In my latest for Film Comment, I wrote about Robert Flaherty’s “documentary”, Man of Aran, filmed out on the Aran Islands in 1932-33, released in 1934. Its footprint is pretty huge and if you go to the Aran Islands now, you can’t escape its presence. The story behind the story is almost more interesting than the film itself – but the footage of the island is awe-inspiring. I mean, look at this.
In 2013, my first review over on Rogerebert.com went live. Roger himself had assigned it to me. It was a review of Christian Petzold’s wonderful Barbara. I sent in my draft to him, terrified and excited. He emailed back in 10 minutes, saying, “This is wonderful. I love how you start with the details of what you saw.” My mother was staying with me at the time (long story: I was very very ill and could not take care of myself at the time), and the two of us shared an intense moment of triumph, her for me, and me for me, that in the midst of my sickness this amazing unforeseen opportunity had come along. It felt like such a hopeful harbinger. It is so special to me that my mother was there for me in that moment. It had been a terrible and hair-raising 5 years. I will be forever grateful. Ebert reaching out to me changed my life.
I have reviewed 3 to 5 movies a month ever since then for Ebert. It’s a great gig, and rare in this terrible racket. I have interviewed directors. I have gone to Ebertfest every year. It’s a gig I am grateful for. I feel proud to be a part of it. Roger Ebert died a month after my Barbara review went up. But at least I got to have that one moment with him. Roger, wherever you are, thank you.
Here are some of the pieces I’ve written over the years, things I’m proud of.
A Band Called Death (2013)
Metallica Through the Never (2013)
Nymphomaniac Volume 1 (2014)
Nymphomaniac Volume 2 (2014)
Hateship Loveship (2014)
The Strange Little Cat (2014)
Love Is Strange (2014)
The Homesman (2014)
I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story (2015)
Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015)
Eden (2015)
Interview with Reed Morano on Meadowland
Crimson Peak (2015)
Spotlight (2015)
Carol (2015)
Christmas Again (2015)
Night Owls (2015). I interviewed director Charles Hood about Night Owls here.
Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (2016)
Cemetery of Splendour (2016)
Krisha (2016)
Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)
The Fits (2016)
World-class Acting: On Joan Crawford and Sudden Fear
Disorder (2016)
Under the Shadow (2016)
Little Sister (2016)
Elle (2016)
Always Shine (2016)
Things to Come (2016)
20th Century Women (2016)
Book Review: Mary Astor’s Purple Diary
Ma (2017)
Kedi (2017)
Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances: An Interview with Sam Schacht about The Method
Heal the Living (2017)
Manifesto (2017)
Interview with Charles Taylor on Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-in Near You
Megan Leavey (2017)
The Beguiled (2017)
Columbus (2017)
Beach Rats (2017)
Rat Film (2017)
Super Dark Times (2017)
Princess Cyd (2017)
The Greatest Showman (2017)
The Last Movie Star (2018)
You Were Never Really Here (2018)
Elvis Presley: The Searcher (2018)
My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here.) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. He did series on books he loved, and albums he loved. I thought it would be fun to put up some of the stuff here. So we’ll start with his list of 50 Best Albums. I’ll put up one every Monday.
Brendan’s list of 50 Best Albums is part music-critique and part memoir and part cultural snapshot.
I have always loved these essays, because I love to hear my brother talk. I am happy to share them with you!
I don’t like the E Street Band. There. I said it and I don’t care who knows it.
OK, fine, Born In The U.S.A. is a perfect album but I think “Born To Run” is overrated, “The River” sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of one, and “The Wild, The Innocent, and The E-Street Shuffle” is just embarrassing. At their worst they remind me of a coked-out middle manager over-dancing to Journey in white jeans.
Most bands are BANDS. You can’t separate one of the members from the rest. This is why the E-Streeters are ultimately session players and not members of a band. I don’t care how many photos they put on the cover of Bruce leaning on Clarence or Little Stevie or Max. It is Bruce and whoever he brings along for the ride.
