Behind The Camera with Steve Kim

Recently, Martin Scorsese caught some flack for likening Marvel movies -- and superhero movies in general -- to theme parks. His biggest criticism was that these stories present no emotional stakes for the characters and subsequently, for the audience. There are many ways in which Marvel movies differ from the works that Scorsese would point to as pinnacles of filmmaking. In his  New York Times opinion piece , Scorsese gives Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie as examples among others. Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie But is Scorsese's criticism justified? Are today's moviegoers really unacquainted with film as an art form? Aren't there countless Marvel movies that comfortably rate over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes? Is Martin Scorsese just an old-timer who simply doesn't get the new form of filmmaking?  In the opinion piece, Scorsese writes that true filmmaking is about characters, about how people engage with or even i...

Peter O'Toole in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia What makes an actor great? How can we say certain actors are better than others when art is supposed to be subjective? As it is with directing, acting is in part a craft that can be "objectively" assessed as subjective as the experience it provides the viewers may be. The problem with writing this post, however, is I know very little about acting. Fortunately,  I still know "enough" to articulate a few qualities that make for a great actor.  Agility -- the ability to shift tones and mood serially with ease  -- is one of those qualities. Notice the number of tones Diane Keaton goes through in just a few lines in this scene : "I know I could have been a better wife to you. Kinder. I could have made love with you more often. Or once even." She goes from guilty, apologetic realization to semi-detached observation to complete detachment. Different but another great  example  by Robert De Niro. ...

"Remember me. Try your best. Maybe we can." "Come back and make up a goodbye at least. Pretend we had one." "I wish I'd stayed too. Now I wish I'd stayed. I wish I'd done a lot of things."  Charlie Kaufman is a brilliant writer. A type of writer who actors love to work with. Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Nicholas Cage, and John Malkovich are all actors who've worked with Kaufman. With  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which won Kaufman the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey bring Kaufman's characters to life.  The film features Clementine (Kate Winslet) and Joel (Jim Carrey) who go their separate ways only to find their paths entwine again. The second time they meet, however, they don't remember they were once together; they each underwent a medical procedure that deleted all memories of each other. This clever premise enables the film to raise and explore a lot of intere...

"I wanna know. I think. I mean, I want to ask you things. But I'm not sure you want that." "Sorry. What am I thinking? I'm thinking that I'm utterly selfish."  "Wherever my car will take me. West, soon. And I thought, perhaps, you might want to come with me. Would you?" Todd Haynes' Carol  is the best film I've seen in the theatre in the past six years. In fact, I went to go see it five days in a row the winter it came out. Todd Haynes hits the right note on so many things, stealing from the masters like Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and David Lean. The acting in the film is also phenomenal. Rooney Mara, especially, is just perfect. She has a tremendously rare gift that eludes even many of the best in the business: the ability to pull in or shut out the audience so quietly at will. ("Quietly" meaning the subtlety in her inflections and facial expressions.) Be...

"This was a particularly bad case of somebody being cut in half." - Dewey Cox "You drove these, through the triangle of death?" - War Dogs "November is all I know. And all I ever wanna know." - Sweet November Sometimes passable movies rake in a lot of cash and sadly even achieve critical acclaim. The inverse is true as well. Solid movies fail to make much profit and receive lackluster or even acerbic reviews. Today's post will feature three movies in the latter camp. (I'm a big fan of life unfolding the way it is meant to.) Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story Dewey Cox  stars John C. Reilly and features some big names in comedy such as Paul Rudd, Jack Black, and Kristen Wiig. The story loosely draws from the lives of Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, and many others. As a result, the tone of the movie can feel too crowded at times. That said, the movie is a very smart satire of the biopic genre. ...