The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001)

(In tribute to Gene Hackman, 1930 - 2025)

Kin dread

Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums is richly layered as a wedding cake-- level after level of confectionery subtly sweetened and deftly whipped follow one after another, with baroque curlicues of icing ornamenting the edges. Not to everyone’s taste and I don’t quite like it as much as his previous Rushmore-- you felt as if you could actually have known the people in that movie. But for those who enjoy lightly sugared nonsense leavened with tart wit (as opposed to the thick syrup that passes for romantic comedy nowadays) and imagination, this is a feast.

Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)

Toying

Toy Story is a witty, precisely paced picture, a flawless entertainment. It has all your favorite toys packed in one movie. It has the voice of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, two proven actors with a pair of Oscars and several hundred million in boxoffice between them. It has wall-to-wall, state-of-the-art, computer-graphic effects designed to pop your eyes out, if you’re not careful. It has the multimedia might of the Walt Disney conglomerate behind it, for heavy marketing muscle. It’s going to be the biggest hit of the year.

The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, 2024)

The fountainhead

Brady Corbet's The Brutalist is his three-and-a-half hour Vistavision biopic on a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who emigrates to the United States for a fresh start on life-- use the word 'biopic' loosely because Laszlo Toth is nominally based on Hungarian architect Marcel Breuer only Breuer wasn't a Holocaust survivor, didn't scrabble too hard for his living, and didn't fanatically insist on having every detail of his plans exactly carried out; Corbet needed spicier material to work on, hence the changes.

The film is about capitalism, anti-Semitism, racism (kind of), and the immigrant experience in America; it's big in almost every sense of the word, down to the expansive 70 mm frame-- an extraordinary achievement considering this was shot for a slim $9 million. 

Interview with the Vampire (Neil Jordan, 1994)

A Bloody Mess

(WARNING: Plot twists and story discussed in explicit detail)

When I saw Interview With The Vampire I was floored, I couldn't get the movie out of my mind. Said to myself: have to read the book. The very next day I hooked myself a copy and read it. I couldn't believe it, I was devastated; the book if anything was worse than the movie.

Apocalypto's racism

Race to the bottom

Cultural anthropologist Liz Grandia's article* lays out far better than I ever could the kind of heedless ignorance Gibson likes to brandish in his movies (the kind of ignorance that chooses Anne Catherine Emmerich's texts (if they really are her texts-- there's doubt) over the Bible for a movie on Christ, or portrays Jews as demonic money-grubbing backstabbers who let the Romans do their dirty work for them).