Walter Chaw’s Top “10” of 2016

January 13, 2017Posted in2016, 2017, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best-of Lists, Blog

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by Walter Chaw There are conundrums presented by what I do now for a day job and this moonlight I won’t quit. Let me get at that by telling you an old, old story about filmmaker Peter Hedges that is sort of current again because he’s acting in a good film out this year called Little Sister. (His son, meanwhile, co-stars in Manchester by the Sea.) When I met Mr. Hedges, it was to interview him for Pieces of April. As per my usual process, I saw and reviewed the movie first, logging it with Bill before going to meet him. The idea behind this is that I never want my work to be coloured by any personal feelings I might develop for the artist over the course of a conversation–for good or for ill. It’s not that I don’t trust myself to be fair, it’s that I don’t know how knowing someone changes the environment in my head. I will be fair, but I’m not the same person before I meet someone and after. The world essentially changes when you meet someone.

Editor’s Choice: The Year in Blu-ray

December 20, 2016Posted in2016, Arrow Video, Authors: Bill Chambers, Best-of Lists, Blog, Blu-ray Disc, The Criterion Collection

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by Bill Chambers The reason film and physical media are prematurely pronounced dead every few weeks is that the mainstream keeps narrowing, limiting the visible spectrum of both industries. Studios remain halfheartedly committed to Blu-ray Disc but, as this Top 10 list incidentally shows, it’s really become the domain of boutique labels restoring and annotating studio-neglected fare, capitalizing on streaming’s short-term memory and populist leanings while inspiring devotion among connoisseurs. Please note that I limited my selection process to titles I’ve personally audited and would endorse anyway, with or without frills. Some of these may be reviewed in full at a later date.

ICYMI (11/11/16)

November 11, 2016Posted in2016, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog
Apologies for the radio silence this week. Honestly? No will. We have plenty of stuff on the horizon, though, and in the meantime here are links to our festival reviews of Arrival and Elle, which open in theatres today.

Goats Crossed, Bridge Closed

September 25, 2016Posted in2016, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blog

by Walter Chaw We've decided to get rid of our comments section here at FILM FREAK CENTRAL. We kept it for longer than we should have, I think. Our world isn't getting any better. It's getting a lot worse. I stopped engaging with our commenters a while ago. I've come back a couple of times in the last few years, but for the most part it's just been this thing that festers, this thing in the basement that gibbers to itself. I've asked friends to not tell me what's being written about me in there. I'm a lot happier not knowing.

September 9, 2016Posted inBlog
FILM FREAK CENTRAL readers! Please consider making a monthly pledge to the site, no matter how small, so that we can keep doing what we've been doing--and maybe even more of it!

Elevation

September 4, 2016Posted in2016, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blog, Film Festivals, Telluride, Telluride 2016

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by Walter Chaw Telluride rests in a valley on the Western side of Colorado. It sits at 8,750 feet. You have to cross Monarch Pass (elevation approximately 12,000 feet) to get there from where I live, a six-and-a-half hour drive away. If you’re doing it right, you walk everywhere in Telluride, taking the free gondola service over the longer stretches up and down the mountain, and feeling the sharp constriction in your chest when your body, even one acclimated to a mile above sea level, discovers there’s noticeably less oxygen to breathe at such great heights. I wonder if mild hypoxia has something to do with my euphoria while I’m here. I am the best version of myself at the Telluride Film Festival, even as the festival itself continues to subtly decline by inevitably becoming more beholden to middlebrow interests and tastes at the same pace it now sells out the highest level of ticket package they make available. Not the ones you can buy off the website, the ones you secure through $100,000 donations.

Echoes (11/6/15)

November 6, 2015Posted in2015, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Directors: David Lynch, Echoes
Return to Oz (1985, d. Walter Murch): The Straight Story (1999, d. David Lynch): Note that there are other Disney movies that begin with the company's name over a starfield (The Black Hole, Toy Story 2), but given Lynch's history of paying tribute to The Wizard of Oz, these two seemed less of a coincidence.

The Rioting Pants: “Me and a Douche and a Bag”

October 26, 2015Posted in2015, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog
by Bill Chambers Hey, folks: I debated long and hard about whether to post this here and I hope you'll forgive the self-indulgence. This is a recently-posted music video I animated and edited for The Rioting Pants, my brother's band; linking it because it's seasonally fitting, a kind of monster rally inspired by "Scooby-Doo" as well as those Hanna-Barbera videos that used to clog the gaps between Saturday-morning cartoons. It ain't up to the level of Pixar but it is entertaining, in my humble and biased opinion. Be sure to select the 1080p viewing option for the full HiDef experience--I worked…

Review Round-Up: 10/16/15

October 23, 2015Posted in2015, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog
Opening nationally this week are Steve Jobs, about a guy named Steve who's given personalized tasks; and Suffragette, about a T-shirt campaign gone horribly wrong. In case you missed these reviews the first time around, Walter Chaw covered both at Telluride.

Review Round-Up: 10/16/15

October 16, 2015Posted in2015, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Theatrical
In case you missed them, Walter Chaw has covered three of this weekend's biggest theatrical releases--the new Spielberg (Bridge of Spies), the new del Toro (Crimson Peak), and the new Give Brie Larson an Oscar (Room)--as well as the first major motion picture to debut on Netflix, Beasts of No Nation. Happy reading!

Weltschmerz

September 18, 2015Posted in2015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blog, Film Festivals, Telluride, Telluride 2015

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by Walter Chaw On my way back down on US 50 to 285 to C470 and I70 and home, I pulled off at someplace carved into the side of a mountain, a lagoon fortified all around with rock and shattered wood and sand. I let out a breath and wondered how long I'd held it. I listened to the lap of water and the air and the spaces inside my head. I took my shoes off. I waded a little way in and schools of fry shoaled away from my feet in black clouds. The water? Frigid. Snow run-off. I could see the white of it, dotting the peaks around me, even now in early September where, still five hours away, it was over 90° in the shade–the last gasps of Colorado's brutal Indian summer.

Miracles

July 27, 2015Posted in2015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blog, Blu-ray Disc, Books About Movies

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Closing the book on Miracle Mile

by Walter Chaw I set down in California for the first time since I was there for a cup of coffee at the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind junket a little over a decade ago. I had flown into Riverside, where my sister and her husband live. A lifetime of living in Colorado made me confused when a mountain range right outside the airport indicated east rather than west. It was hot. It was February.

On “Pretend We’re Kissing”

April 22, 2015Posted in2015, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Canada, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical

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by Bill Chambers I don’t regularly hang out with director Matt Sadowski or anything, but I appeared in his John Hughes tribute documentary Don’t You Forget About Me (seventh-billed, thanks to the alphabet!), and the damned if you do/don’t scenario of reviewing a movie by someone you know IRL, as the kids say, is that any praise is met with skepticism and any negativity becomes personal. But since Sadowski and I haven’t really kept in touch in the nine (!) years since that interview, and since new Canadian films and filmmakers never get enough attention, least of all from me, a few words about his fiction-feature debut, Pretend We’re Kissing, which has actually become something of a minor sensation in its city of origin by outlasting its indie-release lifespan at the Carlton in Toronto. (It’s currently wrapping up its third week there.) I like Matt a lot but will be as objective as I know how.