feature-length version of his 2005 short film of the same name. Thick with paranoid dread and post-Apocalyptic atmosphere, 9 is a film with so many obvious antecedents …more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 1 Comment »
September 11th, 2009
Sizing up history is a tricky business: You can generally recognize that something is significant long before you can really say why or how. So it is with the Internet and its many pioneers. So it is with Josh Harris. …more
Posted in film, rumpus original | 3 Comments »