Culture Greyhound

This go-around is a very special Paragraph Reviews from my dear Hollywood-intern sister Emily, who exclusively screened and reviewed three documentaries for Culture Greyhound.

Burning Down The House: The Story of CBGB

A documentary on the life of CBGB, this film speaks also of the culture at the time and the passion people have for music of their generation. Like most musical documentaries, the impact is not as strong unless you are familiar with the music. However, everyone can relate to what a father figure the club owner, Hilly Krystal, was, and how he impacted the lives of teens in New York for over thirty years. The film itself is well organized, with plenty of footage. Band performances, interviews with New York citizens, and band interviews all help piece together the history of the club. Interviews with the employees and Hilly himself tell the story of exactly what the club was about and what it went through to try and stay open. By the end, I had goose bumps watching Patti Smith start crying at the end of her set the last night CBGB was open. It is a real-life underdog story, and it represents one of the most important times in music history.

Grade: A-

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Trailers for upcoming movies. Some are good, some not as much.

Music, Movies, Television, etc. Pop culture reviews for the short-attention-span Internet age.

Blue Valentine (2010)

It truly is a crime Gosling was robbed of a Best Actor nomination this year, as he and Michelle Williams both deliver mesmerizing performances.  Blue Valentine all by itself is a powerful film, a realistic portrayal of an unfortunately true-all-the-time tale of a couple filled with circumstance and rejection, a marriage falling apart, and a family just beginning to break.  The romance scenes are particularly intense and shot well, and the getting-to-know-you dialogues between Williams and Gosling sell the movie for me.

Rating: 8

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Trailers for upcoming movies. Some are good, some not as much.

Music, Movies, Television, etc. Pop culture reviews for the short-attention-span Internet age.
Enter the Void (2010)

A POV story all the way through, this fascinating film captures the effect of a life’s end through the eyes of a floating spirit over the drug-infested underground of modern day Tokyo.  Everything is spellbinding; the movie itself feels like a giant chemically-induced trip.  Essentially the slow-moving dialogue, drugged-out sequences, and afterlife transitions cause your brain to turn completely off.  Yet the protagonist’s journey is a compelling one, and the characters are well developed in the 130 minute running time.  A splendid mindfuck.

Rating: 8

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2010 was a great year for movies, and in the coming weeks/months, I’ll be doing a post of films I missed this year and didn’t get to watch until later.  Awards season is usually the time I catch up on my movie-watching, and this year is no exception.  Even living in an art-centric city like Austin (with an amazing venue for movie viewing like the Alamo Drafthouse) I still slacked on my film viewing in 2010, so obviously I feel this list is incomplete.  But nevertheless, here are my picks for the Top 5 movies I saw in 2010.

5. Shutter Island

4. Exit Through the Gift Shop

3. Toy Story 3

2. Inception

1. The Social Network

Trailers for upcoming movies. Some are good, some not as much.

Trailers for upcoming movies. Some are good, some not as much.

Music, Movies, Television, etc. Pop culture reviews for the short-attention-span Internet age.

Love and Other Drugs

Watch the two-minute green band trailer and you know exactly how this movie goes, more or less.  Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway fall in love, separate, and get back together again.  Welcome to the standard rom-com formula, unchanged since the beginning of time.  That’s not to say the movie isn’t enjoyable (up until the trite ending, which everyone sees a mile away); there is great chemistry between Gyllenhaal’s take on a career-minded, smart-ass, sweet-talking med salesman and Hathaway’s sarcastic, quasi-misanthropic, surprisingly charming twenty-something with Parkinson’s.  Add a dash of breasts, a ton of male ass, and many many boner jokes (the character is selling Viagra, after all), and you’ve got a decent date movie, even if the first third (which is mainly focused on career moves and less on romance) is more interesting than the eye-roll-worthy rest.

Rating: 6

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