Posts Tagged ‘Macon Blair’
Monday, October 30th, 2023
I enjoy the work of director Jeremy Saulnier. He did the bleak, regular-dude-sloppily-getting-revenge movie BLUE RUIN in 2013, followed by the punks vs. bigots favorite GREEN ROOM in 2015, and then he kind of went off the radar because HOLD THE DARK (2018) only exists in the mists of Netflix, but I liked that one too.
Those three movies paint a certain picture of what kind of filmmaker Saulnier might be. They may have moments of humor, but they’re all very grim and dry, the emphasis on their unblinking look into the dark fringes of life, with a particular fascination for people not too cool to step into enormous fuck ups and messes that movie characters usually don’t. In BLUE RUIN, for example, the protagonist steals a gun to use in a murder, but it has a lock on it, so he tries to break it off with a rock, and breaks the gun. In HOLD THE DARK a guy shoots at cops from a barn with a high powered rifle and they just scurry around helplessly for several minutes until our protagonist gets a gun and takes careful aim… and then he can’t hit him either.
What I think is fairly unknown or forgotten about Saulnier is that his first film, a whole six years before the wide acclaim of BLUE RUIN, presents that view of life in the context of a straight-up horror comedy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Beau Sia, Bill Tangradi, Chris Sharp, Halloween, Jeremy Saulnier, Macon Blair, Paul Goldblatt, Stacy Rock
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 9 Comments »
Thursday, September 14th, 2023
(disclaimer: Netflix continues to suck and needs to stop holding the American movie industry hostage by clinging to a clearly unsustainable exploitation-based business model. Also they have some good movies on there.)
I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE (2017) is a darkly comedic crime tale in a subgenre I would maybe describe as suburban pulp. A very ordinary, relatable protagonist falls victim to a very ordinary crime (burglary) and, compounded with the other indignities of her life (like some motherfucker always letting his dog shit on her lawn, even with a sign specifically saying not to do that), it pushes her past her usual timid boundaries into seeking some sense of justice. That gives her a peek into an underworld of corruption and depravity on the fringes of her town (filmed in and/or around Portland, Oregon). Nothing big time – just some rich assholes and some meth head weirdos, but certainly outside of her previous experience.
Melanie Lynskey (THE FRIGHTENERS) plays Ruth – single, depressed, put upon nursing assistant. The grimness of her existence is well summed up by the title as well as the first few minutes of the movie. It’s a series of illustrations of the overwhelming shittiness of modern living, most of them relatable, but also a pretty outrageous one where an elderly patient is watching cable news and growls just about the most obscenely racist thing you can imagine, then immediately dies. Later, her grieving son asks if there were any last words. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christine Woods, David Yow, Devon Graye, Elijah Wood, Gary Anthony Williams, Jane Levy, Lee Eddy, Macon Blair, Matt Orduna, Melanie Lynskey, Netflix, Portland, Robert Longstreet, Sundance Jury Prize
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Crime | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, August 16th, 2023
First thing I want to say is that I’ve been calling this movie “Oppy” while having no idea that it’s what everyone calls him in the movie. I guess it’s just the natural, instinctive nickname that comes to mind for J. Robert Oppenheimer, even before “J.R.”
Second thing I want to say is that I was so wrong about the phenomenon of OPPENHEIMER! I had been confused as to why people were talking about it as a sure-thing blockbuster smash, but here I am finally having seen it after 3 weeks of sold out shows at the Imax. I had to give in and buy the tickets a week in advance, and the show did sell out in the same theater that never filled up for DEAD RECKONING, JOHN WICK 4, CREED III, DIAL OF DESTINY, etc. There’s lots of hype about it being shot for Imax format, and this is is the only full Imax format screen in the state, so that’s important context. But still – a 3-hour R-rated drama about a scientist selling out every show every day for weeks? Just because Christopher Nolan directed it? Hooray for the auteur theory! (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alden Ehrenreich, Alex Wolff, biopic, Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy, Dane DeHaan, David Dastmalchain, David Krumholtz, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Imax, Jack Quaid, James Remar, Josh Hartnett, Macon Blair, Matt Damon, Matthias Schweighofer, Rami Malek, Robert Downey Jr., Scott Grimes, Tom Conti
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 30 Comments »
Monday, May 22nd, 2023
HOLD THE DARK – not to be confused with Julie Taymor’s musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark – is a made-for-Netflix movie from 2018. I guess time flies, because I didn’t realize it had been that many years I’d been meaning to see it. It was on my list because it’s the fourth film from director Jeremy Saulnier (MURDER PARTY, BLUE RUIN, GREEN ROOM), and it’s written by Macon Blair, who appeared in all of those as an actor (and directed the upcoming remake of THE TOXIC AVENGER).
