When the late, great website The Dissolve ended operations, it’s commenting community had The Solute to call home, but the staff and writers of The Dissolve have been scattered to the winds of the Internet. With Dissolve On, we collect some of the essential film writing being done by these essential film writers. Because there’s always a Dissolver writing something notable about the movies (and occasionally other stuff) somewhere on the Internet.
These folks are talented and prolific, so please share the pieces we missed in the comments!
First things first…ICYMI, The Dissolve is back…in pog podcast form!! Our Riley Sailer provided some of the details here. Now, go forth and subscribe…
Exciting news: @NextPicturePod is now available on iTunes, Downcast, and presumably all other podcast apps. Do it! pic.twitter.com/K3mUsuEjHY
— Scott Tobias (@scott_tobias) November 12, 2015
Tasha Robinson on Shia LaBeouf’s #AllMyMovies (in her new, permanent film critic gig) for The Verge:
“Surprising things happen to people’s faces when a film really entrances them. They stop focusing on all the personality presentation we take for granted when we talk to each other: the polite eye contact, the alert expression that says “I’m listening and reacting to what you’re saying.” When people watch movies, their faces go a little slack, and their emotions come through clear and raw. I had a particularly great experience observing this back in 2007, when I had friends over to watch J.A. Bayona’s excellent horror film The Orphanage. Having already seen the film, I decided that instead of watching it, I’d watch my friends watching it. Watching other people gasp or shrivel in nervous anticipation let me see the movie freshly through their eyes.
That sense of voyeurism, that ability to see people in a vulnerable state and re-appreciate a piece of art at the same time, is at least some of the appeal behind #AllMyMovies, the social-media-ready art installation that 29-year-old actor Shia LaBeouf staged last week. For the piece, LaBeouf watched all his feature films back-to-back at New York’s Angelika Film Center over three days, while a fixed camera transmitted his reactions to the internet via live stream. #AllMyMovies is the latest in a series of LaBeouf-centered performance art pieces, and the second to widely solicit public interaction: in this case, admission to the film series was free, and anyone over 18 who was willing to submit to a weapons check could join LaBeouf in the theater, space permitting. The line to enter the screening room built steadily over the course of the event, with the wait time eventually stretching to several hours as word-of-mouth grew.”
Tasha Robinson interviews Sebastian Schipper for RogerEbert.com:
“It’s telling that so many reviews of Sebastian Schipper’s new film “Victoria” use the word “gimmick”—specifically to deny that the film gives in to one. It seems necessary to acknowledge that someone might accuse it of gimmickry, but writers are scrambling to defend it from a critique no one seems to be making—at least not if they’ve actually seen the film. “Victoria”’s central conceit sounds unlikely: it’s a 138-minute heist film, shot in a single unbroken take on the streets of Berlin. In fact, Schipper says, it sounds so unlikely that Toronto and Sundance both initially rejected the film, because programmers simply didn’t believe he was telling the truth about how he shot it. But after the film won six German Film Awards (Best Film, Direction, Cinematography, Actor, Actress, and Score), plus the Silver Bear and other awards at the Berlin Film Festival, people stopped dismissing it. And the film speaks for itself, clearly and defiantly.
Schipper wasn’t always confident it would. He was afraid the conversation out of the year’s festival showings would focus on whether he had cheated by stitching scenes together with CGI. But that discussion hasn’t materialized. And at this point, he thinks it’s because people can sense that it’s authentic. “I think if we had cut, the discussion would have been there. Because the flow of this film is seamless. We don’t watch films with our brains, and we don’t watch films with our hearts. I think we watch films with our nervous systems. You’re in this river, and whether it’s fast or at times really slow, if we changed rivers, you would feel it.”
Tasha Robinson on Francis Lawrence’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 for The Verge:
“Some film series lend themselves more readily to film-by-film analysis, like the original Star Wars trilogy: with three different directors and three distinctive tones, plus a series of complete, satisfying character arcs in the first installment, those features feel like separate projects, even as they’re using the same characters and actors to tell an ongoing story. Jackson’s episodic Lord Of The Rings movies, on the other hand, are essentially one long feature, cut into manageable, theater-friendly segments.
