Can we talk about the scene in the dentist’s office with the lead singer of Butt Hole Surfers? Can we just discuss that briefly? And that’s the least strange scene in the film. How about the plane crash. Or the time Daniel Johnston was released from a mental hospital on a clerical error and that night opened at CBGB’s? That moment in particular sort of summed up his whole story for me. But really, not one moment alone could do Johnston’s life justice. There’s just so many bizarre but genuinely moving puzzle pieces to his story that you sort of just have to see the movie and listen to the music. At one point his manager talks about someone asking which of Daniel’s albums he should listen to first and his answer was, quite appropriately, “All of them.”

I think by the time the credits rolled the only thing that truly surprised me was just how personal and moving the film was.

IMDb | Ebert

Tags: 4stars, moviereview

At first I was disappointed that this wasn’t the movie version of the Ben Folds Five song*. And after seeing it, extremely relieved that is wasn’t. The standard description of Brick is that it’s a Dashiell Hammett novel set in high school with the same stakes. And that’s just what it is. The plot borrows from the Maltese Falcon and similar books, yet instead of Sam Spade it’s some teenager named Brendon. The most shocking thing is that it works without any irony. But you get over that real quick and suddenly it’s one of the best noir crime movies of recent memory and now the fact that it’s set in high school is almost showboating.

*Joking.

Tags: 4stars, moviereview

God there’s a lot of smoking in this movie. The audience actually chuckled seeing Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow smoking while on camera. The smoke was perfect in the black and white cinematography. It was also interesting having the film look old and archival on the one hand with docu-style handheld and rack focuses on the other. It was like what a Truffaut documentary about Murrow might have looked like.

Tags: 4stars, moviereview

If you’ve seen a lot of Woody Allen movies you are familiar with the concept that if Allen isn’t in a movie, he has cast a surrogate. Will Ferrell in Melinda and Melinda, Kenneth Branagh in Celebrity, etc. So let’s assume there has to be a Woody Allen character in Match Point. I say it’s Scarlett Johansson. Obviously a hot 21 year old blonde will not invite many comparisons to Woody Allen but it’s there, the one-liners, the speech patterns. Look for it.

Also, awesome moment in the theatre. As the ring flew through the air and bounced back onto the ground the lady next to me exclaimed “Match point!” I think she thought the tennis event described at the top of the film about the ball hitting the net was a “match point.” This lady, needless to say, was a miraculous idiot.

IMdB - Match Point / Woody Allen

Tags: 4stars, moviereview, woodyallen