Which is why Nebraska is perfect. Much of Springsteen’s music in the ’70’s suffered under the weight of ambition. I SHALL NOW CAPTURE THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA IN 4 MINUTES OR LESS, AND BY SPIRIT I MEAN THE DIRTY UNDERBELLY AND THE SOARING HOPE, THE PASSION AND THE DESPAIR, THE EVERYTHING AND NOTHING, THE OVER AND THE UNDER, WHAT THE HELL WAS I SAYING?
The E-Street Band did their best to uphold this mandate but who could live up to an all-encompassing quest for immortality? The true anthem occurs not with forethought, but with humility. Listen to “Born To Run” and try to find a humble moment. You can’t do it.
I also find it ironic that Nebraska is considered Springsteen’s first solo album. In my opinion his albums were all solo records, this one merely was honest enough to admit that he didn’t need all those other guys, they were just part of his show.
Admittedly, to this point this has not been a review of Nebraska but a referendum on The E Street Band. While this might seem unnecessary, it is vital in understanding just what makes this album so great and such a departure. Bruce recorded the songs you hear on Nebraska as templates for the band to build from. They took these home demos and expanded on them in typical E-Street fashion.
Bruce then decided it was time to let the dream die. He scrapped the full band recordings and released Nebraska as he’d recorded it…alone.
Nebraska begins with “Nebraska”.
As Bruce brings us along on a murder spree that spans the Badlands, he immediately announces that this isn’t going to be your father’s Bruce Springsteen record. There is no glory, just a polite sociopath who is not sorry for his crimes, but glad to have at least “had us some fun”. America is not the breeding ground for dreams but merely monsters who kill them.
“Atlantic City” brings us back East and into the shoes of a man who is about to commit murder for money. He’s in a jam and can’t see any other way out.
He consoles himself by saying, “Maybe everything that dies one day comes back” but it is small consolation indeed. Juxtaposing these two murderous narratives, Bruce dares us to find sympathy for either devil. Sure the down-on-his-luck would-be gun-for-hire of “Atlantic City” is a pawn in some boss’ game, sure his victims won’t be quite so innocent as the drifter’s kill in “Nebraska”, but victims they will be.
“Mansion On The Hill” is simple is as simple does. Poor man looks at rich man’s house.
Next up on the docket is “Johnny 99” in which a man is sentenced to 99 years in prison for killing a night clerk.
The line “I got debts no honest man can pay” recurs here and the economic thrust of the album becomes clearer. Is a man’s guilt lessened by his circumstances? The men accused seem to think so but the horror of these tales doesn’t allow us that kind of certainty.
Until this moment, the album is stark, finely carved, emotionally resonant, and haunting. It is about to rocket into tragedy and genius.
“Highway Patrolman” packs so much action into its 5 minutes and 38 seconds that Sean Penn made a movie out of it.
It tells the story of two brothers who grow up on a farm. One goes off to fight in Vietnam, the other stays behind to work the land. They may or may not be in love with the same girl who marries the one who took over the farm. The farm goes under and the farmer becomes a cop to provide for his family. The Vietnam Vet comes back and can’t seem to stay out of trouble, as much as his cop brother looks out for him. Finally he gets into a scrape that turns fatal and a car chase ensues. The Patrolman allows his brother to escape across the Canadian border.
How Springsteen manages to pull this all off in rhyming couplets is astonishing. The human cost of crime and its collateral victims is brutally apparent.
“State Trooper” flips the coin to view law enforcement from the point of view of a criminal driving on the New Jersey Turnpike.
He says, “I got a clear conscience ’bout the things that I done” but still he prays that the State Trooper won’t pull him over. After the first 5 songs, we share that prayer because the desperate men that people this world use murder as a means of escape.
“Used Cars” returns to the mind of the poor, as a young boy dreams of being able to afford a new car some day.
The violence of the other songs persists, however, and that very dream of wealth seems like a surefire path to destruction.
“Open All Night” might have been an outtake from “Born To Run”, it’s all chrome and wheels and late night driving and nowhere and no-how.
But again, the context has changed so drastically that even these declarations of love and fidelity seem as if they’d been wrought with weapons, bathed in blood, cured in filth.
“My Father’s House” drops an emotional A-bomb into the proceedings.
