Adam Kempanaar is joined by Michael Phillips for this week’s episode of Filmspotting for the review of Animal Kingdom. While Michael admits that he internally compares this film to something like Goodfellas, he doesn’t want to shoulder it with that particular execution of the crime drama. Unlike Scorsese’s style, director David Michôd tries to capture a seemingly more realistic look at the situation, with the “protagonist” not really having the same natural charisma as Ray Liotta. The guys have a lot of good...
Adam and Matty meet this week to talk about Get Low, a new film starring the epic ranks of Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Bill Murray. While the film starts off with a visually stunning introduction and allows Duvall to deliver a breathtaking ending, Adam and Matty agree that a bulk of the movie is boring and overly polished. Beyond that, the major themes of the film don’t really have much to do with the events that take place throughout, essentially never maintaining a real tone. Ultimately, the Filmspotting duo can’t help but disagree with...
Adam and Matty are a little bit removed from the games and music pop culture scene nowadays but they try their best to handle Edgar Wright’s latest film, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Their lack of experience in both of those likely have something to do with their dissatisfaction with the repetitive nature of the fight scenes, the unrealistic overarching plot, and the grating visual style. However, they do have something good to say about Wright’s filmmaking, which they agree is pretty well done. Matty also praises the execution of several...
Adam takes a week off to attend to his new son while Matt Singer of IFC News helps fill his seat on this double review edition of Filmspotting. The first film that the guys review is Farewell, a Cold War spy thriller that helps reignite Matty’s love for 80’s spy movies. It’s clear that while the two can agree that the relationship between the two spy protagonists is entertaining and the performances are great, but the film’s cumbersome scope lands it in “queue it” territory.
After a very dramatic Massacre Theatre, Matty and Matt...
This week’s Filmspotting begins with an interview rather than the typical movie review, with Adam interviewing Life During Wartime director Todd Solondz. With characters based on his past film Happiness, Todd offers some insight on why he would choose to revive them rather than produce a fully original film. Beyond that, he goes on to say how he thought about casting and how he fashioned characters to better suit the actors he chose.
The Billy Wilder marathon finally comes to a close this week with a big war movie, Stalag 17. It kind of transcends...
After a slightly laborious lead-in from Matty, Adam starts off this week’s review of Inception with a couple of simple thoughts, namely that this film succeeded on many levels and definitely ranks among his best movies of the year so far. He goes on to say that the movies was so immersive and the mechanics were so well established that he found himself plunged into the film as though it was his own dream, ironically enough. Matty steers the conversation from there, praising the visuals as the most stylistically complete that Nolan has...
Steve Prokopy (or Capone of Ain’t It Cool News) stands in for Adam this week for Filmspotting’s review of Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Right off the bat, Steve and Matty both agree that the film is technically sound in most aspects, except for the lackluster special effects. Outside of that concise criticism, Matty mostly tries to contemplate the place that Twilight films occupy in the film world with Steve noting that the movies are getting progressively better.
Afterwards, Louis Ozawa Chanchien joins Matty for an excellent edition of...
Filmspotting reports in this week with an After Hours episode, which tackles a lot of backlogged listener feedback, suggested top five lists, and listener love. Opening things up is a listener who asks Adam and Matty which actors had underrated or unappreciated performances. Next up is the inevitable criticism of the top five directors lists from a past week’s episode.
The biggest point of contention in Matty’s top 20 films of the past decade seems to be his choice of 28 Days Later. His mistakes didn’t end there, as he...
Filmspotting dives into one of their most anticipated summer titles this week, Toy Story 3. Matty is fairly well known for begrudging Avatar for its 3D usage, but he concedes that Pixar’s implementation didn’t particularly detract. He goes on to talk about some of the more mature themes that popped up in this third entry in the series, asking Adam whether or not he’d be comfortable taking his kids to see it. While Adam and Matty agree that this film might not live up to the first two Toy Story films, they definitely enjoyed the more...
The rare Filmspotting double feature is back in action this week, starting off with a review of Vincenzo Natali’s latest thriller, Splice. Matty prefaces their conversation with the old-style definition of a “B movie”, namely an opening act to the major feature that tackles little-tread genres. With that context, Adam and Matty’s collective review is fairly complementary, centering on the somewhat corny introductory scene, campy dialogue, and silly gore. Ultimately, they agree that the film is fun and the plot is sufficiently...
On this week’s episode of Filmspotting, Adam and Matty dedicate much of the time to the late Dennis Hopper, starting things off with a flashback to mid-2009 and their impressions of Easy Rider (in which Hopper directed and acted in). The film was clearly a favorite in their New Hollywood marathon a year ago, earning Matty’s best cinematography award amongst the pack of nine films.
After hitting upon the typical Massacre Theater and poll question segments, Filmspotting returns to the Billy Wilder marathon with their latest pick, The...
This week’s show is a bit on the short side, starting off with a review of Nicole Holofcener’s Please Give. After simple agreement for weeks and weeks, Adam and Matty finally fall on opposite sides of the fence for this film. Adam can’t really see the journey that each of the characters follow, as they really don’t learn too much more about themselves along the way. On the other hand, Matty argues that Holofcener produces one of the most powerful cast of female characters to hit the big screen. Either way, they both...
Filmspotting joins Russell Crowe for some target practice in Sherwood Forest with this week’s review of Ridley Scott’s latest, Robin Hood. Unfortunately, Adam and Matty agree that it seems to follow suit with last week’s film, Iron Man 2, in the muck of summer mediocrity. Though they did certainly enjoy the performances of many of the upcoming, young actors playing peripheral characters, they simply couldn’t get into the political rough and tumble that Scott tried to focus on. Cate Blanchett also impressed the guys...
Filmspotting is back to regularly scheduled programming this week, visiting the mainstream side of the tracks with their review of Iron Man 2. They start off with the things the like about the film, namely the performance of Garry Shandling and the way that Jon Faveau handles the camera in action scenes. Beyond that, they have little else good to say. The film felt too jokey about scenes where the situation should have been far more dire, exacerbated by the overindulgence of Robert Downey Jr. The sheer number of characters didn’t...
At the top of the show, Adam and Matty review Bong Joon-ho’s latest film, Mother. Matty begins his commentary by complementing the nature of foreign (and in this case, Korean) film to take familiar genre and turn them on their heads. As such, Mother takes on the crime drama genre by observing lead actress Hye-ja Kim and her character’s role to defend her special needs son from his accidental, murderous crime. With fascinating, mold-breaking characters, great performances, and an unpredictable plot, Filmspotting clearly recommends...
