The Rumpus Review of Nymphomaniac Vol. II
If predictability was insight, if the familiar was shocking, if everyone hadn’t already watched a billion hours of Internet porn, Nymphomaniac might be the movie Lars von Trier thought he was making.
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Posts by: Larry Fahey
The Rumpus Review of American Hustle
This is a movie that wants to be about truth and lies, and the nature of both. It wants to be about the ubiquity of the con. And it wants to be about the authenticity that can somehow grow in an environment of utter fakery.
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The Rumpus Review of Nebraska
This is a road movie, but it’s about the road Woody’s already traveled more than any destination. It’s about origins.
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The Rumpus Review of All Is Lost
From the start, All Is Lost understands what makes the survival genre great: an uncompromising dedication to what happens on the screen and a refusal to linger over why it happens or what it means.
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The Rumpus Review of The Great Gatsby
There has never been a great movie adaptation of a novel. This isn’t to say that there’s never been a good movie that was first a book.
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The Rumpus Review of The Place Beyond The Pines
The Place Beyond the Pines begins with a long tracking shot, and the shot acts as a summary of everything that’s good about the movie: its confidence, its ambition, and its meager but distinct accomplishments.
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Django Take #1: Good is the Enemy of Great
Look, we’re going to have to make a decision about Quentin Tarantino.
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Turning Points #2: Cary Grant in Father Goose
To be accepted, to be relevant, he would need to become someone else. He would spend the next half-century creating that person and then, at age 60, decide that it was time to reveal his true self, in Father Goose.
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The Rumpus Review of The Master
In Anderson’s hands, we are always on a journey into the troubled minds and hearts of men at war with themselves; to the intersection of primitive impulses and intellectual aspiration; and, never more than in The Master, through hubris, half-blind seeking, and love that destroys itself.
...moreTurning Points: Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris
Marlon Brando was the greatest film actor of the 20th century, and a failure.
...moreThe Rumpus Review of Drive
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 […]
...moreReturn of the Movie Binge
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.
...moreThe Rumpus Review of Tree Of Life
Terrence Malick gets points for sincerity. In fact, he gets all the points for sincerity, every single one of them.
...moreThe Rumpus Review of Stone
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.
...moreAll Thumbs: Roger Ebert and the Decline of Film Criticism
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
...moreLarry Fahey: The Last Book I Loved, Bullet Park
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 […]
...moreA Dark, Dark Summer Day: Fahey vs. Hollywood
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.
...moreThe Rumpus Review of Inception
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:
...moreSomething Steely, Unsympathetic, and Cold: A Reconsideration of Mary Poppins
Something horrible is coming to 17 Cherry Tree Lane.
...moreThe Rumpus Review of Kick-Ass
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.
...moreThe Rumpus Review of Chloe
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.
...moreThe Rumpus Review of Shutter Island
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.
...moreThe Rumpus Review of A Serious Man
What is it with the Coen brothers, technical masters who tend to use their skills for no meaningful purpose?
...moreThe Rumpus Review of Jennifer’s Body
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.
...moreThe Rumpus Review of 9
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
...moreThe Rumpus Review of We Live in Public
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.
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