Movie Marathon

I had a pretty ideal weekend, which included a mini-movie-marathon comprised of seeing three pictures at the theater.

Don’t you just love this time of year? There’s so much to see!

From potential blockbusters designed to rake up during the holiday season to prestige pictures and indy films hoping for an Oscar nod to the occasional doc or quirky picture that fills in a gap or was delayed for some other reason, there’s a lot going on at the local independent cinema or multiplex.

Here are three short takes on the films I saw Saturday and Sunday; my movie-going partner and I reached an easy consensus about the three with Green Book easily the strongest of the films ahead of The Front Runner and Creed II.

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WIDOWS

I was sitting here contemplating a little post on Widows when I got a text asking who my favorite director is.

Wow.

Impossible for me to answer because there are so many variables.

The question is relevant, however, to my thinking about this film.

After all, if anyone else had made it, I would have liked Widows more.

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BlacKkKlansman

I didn’t write about BlacKkKlansman when I saw at the theater at least partly because I wanted to like it more than I did…after all, Spike Lee is one of my favorite filmmakers.

Don’t get me wrong, there is much to recommend the film, but it is not what I consider top-drawer among Lee’s work. Now that the film is available for home viewing, it seems a good time to make a comment or two about it here.

Since I love Spike Lee, I couldn’t resist including this shot of me with the iconic filmmaker taken during a visit to Wake Forest.

2010 at Wait Chapel on the Wake Forest University Campus.

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Boy Erased

There is much to recommend this screen adaptation of Garrard Conley’s memoir detailing his experience after his parents put him in a church-affiliated gay conversion program.

Certainly, with such programs still legal for minors in a majority of US states, training our awareness on these damaging programs is a worthy effort.

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The Old Man & the Gun

Just a short note on this one…

Sometimes a movie seems a bit less than the sum of its parts. This assessment comes from someone with a well-documented predilection for little pictures, intimate dramas, the slice of life aesthetic, all of which–arguably–this picture has.

Always a fan of Sissy Spacek and Casey Affleck and mostly a fan of Robert Redford (especially after the cragginess mitigated his early prettiness), I wanted more depth, something to make me know these characters better and to care more about them.

A Star is Born

I’ve been toying with an idea about the latest version of A Star Is Born in response to critics who feel the second half of the film delves too deeply into the male pain of Jack (Bradley Cooper, who also directs) at the expense of Ally’s (Lady Gaga) character.

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Guest Post: Women and Religion in Film

In advance of tomorrow’s screening of Black Narcissus in the Women and Religion in Film series (part of a/perture cinema’s Looking @ Art Film program), I asked series organizer Joshua Canzona to share some thoughts about the film (and I’m especially pleased to see his surprising reference to the Bechdel test!).
You can watch Black Narcissus at a/perture tomorrow morning (November 10 at 9:30 a.m.) and stay for a discuss between Dr. Canzona and his colleague from the Wake Forest University School of Divinity Dr. Katherine Shaner. General admission is $14.50, and student tickets are $12.50.

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