A man dreams of his father’s house. He wakes determined that their relationship will be repaired, that they won’t hurt each other anymore, that they will love as father and son. He rushes to his car, drives to his father’s house, and finds that his father doesn’t live there anymore. The primal relationship is forever scarred.
“Reason To Believe” seems innocuous enough, a litany of woes that end with Bruce saying, “Still at the end of every hard earned day/People find some reason to believe.”
Upon closer inspection, this is hardly the uplifting gospel moment it appears to be on the surface. In the first stanza the narrator is laughing at a man who is prodding a dead dog with a stick. In the second, a scorned lover waits every day for the man who will never come back to her. In the third, he compares a baby being baptized to the death of an old man. In the fourth, he witnesses a marriage but later sees the groom waiting for the woman who has spurned him. The singer of these songs doesn’t sympathize. There is a glint of amusement in his jaded eye, the eye of a man who laughs at the weak, manipulates the uncertain, kills the inconvenient.
This is not the sound of a man who is in a good time rock and roll band. This is the sound of a man who has decided that his band is for shit, his fans don’t get the message, his image has preceded him like some sort of bullshit carnival barker, and the only connection he is able to muster is with drifters who kill for pleasure, money, or panic.
The album isn’t called Reason To Believe. It’s called Nebraska. The almost deserted setting that housed a man who thought it would be “fun” to steal a car, drive off into the sunset, and kill everything in his path.
The scary thing is? He was born to run.
— Brendan O’Malley
I love Gaspar Noé, warts and all. I look forward to his new films like I look forward to some exciting event where I have no idea what’s going to happen.
His latest, Climax, is really great. I reviewed the film for Rogerebert.com.
Oh, and in the review, I referenced the opening credits sequence for his 2009 film Enter the Void. Here they are:
Me backstage during a production of Macbeth, in which I played one of the witches, reading William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, before it was time to put on my costume.
My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here.) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. He did series on books he loved, and albums he loved. I thought it would be fun to put up some of the stuff here. So we’ll start with his list of 50 Best Albums. I’ll put up one every Monday.
Brendan’s list of 50 Best Albums is part music-critique and part memoir and part cultural snapshot.
I have always loved these essays, because I love to hear my brother talk. I am happy to share them with you!
Some things are great because they achieve such clarity of talent and perception that they pierce you to the heart. Some things are great because they make you forget that your heart can be pierced and they transport you to a place of lighthearted enjoyment. Some things are great because they speak directly about our society in such a way that something seems to come further into focus.
The Shaggs are not great for any of those reasons. In fact, to use the word great in conjunction with The Shaggs is an iffy proposition.
The Wiggins sisters lived in Fremont, New Hampshire, a small logging town way up north. Their grandmother had had a premonition that her son would have several daughters and that they would become famous musicians. Austin Wiggins believed his mother, so, after having married and produced several daughters, he set about the task of bringing his mother’s prophecy to light.
It was the late ’60’s.
He bought a drum set, several pawn shop guitars, and some rudimentary amplifiers. The girls set about learning how to play and writing songs. They were a bit nervous when their dad suggested that they play the Fremont Town Hall Saturday night dance. They didn’t think they were ready, even though they’d been taking lessons and practicing together for just over a year. But Austin insisted. They became a fixture there, playing weekly until Austin’s death in 1975. The group disbanded after that.
Austin took them out of high school and home-schooled them so they could focus on their music. He also arranged for them to go down to Boston and record an album. Again they weren’t sure they were ready for that step but what Austin said went.
The album they recorded is some of the most astounding music you will ever hear. You can’t sing along to it, you can’t tap your foot, you can’t get lost in the melody, you merely try to keep your jaw from hitting the floor too hard.
At the time that they recorded the album their youngest sister Rachel was not yet accompanying them on bass for all the songs. She only plays on “That Little Sports Car”. The lineup for the rest of the songs is as follows:
Betty Wiggin – rhythm guitar, vocals
Helen Wiggin – drums
Dorothy “Dot” Wiggin – lead vocal, guitar, arrangements
It is almost impossible to avoid cruelty while describing this music. The girls seem to be playing different songs simultaneously. Legend has it that during the recording the girls would stop and say one of them had made a mistake. The engineer couldn’t fathom how any of them could tell.
