It begins and ends with a look. In that look is hesitance, longing, desire, confusion, confidence, conviction, hope. Even love. On NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, writer and critic Glenn Weldon described real chemistry between actors living in the look, elaborating on the attraction manifesting in the movement of the eyes.
Bloodline is all about deception. What’s beneath the surface, what we hide from the world and the lies we tell to protect ourselves and our families. The problem is, and the one that is explored in Bloodline, that it’s usually our families who know our deepest secrets anyways. And if you have a family like the Rayburns’ they are likely to use them against you at some point. What becomes clear in these first six episodes is that these are people who don’t let things go.
The Wolf of Wall Street Written by Terence Winter Directed by Martin Scorsese USA, 2013 Leonardo DiCaprio is a year away from 40, though he still retains the same boyish air and enthusiasm that marked him from Titanic onward. But over the intervening 16 years, he’s thinned down enough that he has a leaner, tighter, …
The Spectacular Now Directed by James Ponsoldt Written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber USA, 2013 The teenage genre is an infinite well Hollywood enjoys returning to, even if such repetition can frequently wind up creating some of the most inherently false-seeming films. We like watching movies about teenagers so we can be nostalgic …
So I know it’s Alien Invasion Month and that the key requirements of Sound on Sight’s ongoing theme are quite simple: a) aliens and b) invading. I also know that apart from the U.S. military’s invasion of small town Ohio, there’s not a whole lot of that second part in J.J. Abrams’ Super 8, least of all from its star extraterrestrial, a recently escaped interplanetary alien-spider-gorilla who’s been exacting revenge on the government that studied him by abducting townsfolk and household appliances to rebuild his ship constructed from white, morphing Rubiks cubes. It’s all very technical, if you must know.
Zero Dark Thirty Directed by Kathryn Bigelow Written by Mark Boal U.S.A., 2012 The fascinating directing and screenwriting duo of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal have consciously taken an emotionally and intellectually provocative route in their collective filmmaking career in the past few years. Their interest with regards to telling rich, compelling stories on the …
Argo Directed by Ben Affleck Written by Chris Terrio USA, 2012 Improbably, Ben Affleck has turned his career around in the last few years from the pit where such cinematic embarrassments as Gigli and Daredevil forever reside. He’s essentially transformed himself from a tabloid cover-star into a poised actor-director who subscribes to the “Hollywood doesn’t …
Thanksgiving is here (American Thanksgiving, at least), making it officially the Holiday Season. It’s a time for reflection, for pausing to appreciate those people and things we’re most grateful for, and for focusing on what’s really important in life. Television. Here are just a few of the many things I am grateful for this year. …