The Hunger Games movies, now wrapping up with the fourth installment, Mockingjay – Part 2, split the difference. In the series’ opening film, 2012’s The Hunger Games, director Gary Ross loyally adapted Suzanne Collins’ bestselling novel without much visual or narrative distinction. But when Francis Lawrence took over the series as of film number two, Catching Fire, he established a crisp visual language and design that he’s kept through his three films in the series. Lawrence’s Catching Fire and the two halves of Mockingjay play more like a single six-and-a-half-hour movie, with pauses for cliffhanger moments between films. Part 2’s value isn’t in the individual experience, so much as in the way it pays off its predecessors. Taken on its own, it’s a dour, faltering film with an under-served cast, full of unsatisfying downtime and distractingly poor lighting. As part of a bigger work, though, it picks up meaning in the way it triggers memories and completes thoughts, and the way it resolves the story for its long-suffering characters. It isn’t a wholly immersive experience, but it’s a comfortingly re-immersive one.”
Scott Tobias interviews Josh Mond for Rolling Stone:
“[The previously described scene] comes right in the middle of “James White”, an indie drama about a wayward son finally dealing with maturity, responsibility and mortality, and one almost directly lifted from the life of its New York-based writer-director Josh Mond. “There were a lot of emotions I didn’t understand at the time,” the 32-year-old filmmaker says, regarding his own long, dark nights during his terminally ill mother’s worst moments. “I didn’t know how to process them, from shame to guilt to sadness to anger to fear.” Mond remembers taking a call from his sister, who was living in Los Angeles at the time: “She said, ‘You may think this is the worst thing that could ever happen. But you’re so lucky you got to spend that time with her and share [this] with her, because it’s a really beautiful thing.'”
Mond’s experience in dealing with a dying parent is not uncommon; what is rare is to see such moments so keenly and honestly articulated on screen. In James White, end-of-life care is a punishing ordeal that mother and son go through together, with physical and emotional trials, but also great tenderness, humor, and grace. “What makes you connect most to a movie,” the director says, “are the things that we feel uncomfortable sharing.”
Scott Tobias on the Netflix Mr. Show revival w/ Bob & David for The Washington Post:
“Fans of “Mr. Show,” Odenkirk and Cross’ cultishly-beloved HBO series, will get the message: Your favorite show is back, almost exactly as you remembered it. Bob and David are once again ringmasters of their own flying circus, slapping on an assortment of fright wigs and fake mustaches, and their team of writer/performers have returned, too, including Jill Talley, Jay Johnston, Tom Kenny, Paul F. Tompkins, Scott Aukerman, Dino Stamatopoulos and Brian Posehn. The format is largely unchanged as well, with brief on-stage bits framing a series of silly, absurdist, occasionally political sketches, connected by odd segues and an elaborate wraparound sequence. The “Mr. Show” name is gone, but any other tweaks are mostly cosmetic.
In our current age of “Peak TV,” where everything old is new again, Odenkirk (now best-known as Saul Goodman from the “Breaking Bad” universe) and Cross (whose credit-filled career includes “Arrested Development’s” beloved never-nude Tobias Fünke) can be like Bruce Campbell in the Starz series “Ash Vs. Evil Dead,” wizened cult heroes sucking in their guts and returning for battle.”
Scott Tobias on Jackie Earle Haley’s Criminal Activities for Variety:
“The ’90s are back again in “Criminal Activities,” a profane thriller that so closely resembles the B-movies that followed “The Usual Suspects,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Get Shorty,” it could be mistaken for an archeological discovery. Making his directorial debut, veteran thespian Jackie Earle Haley uncannily re-creates the feeling of watching an Elmore Leonard clone circa 1996, when hunger for philosophizing hoodlums was at an all-time high. There’s nothing remotely fresh about this revival, but tight pacing and an overqualified cast keep things zipping along nicely, which may not be enough to draw people to theaters on Nov. 20, but should clear the lower bar of its simultaneous VOD release.
Were the four buddies at the center of “Criminal Activities” not texting so furiously, the film could be mistaken for another “Suicide Kings” or “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” or “Two Days in the Valley,” since so little has been invested in the contemporary backdrop. All the emphasis is on the foreground, which offers the familiar premise of amateur crooks getting mixed up with trigger-happy professionals. Playing the type of guy who wears shades indoors, Michael Pitt stars as Zach, a smug young stock broker who reconnects with his friends Noah (Dan Stevens), Warren (Christopher Abbott), and Bryce (Rob Brown) at a funeral. A few drinks later, the boys start scheming.”