The best label I can come up with to describe this one is an Alaskan Gothic. It’s quiet and gloomy, with lots of snow, tiny fire-lit cabins, death and superstition. A movie that gives you the feeling of cold, wet socks inside your boots, and wearing a heavy winter coat indoors. It starts with a little boy playing outside in the small Alaskan village of Keelut, and a wolf approaches. And then the kid is gone – apparently not the first child to disappear around here. His mother Medora (Riley Keough, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD) sends a letter to a wolf expert named Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright, SHAFT) who once had to kill a wolf and wrote about it in a book she read. She wants him to kill this wolf before her husband Vernon (The Northman himself, Alexander Skarsgard) gets back from the war. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alaska, Alexander Skarsgard, James Badge Dale, Jeffrey Wright, Jeremy Saulnier, Julian Black Antelope, Macon Blair, Riley Keough, Tantoo Cardinal, William Giraldi
Posted in Reviews, Horror, Thriller | 15 Comments »
Tuesday, March 31st, 2020
Note: since many of us are on lockdown I want to make sure some of the things I review are extra accessible. I watched this one streaming for free on Tubi (and I’m sure you can get it without ads elsewhere).
When Lucky McKee directed MAY (2002), he became one of a wave of promising new 21st century horror directors. He hasn’t received as much attention as Eli Roth, Rob Zombie or some of the other guys who started at the same time, maybe because he hasn’t ended up being as prolific. But he’s got a permanent place in my hall of fame because THE WOMAN (2011) is My Favorite Horror Movie of the 2010sTM. So I’m interested when he comes out with a new one.
Last time it was one called BLOOD MONEY in 2017. If you heard about that one, and it wasn’t from me, I’d be surprised. It’s a straight to video/streaming thriller about some young people finding a bunch of money in the woods and trying to get away from the gun-toting hedge fund jerk it belongs to, played by John Cusack. Obviously I prefer the thorough originality of THE WOMAN, but I also dig when a good director can follow a pretty standard genre template and craft it with bits of nuance and personality that you don’t expect. In particular I was impressed by some of its gender themes, by the performance of Willa Fitzgerald (Scream: the tv series) and that the only woman in the movie gets to be the Tupac-in-JUICE character who pushes them into danger. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Caitlin Stasey, Isai Torres, Lifetime movies, Lucky McKee, Macon Blair, Sasha Frolova, Thora Birch
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 13 Comments »
Wednesday, August 23rd, 2017
The prodigal son has returned. Four years ago, Steven Soderbergh (OUT OF SIGHT) had gotten burnt out on directing and decided to retire. After the 2013 doubleheader of SIDE EFFECTS and BEHIND THE CANDELABRA he hung it all up, and in the interim he’s done nothing but kick back, lay low, recharge his batteries, start his own brand of Bolivian muscat brandy called Singani 63, do an edit of HER for Spike Jonze, create his own alternate cuts of PSYCHO, HEAVEN’S GATE, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and 2001: A SPACY ODYSSEY for fun, shoot and edit MAGIC MIKE XXL, direct, produce, shoot and edit 20 one-hour episodes of The Knick, and relax. And now, finally, he’s back to work!
I guess that makes BEHIND THE CANDELABRA his Black Album and LOGAN LUCKY his Kingdom Come. But fortunately without a duet with Coldplay at the end.
