Directed by John Schlesinger A happy young couple buys up a three-unit San Francisco apartment, with just barely enough capital to get by, but has the misfortune of bringing in chaos incarnate, a man named Carter Hayes (Michael Keaton). Hayes is something of a sociopath whose methods happen to orbit real estate. He could very … Continue reading Pacific Heights (1990)
San Francisco
It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1988)
Directed by Richard Linklater In his first film, Richard Linklater plays an aimless young man who wanders the western half of the country with no specific destination. He begins in Austin, then spends time in Montana and California and plenty of time on trains in between. His journey, in its own way, is like that … Continue reading It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1988)
Big Eyes (2014)
Directed by Tim Burton Big Eyes is Ed Wood-lite, another dramatization of a true story about an artist with varying degrees of success. In the former Tim Burton movie, Ed Wood was a director of unmistakably bad movies, though undeterred by each subsequent success. He remained an optimist through and through. In Big Eyes the … Continue reading Big Eyes (2014)
Venom (2018)
Directed by Ruben Fleischer Okay, so in Venom a parasite takes partial control of reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and turns him into a cannibalistic Spiderman type of thing, but don't be fooled (!), this movie is just like every other passable studio superhero movie out there. Sure, there are some interesting choices, Hardy has fun … Continue reading Venom (2018)
Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)
Directed by John Carpenter John Carpenter and Chevy Chase make for an unlikely duo in Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Chase plays Nick Halloway, a narcissist broker living in San Francisco who's not unlike Fletch or any other number of Chase personas, and just like in that 1985 film he finds himself embroiled in a plot … Continue reading Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)
The Game (1997)
Directed by David Fincher In David Fincher's The Game, a lonely, powerful control freak loses control. He is Nicholas Van Orson (Michael Douglas), an investment banker who lives in a large mansion that only accentuates his isolation. When one of his employees wishes him a happy 48th birthday, he implies to his assistant that he should … Continue reading The Game (1997)
Time After Time (1979)
Directed by Nicholas Meyer The most striking scene in Time After Time comes fairly early into the film, when two time travelers from 1893, one accidental and one purposeful, debate the state of the contemporary world (at least as it was in 1979). One of them is H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell), the famous writer who was … Continue reading Time After Time (1979)
Medicine for Melancholy (2008)
Directed by Barry Jenkins Medicine for Melancholy feels like a film from the French New Wave. It's a character study with no real plot. The shots are handheld, and the image is bleached and desaturated so much so that the movie calls attention to the ways in which it is just that, a movie. This … Continue reading Medicine for Melancholy (2008)
Contagion (2011)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh Contagion is an attempt at deadly realism, tracking a disease with about a 25% mortality rate over the course of a few months and through several different continents. The film jumps between countries and characters, tracking those affected and those responsible for coming up with a cure to a virus which … Continue reading Contagion (2011)
Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)
Directed by John Frankenheimer Birdman of Alcatraz is a little too long. That's my first thought. I can only listen to the soothing musings of Burt Lancaster for so long, and with this movie I started to tune him out at around the 100 minute mark. Lancaster plays Robert Stroud, a murderer quick to anger. … Continue reading Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)
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