Noel Murray on Steven Cantor’s 30 For 30 instalment Chasing Tyson for AV Club:
“This third season of 30 For 30 has been kind of a bust up to now—with one embarrassing cancelled episode, a couple of odd hagiographies, and a frustrating overall lack of ambition and artfulness. But tonight’s “Chasing Tyson” feels like a throwback: like something from the series’ first season. Director Steven Cantor brings shape and definition to the material, keeping the style simple yet effective. I wouldn’t call this a top-tier 30 For 30. It’s longer than it needs to be, and could use a little more actual analysis. But it is an actual documentary film, about actual notable athletes—and that alone makes it better than any other episode this fall.
Cantor has an eclectic documentary filmography, but has worked on some movies that people who keep up with popular culture might know—in particular Lucy Walker’s Amish rumspringa doc Devil’s Playground and the Pixies doc loudQUIETloud. The smartest decision he makes with “Chasing Tyson” is to emphasize the archival footage at his disposal rather than loading up on too many talking heads or quirky animations. This episode traces the tumultuous decade that boxer Evander Holyfield spent trying to book a heavyweight title fight with Mike Tyson, who was indisposed for various personal, legal, and business reasons. Given that boxing is still a sport a lot of people can’t afford to see, a lot of the clips in “Chasing Tyson” will be new to some, which is a great reason to include as many of them as possible, rather than cutting back to newer interviews.”
Noel Murray on the overlap between recent Sun and Ork Records compilations for AV Club:
“[Roy Orbison’s]“Ooby Dooby” and [Alex Chilton’s]“Bangkok” have a lot in common. They’re both intentionally goofy, meant to appeal to adolescents and arrested adolescents alike. And when they came out, both were somewhat at odds with the dominant trends in popular music. Phillips was fighting in the mid-1950s to keep his Sun Records’ roster of blues and rockabilly acts as raw and authentic as possible, to offer a true alternative to the smooth, homogenized pop on the radio. And Terry Ork (born William Terry Collins, renamed because of his Ork-like physique) was doing much the same 20 years later in New York, helping to build an entire artistic movement around the wastrel poets and garage-rock nostalgists congregating in the city’s dingier quarters.
Both songs also appear on new CD box sets, released on the same day. Yep Roc’s Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ’N’ Roll is a sort of soundtrack to an upcoming Peter Guralnick biography of Phillips, and features over 50 songs personally selected (and annotated) by the author, tracking the evolution of the producer’s work before, during, and after his Sun Records heyday. Similarly, The Numero Group’s Ork Records: New York, New York collects 49 songs either released by Ork or recorded as part of projects that never fully came to fruition. The collections make fine—if unintended—companion pieces, each in their own way asking where rock ’n’ roll comes from, and to whom it really belongs.”
Noel Murray on John Crowley’s Brooklyn for AV Club:
“Brooklyn is a very nice movie. It’s an arthouse picture for people who don’t frequent arthouses—a tale of cultural displacement so sanitized and swooningly romantic that film buffs could recommend it to their parents and grandparents without hesitation. All of that may sound like a slam, but it’s not meant to be. It’s not easy to make a movie as beautiful as Brooklyn, where the stakes are low but the outcome really matters. This is an old-fashioned entertainment, but one so masterfully crafted and heartfelt that it’s hard not to love…
Brooklyn could be seen as a sunnier, shallower variation on James Gray’s more harshly realistic (and brilliant) The Immigrant, or even a sweeter version of Tóibin’s more pungent novel—but that unfairly undervalues what [director John] Crowley, [screenwriter] Hornby, and [actress Saoirse] Ronan are doing. Brooklyn is crowd pleasing, but not pandering or broad. Instead, it’s an optimistic yet down-to-earth depiction of what “the American dream” has really meant to so many millions.”
Nathan Rabin (whose Career View for The Dissolve is essential reading) ranks the films of Phillip Seymour Hoffman for Vulture:
“The loss of an artist of Hoffman’s caliber — he was no mere actor; both collectively and individually, his work allowed us to understand ourselves and our world better — is incalculable. That loss has felt particularly intense as Hoffman’s last remaining films have trickled out; alas, Hoffman does not have a Tupac-like deluge of unreleased posthumous material left (nor did directors possess the shamelessness to digitally enhance what was left behind). Accordingly, today’s release of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 — the final film Hoffman made — gives a world that never stopped mourning Hoffman another opportunity to celebrate one of the greatest actors of all time.
