Robert Towne: 1934-2024
Another important showbiz death? I’m afraid so…
THE BEEKEEPER
A Jason Statham movie with most everything that portends, meaning THE BEEKEEPER (2024) won’t ever be mistaken for CITIZEN KANE
A CHINESE GHOST STORY (1987)
An enormously iconic Hong Kong fantasy, although I’ve never been all that impressed by it.
THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD
A film that in most particulars would appear to qualify for Profoundly Weird status, but which in the filmography of its director, Canada’s Guy Maddin, doesn’t seem too strange at all
BUFFET FROID
A very bizarre 1979 comedy by France’s Bertrand Blier that functions as a film noir parody, a cautionary essay on contemporary dehumanization and an unfiltered blast of surreal invention
FAUST (1994)
Jan Svankmajor does FAUST. Need I say more?
THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS
The “Most Amazing, Incredible, Remarkable True Story Ever Told”?
MIDORI-KO
The magnum opus of Japanese dementoid Keita Kurosaka
Donald Sutherland: 1935-2024
In the category of underappreciated actors, the recently deceased Donald Sutherland looms rather hugely
BATTLEFIELD EARTH
A rare example of a film to which the passage of time has actually been kind