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An unexpected but fitting epitaph for a film preoccupied with the ephemeral, glancing briefly into a mundane future we’ve already left behind. It’s the magic hour in San Diego, city of god and tragedy.

As the unbearable panic mounts, a touch of release in the fantasy that the world – with its painful shortcomings, responsibilities, and consequences – could be forgotten or repressed. In this, we get a momentary reflection on just how unstable things have become in the last hour and thirty minutes. A film whose potency is discernible in our relief at having escaped it.

Pop Culture Archeology, Artistic Terrorism, and montage theory in Crazy Dave Tape Part 2

Domesticity is unnatural, it seems. Your voice will never reach him across that shaggy growth of bark and shadow, and junior will never grow up to be a football star.

An aperture of rock looms prominently in the frame, reminding us that nature is alive with its own uncommon manner of looking in which we are rendered curious objects of fascination and remembrance. This may help explain why all the ghosts take on photography as a hobby.

la mort des jeunes in Super Badass

“Be grateful for the music. Most of us die in silence.”

A film that really did mean to be good, and was. Thank you, John Paizs.

Zealots convene for their massive idol’s violent marching orders, and the rest is history

There are all sorts of beings in the jungle, and their sublime coexistence haunts me.

Offscreen violence leaves both memoir, memory, and malfeasance dancing in the wind.

Heartbroken Luisa sits by herself, yearning for a reversal of fortune that will never come.

Lloyd and his nurse share one last moment before the silence comes, changing this viewer forever.

Halfway through this bloody summer horror-comedy, we are treated to the two most unabashedly gorgeous minutes put to film last year: a naked, underwater dance, set to “The Flower Duet.” The only thing I saw all year that is actually even better in 3-D.

A half-a-century old piece of Jerome Robbins choreography, re-staged by dancers from the New York City Ballet and filmed in abandoned lots and old gymnasiums throughout New York.

In their darkest, bleakest moment, as they slowly slide toward the roaring incinerator amidst a mountain of shredded garbage, these abandoned, once-beloved toys hold hands and bravely face their certain death together. Incredible.

Because it was financed by Disney, this doc about the studio’s renaissance period of the early 90s could only briefly touch on the drama surrounding the partnership of Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg. But my interest was peaked enough to read three excellent books on the subject.

Gordon Gekko is with us throughout the either-too-short-or-too-long, ultimately disappointing sequel to Wall Street, but we don’t really believe he’s back until we get to see him, hair-slicked-back, talking on his cell phone and buying suits.