A summer movie and a presidential campaign have at least one thing in common: it is the job of each to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Neither is trying to push the envelope or engage us in creative discussion; they are both trying to sell us on a narrative that reflects a…
“The Master” opens on a shot of the marbled blue-white wake of a battleship, and director Paul Thomas Anderson returns to that image several times throughout the film. Soon, it becomes clear why; the image embodies the film’s subject, the muddled and mysterious history that we leave behind us, specifically the history of one sailor…
One of my favorite movies about American democracy in action is “Election,” Alexander Payne’s 1999 dark comedy on the making of a high school president. Tom Perrotta, the author of the novel on which the movie is based, has cited the 1992 presidential election as inspiration, and it makes sense. The movie follows the same…
This is an introduction to the politics of “Parks and Recreation,” and it marks the first post of “Parks and Rec” Week here at Reel Change. Check back later this week for more analysis of the show, the fifth season of which premieres this Thursday at 9:30 on NBC. My wife and I celebrated our…
Richard Gere has built a long career out of playing a very specific type of role: men who are successful and corrupted by power but with enough latent virtue to be worth rooting for (see “Pretty Woman,” “Chicago,” “Primal Fear” for examples). “Arbitrage,” the muddled new thriller from first-time writer/director Nicholas Jarecki, gets the first…
I hate to criticize movies. That may seem like an odd statement coming from someone who writes a blog built on film criticism, but it stems from personal experience. I spent a few years in my mid-twenties making independent films. On one of them, I was the writer, director, editor, producer, and lead actor. In…
Instead of a traditional fall movie preview, I have identified four movies that will appeal to Republicans and five that will appeal to Democrats. Here are those five movies: Branded (September 7) With echoes of “The Matrix,” “Branded” paints a portrait of a dystopian society (we’ve seen a lot of those this year) in which…
Every fall, major studios and independent films alike trot out their prestige pictures. Even though the Academy Awards have undergone a series of rules changes to be more friendly towards blockbusters, the fall season is still traditionally reserved for serious movies that may very well be in the running for Oscar consideration. Naturally, it a…
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