How can something so disjointed and crude be one of the “greatest” albums of all time? Well, for one thing, you can’t stop listening to it once you start. It leaves you flabbergasted.
I shall take a moment to try and invoke the sound.
Picture 3 very sad teenage marionettes with instruments. They would rather be back in their boxes; they don’t like you looking at them or listening to them. But they have no choice so they start to play. Their only job is to keep playing so that the puppet master is happy. They don’t realize that they have free will. This mixture of survival instinct and total oppression gives the music a haunted quality, like prisoners forced to play instruments they have no affinity for.
Apparently the locals would come out and taunt the girls while they tried to entertain at The Fremont Town Hall. But they kept playing until their father passed away. Then they didn’t have to pretend anymore.
But, still, Austin’s mother was right. His daughters are famous. Some have greatness thrust upon them.
— Brendan O’Malley
My review of Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life, about a couple’s infertility struggles, starring Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn, was one of my favorite films of 2018. I reviewed for Film Comment‘s September/October 2018 issue and it appeared just in the print edition. But it’s now online.
If you haven’t seen the film, I highly recommend it. It’s not just dark. It’s funny too. A real ACTOR’s movie. Here’s my review.
I feel so fortunate to have met him when he came and spoke at my school. In a particularly magic moment, he took the hand of a student in the front row, pulled her to her feet, and danced with her, taking her in hand, floating sideways across the stage with her, a moment of perfect grace.
During his time with us, he was asked, “How do you direct Audrey Hepburn and not fall in love with her?”
He replied, “You don’t.”
Stanley Donen was responsible for creating such iconic images and movements and feelings they’ve seeped so totally into the culture we can’t even trace them back to their origins. Or, we can, but these images, moments, gestures, feelings, have traveled so far they have taken on a life of their own. It is as though they have always been there. But they haven’t. He created them.
He’d be in the history books for this alone.
But then there’s:
and …
Funny Face, another adored classic. Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn? Come on!
Pajama Game, co-directed with George Abbott (who also wrote the script, and co-directed the Broadway production with Jerome Robbins), is also a fave. In the famous “Steam Heat”, it’s really Bob Fosse’s choreography that is the star. The camera placement and camera movement – from stage level – to above the stage – to sometimes (rarely) up on the stage – paves the way for that realization. It’s about Fosse. Filming a dance sequence in this intuitive and generous way is almost a lost art.
We need long shots to see the three steam-chimneys move as one. The camera has to move at the same speed as them – but with then the big flung-out show-bizzy Fosse gestures – you need cuts to accentuate. Film-making is a collaboration: editing/camera/direction. In “Steam Heat,” nothing distracts from that which is most important: the choreography as executed by these geniuses.
Speaking of Fosse, there’s also this great number from Damn Yankees, with Fosse and Gwen Verdon.
Fosse again, a fantastic number in Stanley Donen’s film adaptation of The Little Prince:
Donen’s work in the 60s is excellent, zipping with verve, fun, silliness, heart. Two for the Road, starring Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn may … dare I say it … be my favorite film of his? Oh hell, I don’t need to choose. But it’s so wonderful.
How much do I love Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn? When Hepburn musingly asks, “How do you shave in there?”, touching Cary Grant’s dimple, she asks what so many of us thought.
The film is filled with meta-fun, plus their beauty, they’re both so insanely beautiful, beauty and charm to revel in. The film revels in it frankly and with no apology. Why deprive ourselves of enjoying their beauty, or pretend that that’s not what we’re doing? Donen knew what we wanted.
And then there’s the meta-perfection of this moment.
Here, Donen loops in the awareness of the entirety of Grant’s career, his rapport with audiences for 30 years at that point, the love everyone had for him. Let’s adore him without caveat or exception.
In 1997, Stanley Donen won an Honorary Oscar. His acceptance speech is one of the high watermarks in the history of the Academy Awards broadcast.
We’ve lost a huge link to our collective past. But his work will live on.
Rest in peace.
For a couple of years now, my hilarious cousin Emma – whom I have written about before – has been making videos she calls “Melatonin Movie Reviews”, where she pops 4 Melatonins and then discusses current releases.
