Author: Adam

PTA Filmography Series Part 4: Punch-Drunk Love

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“I have so much strength inside of me. You have no idea. I have a love in my life. It makes me stronger than anything you can imagine.” - Barry Egan I suppose we should consider this Paul Thomas Anderson’s brief foray into “Romantic Comedy” (unless you count Phantom Thread). It’s not like any other romantic comedy I’ve seen. It’s funny, but not that funny...
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PTA Filmography Series Part 3: Magnolia

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"The book says: We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us." - Jimmy Gator / Quiz Kid Donnie Smith / Narrator I'm pretty sure Anderson cringes at this movie. And I do too, honestly. The above quote can seem faux-deep when isolated and presented at the top of a semi-critical analysis like this one. It seems a bit trite. Overly melodrama...
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Icarus Films

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Jacob Peter Gowy's The Flight of Icarus(1635–1637) There’s been this new drama/action thriller genre over the past couple decades. I’ve come to think of these movies as Icarus Films. They’re “Based on a True Story” movies, where a risk-taker gets sucked into a criminal enterprise (often international), gets caught up in the lavish lifestyle, flies too close to the sun,...
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PTA Filmography Series Part 2: Boogie Nights

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This is Anderson's Scorsese movie. Sure, there’s a bunch of Altman here too. But it feels like Scorsese with those sweeping long takes and great musical synchronization. I've seen this movie a few times in my life. For some reason, it never quite stuck. I liked it okay. But I never really understood the adulation it often received. Well this time...it stuck.&nbsp...
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PTA Filmography Series Part 1: Hard Eight

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Hard Eight sometimes feels like one of those creative exercises where you're given a prompt - just the start of a story - and then you have to fill in the rest. It feels borrowed. Like a dozen popular 90's movies all rolled into one. And yet it doesn't feel too full. It feels kind of incomplete, actually. Like we only got part of a story. And yet I still liked it. I l...
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Paul Thomas Anderson Filmography Series

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A film-by-film look at director Paul Thomas Anderson's filmography.  I've chosen to watch all his feature films in order, to track the progression from him as a young filmmaker whose mashup of directorial influences nearly defined his own artistic identity, to an experienced storyteller with a unique vision, who hides his influences in the linings of his suit ...
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Best Albums of 2019

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It was a deceptively solid year for music. We were given an eclectic mix of new music from both veteran innovators (Lana Del Rey, FKA Twigs, Nick Cave, James Blake) and newcomers that dominated the global charts (Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X, Lizzo).  2019 feels like a precipice, in a way. Not just for music, or film, and other forms of art. The social fabric of ou...
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Best Films of 2018

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For the second year in a row, I present to you the best movies of the year… The previous year, that is.  It’s hard to stay on top of all the movies that come out. And it’s hard to make it to the theater when you have a family, a job, and a thousand other things to do every day. What most of us end up doing is just waiting for it to come out on streaming. It’...
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Review – The Favourite

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Or rather... Framing is everything, really. How you frame something, as an artist, will influence how the audience responds to your art. Historical period films are sometimes like looking through a small window. We get to see whatever the filmmaker chooses to present to us, and sometimes the rest of the scene is withheld from view. So how a historical figure or even...
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