With that in mind, we figured this would be a good time to delve deep into Hoffman’s filmography to determine what art of Hoffman’s is objectively, definitively better than his other art. In making our selection, we considered both the quality of the film as well as Hoffman’s performance. Though we strived to be as complete as possible, we were not able to see Mockingjay Part 2 ahead of this article, nor were we able to track down two of his most obscure early films, Szuler and Joey Breaker, left behind in VHS format. We still, however, had an awful lot to sift through, much of it awfully good.”
Nathan Rabin on the cult status of Dana Carvey’s Master of Disguise for Rotten Tomatoes:
“The fact that The Master Of Disguise is a children’s film does not render it any less perverse. If anything, the bizarre friction between the never-ending stream of weird sexual innuendos and self-indulgent references to R-rated movies released decades before the film’s core audience was born makes it even weirder. Most Hollywood executives might have a problem with creepy sexual content in a kid’s movie, but The Master Of Disguise feels like it was greenlit and overseen not by Joe Roth, the head of Revolution Studios, but rather by Sir Mix-A-Lot, who has always been refreshingly honest about his sexual preferences.
One of the film’s running jokes, for example, is that protagonist Pistachio Disguisey (Carvey) is sexually attracted to women with enormous posteriors that remind him of his beloved Mama’s (Edie McClurg, the original Edie McClurg type) zaftig rump. This is no one-off gag. On the contrary, it appears over and over again throughout the course of the film. In the most appalling instance, Pistachio and his grandfather (the great character actor Harold Gould) stare longingly at the big ass of a long-haired stranger walking away from them and are so shocked to discover the plus-sized bottom belongs to a dude that the ice cream cones they are conveniently snacking upon rocket straight into their mouths. It looks disconcertingly like two butt-obsessed men are performing oral sex on frozen treats — a rare example of a double gay panic joke in a PG-rated children’s film.”
Nathan Rabin on Hollywood’s fascination with Tech Tycoons for The Long and Short:
“As the release of Steve Jobs, the long awaited fourth feature about the Apple kingpin attests, technology billionaires loom large in our culture. They are the architects of our world, innovators whose genius shapes the way we live. It’s difficult to overstate the impact someone like Steve Jobs has had on our world. In fact, after watching the entire cinematic sub-genre of movies about him, it could quite easily be argued that even after his death, this still is Steve Jobs’ world; he was just condescending enough to let all of us inhabit it.
There have been other films, based on the characters of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, who also made more than just the “dent in the universe” that Steve Jobs set out to leave behind. What makes these tech tycoons so fascinating to the makers of modern cinema?”
Mike D’Angelo on Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang for AV Club:
“Given that Mustang is a story about five sisters, clustered together in age and collectively going through puberty and/or adolescence, all of whom are imprisoned (literally, in this case) by authoritarian relatives, one could be forgiven for assuming that the film must be a Turkish remake of Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (itself adapted from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides). As it turns out, there’s no connection, apart from that basic narrative similarity. Rather than a gauzy reflection of the past, filtered through the wistful memories of young men, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s feature debut (co-written with Alice Winocour, director of Augustine and the forthcoming Disorder) focuses entirely on the girls, in the present tense. The result, while less poetic and artful than Eugenides’ book or Coppola’s film, is much more emotionally direct, and pulls off a very tricky balancing act between bemoaning its characters’ fate and celebrating their resilience.”
Mike D’Angelo on Lenny Abrahamson’s Room for the Las Vegas Weekly:
“Having previously made a film in which the title character’s head is never seen (Frank), Abrahamson would seem to be a solid choice for a story with a severely constricted view. For some reason, however, he largely squanders the location’s claustrophobic potential, shooting Room more or less like any other room. (The film’s second half, which expands the scope considerably, is stronger.) And he utterly botches what ought to be Room’s most powerfully cinematic moment: the character Jack’s first view of the sky, and the overwhelming sense of enormity that accompanies that revelation. Still, the scenario’s inherent pathos is off the charts, and no amount of lackluster direction can completely kill it, especially with [Brie] Larson giving such a fiercely committed performance. Just try to see it in a tiny theater, if possible.”