If it was anybody besides Soderbergh it would seem weird that it was this one that pulled him back in – arguably as close to hack-work as he’s ever done. It’s sort of a redo of his three OCEAN’S movies but with hick characters and locations. But even a weak Soderbergh movie has always been worth seeing, and one of his talents is finding the compelling in the routine. It’s a bouncy, far-fetched caper story, but he seems completely invested in the lead character and the time he spends with his precocious little daughter (Farrah Mackenzie, DOLLY PARTON’S COAT OF MANY COLORS), and gives those scenes weight that really anchors the movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Driver, Channing Tatum, Daniel Craig, David Denman, David Holmes, Dwight Yoakam, heist, Hilary Swank, Jack Quaid, Jesco White, Katherine Waterston, Katie Holmes, Macon Blair, NASCAR, Riley Keough, Sebastian Stan, Seth McFarlane, Steven Soderbergh
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 17 Comments »
Monday, April 25th, 2016
GREEN ROOM has a pretty good spin on a classic setup: a touring punk band in a siege movie. This shitty young band called The Ain’t Rights, living out of their van and crashing with strangers, spending more on beer than on gas, going out of their way for questionable gigs in The Middle of Nowhere, Oregon, end up locked in the dressing room of a scary skinhead club because one of them walked in on a murder. The Punks Who Knew Too Much.
If there’s not already an ad that says “it’s ROMPER STOMPER meets ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13!!!” then here it is available to cut and paste, A24 Films.
I have very little experience in the world of punk rock, but from my ignorant perspective this comes off as a more authentic depiction than any of the other movies I’ve seen about it. That includes RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD. And I don’t consider Cherry Bomb from HOWARD THE DUCK to be punk at all. Anyway I’ll be interested to find out if my musician friends find more fault with it than I did. To me it feels like writer/director Jeremy Saulnier might’ve come up with the idea while playing in a band like this, or if not he must’ve known people in this life. Like his first movie MURDER PARTY (a horror comedy in the world of Brooklyn hipster artists) it seems to be inspired by subcultures and people he knows from life, not movies. And like his second movie BLUE RUIN (an indie revenge drama) it goes out of its way to make violence messier, uglier and more difficult than in most movies. Like, what if it wasn’t Bruce Willis, but a regular dude like you who had to fight his way out of a corner using sharp objects he finds laying around?
But it comes a little closer than the other two movies to straight up embracing its genre. It even uses the always enjoyable action movie move of one of the band members getting referred to as “Jiujitsu” and then it turns out he really is a practicioner of said martial art. His armlocks and chokeholds come in handy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alia Shawkat, Anton Yelchin, Callum Turner, Jeremy Saulnier, Joe Cole, Macon Blair, Patrick Stewart, punk, siege movies
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 37 Comments »
Wednesday, July 30th, 2014
I don’t know what this has to do with BLUE JASMINE, but it’s pretty good as a standalone.
I saw alot of film festival acclaim for BLUE RUIN as a movie about how bad and ugly revenge actually is. I gotta tell you I was skeptical, because I didn’t want to hear some joyless lecture about the wrongness of something most of us never experience, especially as punishment for our inherent enjoyment of classic action movie formula. DEATH SENTENCE and others prove you can make that point and still have fun.
Luckily my assumptions were unfounded. As the writer Harry once told Flavor Flav, “Don’t believe the hype.” BLUE RUIN isn’t trying to teach us a lesson, it’s actually a fairly traditional and enjoyable thriller about a murder and ensuing mess, spiraling out of control like that time the Cat in the Hat came over and ate cake in the bath tub. It’s just that it comes from young independent filmatists so it feels more like it’s happening to some dude you know than the usual slick Hollywood players. It’s quiet, naturalistic, and you have to piece together the backstory from what’s happening, you don’t get alot of obvious exposition. The avenger is a pretty non-descript nerd named Dwight (Macon Blair). Big, sunken eyes, a little doughy, bad haircut, no cool motorcycle jacket or shades or nothin. Just a normal guy. Could work at Best Buy or something.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Devin Ratray, Jeremy Saulnier, Macon Blair, revenge
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 27 Comments »