Honestly, my family … I can’t keep up!
Well, Comedy Central took notice of what Emma was doing and brought her into the fold. Congratulations, Emma!
Proud to present to you, on Comedy Central, my cousin Emma, a.k.a. “Melatony” and her hilarious roommate, a.k.a. “Silent Siskel”, weighing in on the Oscars, after downing 4 Melatonins.
My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here.) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. He did series on books he loved, and albums he loved. I thought it would be fun to put up some of the stuff here. So we’ll start with his list of 50 Best Albums. I’ll put up one every Monday.
Brendan’s list of 50 Best Albums is part music-critique and part memoir and part cultural snapshot.
I have always loved these essays, because I love to hear my brother talk. I am happy to share them with you!
The first stutter of the marching band snares that skitter along underneath “Lose My Breath” acts like some magic elixir on me, dressing me up in a tuxedo and dropping me right into an old screwball comedy. I am Cary Grant and I don’t mean I’m a gorgeous movie star, I mean I’m a naive professor who can’t quite wrap his head around the fact that there is a woman in a silky evening gown standing ever so close.
Then “Cater 2 U” kicks in and whatever machinations she has undertaken to get me away from my important work on particle phsyics have worked. Through some sequence of mishaps and little white lies we are alone in a fabulously appointed hotel room. I’ve bumped my head and must lie down. She sits next to me, rustling the fabric of that shimmering dress, and presses a poultice to the only lump the code will allow her to acknowledge.
But, being the clumsy minx that she is, she spills a champagne bottle all over me and my throbbing tuxedo. Just then Destiny’s Child start cooing “T-Shirt” and we’ve got to get out of these wet things!
The screwball reasserts itself as we’re flushed out of the hotel room by an overeager bellhop. In the lobby in nothing more than my skivvies I implore the young lady to simply leave me alone, why is that so hard for her to do? Just then my fiancee (fiancee, I’d completely forgotten!) sweeps through the lobby on her father’s arm declaring that the grant I’d expected to complete my work has now been taken off the table. Destiny’s Child ask, ‘Is She The Reason?’ on behalf of the wet minx who now views me as something of a cad.
She has a quick conversation with a maid. “Girl” underscores the scene as the two commiserate in thwarted love.
Our wet heroine then flees the lobby and sits at the hotel bar sipping then gulping cocktails at an alarming rate. Through Destiny’s Child she tells herself to break this “Bad Habit”. I’m still shell-shocked in the lobby in my underpants, too shaken up by the loss of my potential academic future to realize that the woman of my dreams is a mere yards away and under the happy spell of martinis.
A quick kick in the rear by the aforementioned bellhop brings me to my senses and I rush in to tell her I could care less about that silly grant and even less about that horrible woman I was engaged to only moments before. Can’t she see I’ve changed? She is deep into intoxicated grief however and rebuffs me, telling me why through the mournful lilt of Destiny’s Child “If”.
In a fit of desperate invention, I rush into the convention being hosted by my ex-fiancee and her war profiteer father! Wrapped in a bathrobe monogrammed with the initials of the swanky hotel I bum rush the stage and begin a rambling explanation of my research. My findings are shocking indeed but when combined with my declaration of undying love for the young lady hiding in the back of the hall they elicit a rousing cheer, as Destiny’s Child declares me “Free”.
My poor sexy ex-fiancee spikes her heels into the plush rug, whips the fur stole further around her neck, and along with Beyoncé, declares herself “Through With Love” until she collides with the bellhop in front of the marble staircase. He breaks her fall with a kiss.
My tuxedo restored, I dance cheek to cheek with my new fiancee, the right one, who not only loves me dearly and is sexy as all get out, but is also an heiress bent on funding research that she can feel passionate about. Destiny’s Child sings “Love” as we are revealed to be in the lobby of the hotel where we have just gotten married and decided to live.
Is this an album review? I’m not sure. But when Beyoncé asks, “Can you keep up, baby boy?” and then puts her foot down and says, “Put it on me deep in the right direction” that is what happens to me. I’m scandalized in all the best ways.
— Brendan O’Malley