Mike D’Angelo on Todd Haynes’ Carol for AV Club:
“The most telling, period-defining moment in Carol, Todd Haynes’ superb adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price Of Salt (originally published under the pseudonym Claire Morgan), gets no particular emphasis and could easily be missed. It occurs not long after young aspiring photographer Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) and middle-aged housewife Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett) meet at the department store where Therese works, exchanging a few torrid glances but no overt declarations of romantic interest. Carol leaves her gloves on the counter—perhaps intentionally—and subsequently finds an excuse to bring Therese to her house, providing her with a grand tour. At this point, the two women haven’t so much as touched one another, much less voiced their attraction; both are models of Eisenhower-era propriety. Carol has removed her shoes, however, and when she hears her husband, Harge (Kyle Chandler), walk in the door, she immediately scrambles to put them back on, before he can see her with Therese in her stocking feet. Again, nothing is made of this—it’s shown at a distance, uncommented upon, mundane. But like the man, riding the elevator with his wife, who removes his hat when a pretty girl steps on (courtesy of Raymond Chandler, discussing visual storytelling in a letter to his agent), it speaks volumes all the same.”
Keith Phipps interviews Todd Haynes for Uproxx:
“On the one hand, Todd Haynes has come a long way since his 1987 film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, a biopic of the doomed pop star told entirely with Barbie dolls. On the other, he hasn’t. Haynes still makes films that create immersive worlds, one in which every detail contributes to the desired effect. And he still makes films about people who find themselves, by accident or design, on the fringes of what’s acceptable in society. From the AIDS-inspired fury of Poison‘s genre exercises to the ailing protagonist ofSafe to the norm-challenging rock stars of Velvet Goldmine to the would-be lovers of Far From Heaven, Haynes makes films about those who disrupt or are oppressed by the norms of society. Haynes’ latest, Carol, is no exception…
KP: This is unusual for you in that this is not a project you originated. What did you do to make it your own?
TH: I guess all of these things … What I did was, I guess, take it as a challenge to do a love story, something that also I had not done before, per se, in my films. There’s been elements of love and desire in my films, but not really following that genre exactly. The Sirkian melodrama doesn’t organize around point of view, at all. It’s not about identification, it’s about observing these very prescribed social systems from a slightly uncomfortable distance and watching people kind of maneuver under the stress of very limited options. What do they do? You’re left to kind of think, ah, society’s to blame, or whatever it is.
This was very different. It’s really about point of view. The whole way the camera is so much about who’s looking at who, all these shots through windows and glass and precipitation and dirt on the surface so that even the act of looking is kind of frustrated so you feel more hungry to do so. All of that helped to further that idea.”
Keith Phipps on Sean Baker’s Tangerine for Uproxx:
“One of the best films of the year was shot entirely on iPhones in parts of Los Angeles in which you’ve probably never set foot. Tangerine observes a day in the life — Christmas Eve, specifically — of two transgender sex workers named Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor), the cab driver who carts them around and occasionally enjoys their services (Karren Karagulian), and the pimp/boyfriend (The Wire‘s James Ransone) Sin-Dee hasn’t seen while she served a jail sentence and can’t seem to find now that she’s free. Directed by Sean Baker, Tangerine pops with a rare sense of on-the-street energy. Chaos follows Sin-Dee as she pursues her manhunt, with Alexandra just barely picking up the pieces behind her. But the film’s the furthest thing from voyeuristic, focusing on the relationship between the women and capturing the way all relationships are at least partly defined by the things we choose to ignore. It’s a vital, affecting piece of filmmaking– one made all the more remarkable given its leads’ lack of experience in front of the camera.”
Keith Phipps on Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight for Uproxx:
“Listen closely to the soundtrack of Spotlight and you’ll frequently hear the sound of church bells. The film, in a characteristic move, never turns up the volume on them. They’re just there, in the background, part of the fabric of everyday life in Boston. They’re much like the churches themselves, which figure into the background of many shots or, for that matter, the Church, whose presence is felt throughout the heavily Catholic city. It operates with an expectation of respect, and an accompanying expectation of privacy, privileges granted by most of Boston’s citizens with the understanding that the Church is, above all, a force for good. But with any privilege comes the potential for abuse, and with an institution like the Catholic Church, the scale alone makes that potential tremendous and diminishes the potential for the abused to make themselves heard.
On January 6, 2002, The Boston Globe ran a story with a simple, but devastating headline: “Church allowed abuse by priest for years.” It was the product of intensive reporting from the paper’s Spotlight team, a division devoted to investigative work and used to training its focus on a story and not looking away until it was done. The Spotlight built the story, and the stories that followed, detail by detail and interview by interview until there could be no disputing its truth. Spotlight, the story behind the story, is a case of content determining form.”