I always kind of liked Roland Emmerich. He does bloated, summer-blockbuster destruction better (or at least more entertainingly) than just about anybody.

Fuck Yeah, Eight Diagram Pole Fighter! I was lucky enough to see a 35mm print of that movie a few years back, and it was fucking gorgeous.

In the context of this conversation about how we process genocide, I have to once again proselytize for The Act of Killing, which is specifically about the mass killings in Indonesia in the 1960s, which were approved of by the United States. But more than that, it's about how we process, or don't process, atrocities…

re: court-packing

It's just one more decision in a long, slow process of completely abandoning realism as a legitimate judicial principal. "Tough shit" (or "tough luck" as Andrew Koppleman more tactfully puts it) has been the Court's guiding jurisprudence since the Rehnquist Court. The conservative wing would like nothing more than to…

"Don't Stop" and "You Make Loving Fun" are probably my two least favorite Fleetwood Mac songs.

Man, it was so hard being a budding cinephile in the late '90s/early '00s because I idolized DeNiro, and each new film he made (most of which I ended up seeing in the theater) only served as further evidence that he gave not a single fuck anymore.

The exact same thing happened to me with a Claire Zulkey novel.

It's streaming on Netflix, along with four other movies from Kino's "Lubitsch in Berlin" set.

Your point is well-taken, and I tend to agree that it's better when someone actually attacks a song as a song in this feature. But here, Vanderslice's experience seemed to genuinely hate this song because of his bad experience. His hatred for these people is subsumed into the song and becomes a  part of it. It becomes…

Hey, I just watched Seven Chances last night! It was a lot of fun, wackier than most Keaton films. And, of course, the bridal chase is amazing.

It's weird. I think pretty much everyone who loves this movie makes some version of this claim. But as much as I admire Jonze and Eggers for doing something brave and ambitious in their adaptation of a beloved classic, I don't feel any connection at all to this movie's vision of childhood. (And I was a pretty…

That scene deserves far better than Crystal Castles — something like Burmese or The Body.

@PugsMalone:disqus That was not your mother who docented me.

Awesome! I wonder if she was my docent.

I was recently in Philadelphia and stopped by the Rosenbach Museum & Library, which features a new Maurice Sendak exhibit. It's pretty small, but also very cool. The centerpiece is a mural Sendak painted in his friends' children's bedroom. The whole wall was moved to Philly and restored, and it's a testament to Sendak…

Wow, that's really cool. Did you like it?

As I recall, Cooper's character was meant to be suggestive of Bush, not a direct satire of him, but a lot of critics tried to read it as straight satire. I agree with you that the main sin is a lack of focus.

@avclub-cfe912f5cb3aa572bd1c9ae2a9b82207:disqus Yeah, I actually like it, but it's definitely much better if you're already a Sayles fan going in.

I think the upshot of this conversation is: Don't start with Silver City.