A good critic is essentially a reductionist, distilling popular art and entertainment into its most basic components and highlighting which parts add to and which parts detract from the final product. It’s easy to take a movie like The Social Network and sing high praises for the hauntingly ambient soundtrack, the laser precise direction, and the compelling performances, just as it is easy to take a movie like Vampires Suck! and rake it over the coals for terrible writing and […]
Pass the Popcorn!
Pass the Popcorn: Dark Days – Tenth Anniversary Edition
Perhaps like me, you’ve never heard of Marc Singer’s documentary Dark Days (featuring music by DJ Shadow). Maybe that shouldn’t be so surprising. Spearheaded by an English immigrant with no prior filmmaking experience, shot on a less-than-shoestring budget and barely making a ripple in the American film mainstream, it was easy to miss. But it’s an intimate, emotionally powerful film that deserves wider recognition. Fortunately, the film’s significance is receiving the deluxe treatment to mark its tenth anniversary. When he […]
Pass the Popcorn: Todd Phillips’ “The Hangover Part 2”
Let’s get this out of the way: yes, The Hangover Part 2 is more of the same. The title implies (correctly) that it can be viewed as merely an extension of the earlier film, as opposed to a brand-new one, and it hits every beat in its (already-worn) formula succinctly. If you didn’t much care for The Hangover, that sentence should function as a perfectly serviceable review for you, and anything else I have to say is merely window-dressing. Not […]
“PJ20”: Or, Why This is Gonna Be an Awesome Year for Music Docs
I’m not much of a theater-goer, but I feel as though I’m gonna have to make quite a bit of time this year to check out music documentaries. As I’ve mentioned several times (most recently last week ), the Tribe Called Quest film, “Beats, Rhymes & Life”, is #1 on my must-watch list. However, another documentary that I recently got wind of is the Cameron Crowe-directed “PJ20”, the subject of which is one of my all-time favorite rock bands, Pearl Jam. A […]
Pass the Popcorn: “Still Bill”
Bill Withers seems like an unlikely subject for a movie, right? Even if you’re a soul music fan, hell-even if you were a Bill Withers fan up until the point that “Still Bill” was made, his life seemed like it was one of the least likely for even a documentary. An unassuming, regular-Joe singer/songwriter, Withers amassed a string of hits over the course of a decade before abruptly retiring to concentrate on family life. No drugs, no paralyzing car accidents, […]
Pass the Popcorn!: Popblerd Reviews “Howl”
When the opportunity arose to attend a premiere of the new movie “Howl”, I jumped at the chance. Not only was the opportunity to see a movie for FREE.99 a great deal, but after doing a little research on the film, my curiosity was piqued. I had a basic knowledge of Allen Ginsberg and the whole Beat Generation/San Francisco scene from reading several interviews with him (including one in Rolling Stone circa 1995 or 1996 that was really good), and […]