Vikings & Beekeepers

Bound For Glory (1976, dir. Hal Ashby)

In an interview before he died, David Carradine, who plays radical folk singer Woody Guthrie in Bound For Glory, referred to Bound For Glory as the second best movie Hal Ashby ever made, only behind Ashby’s 1979 collaboration with Peter Sellers, Being There. For my money, Being There and Bound For Glory rank three and four, respectively, behind Harold And Maude, which despite the modern hipster re-appraisal (thanks, Wes Anderson) is as great as you think it is, and The Last Detail, which is the source of one of the great Jack Nicholson performances (note: I haven’t seen Ashby’s two other most celebrated films in Shampoo and Coming Home. Shampoo looks like it could be a lot of fun, but Coming Home reminds me of this).

(more…)

Defending Your Life (1991, dir. Albert Brooks)

Albert Brooks is one of the great comedians of our time. He might be one of the 10 funniest people in the world, but I haven’t done the official count yet, so it might still be close. He plays like a more aggressive and aggressively neurotic Woody Allen which helps give some of his satires (namely Modern Romance and Lost In America – Real Life is still on my Bucket List) an incredible amount of raw, unflinching bite. He also has one of the great comic voices of our time. Come on, the dude is Hank Scorpio.

(more…)

So here’s the start. I’ll probably be reviewing older movies in the future, but in the meantime I figured I’d kick off V&B’s film club with a couple of fresher offerings in the The Tree of Life and Midnight In Paris, two films that contrast nicely because their creators couldn’t be farther apart on the spectrum of proficiency – Tree is Terrence Malick’s fifth films since 1973, Midnight is Allen’s 38th. I hope you like the discussion.

(more…)