Author Adam Kuntavanish

Cinema transcends boundaries of time and space and thought and emotion; at its best it communicates the experience of being truly alive. I've been transfixed by the material ghosts of the movies since an early age, and I can't seem to shake them. Since reading and writing and talking about films are the next best things to watching them, criticism became a natural fit. Whether new or old, foreign or domestic, mainstream or cult, all movies are grist for my mill. Be forewarned, I'm an inveterate list-maker, so look out for rankings, topics, and opinions of all kinds. The AFI's got nothing on me.

Reviews ghostbusters-1
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Free from the specter of nostalgia about the summer camp experience or the film itself, I can confidently state that Meatballs can be best experienced today for its influence and placement at the forefront of a new brand of raucous North American comedy. Conceived by Canadian writer-director-producer Ivan Reitman as a quickly-shot directorial vehicle following his loss of that role on National Lampoon’s Animal House, the film introduced to cinema audiences the insouciant, above-the-fray wit of Second City, National Lampoon, and then-recent Saturday Night Live alum Bill Murray as head counselor Tripper Harrison. Set at the second-rate Camp North Star (the real-life Camp White Pine at Haliburton, Ontario, where Reitman and writers Dan Goldberg and Len Blum had attended as kids), Meatballs marries the anti-snob, us-against-them mentality of Animal House with counterculture anarchy of M*A*S*H in a more kid- and teenager-friendly milieu, becoming in the process an independent blockbuster and one of the most financially successful Canadian films even to this day. Yet it became a victim of its own success, spawning several forgettable sequels and a host of imitators, remarkable only for the motormouth performance and relatively gentle sensibility at its core.

Reviews model-shop2
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In 1967, Jacques Demy came to America. Spurned by the successes of his rainbow musical fantasies Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Young Girls at Rochefort, Columbia Pictures brought Demy under contract to make his magical films in the US. What resulted was a single film set in the States, the downbeat Model Shop, a relative commercial and critical failure that spelled the end of Demy’s prospects in Hollywood. Yet time has looked kindly upon the film’s place in the director’s melancholy universe of transitory romance, even as distinctly American idioms and dialogue rub unevenly against Demy’s dreamily elegant aesthetic.

Top Ten hot-fuzz
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In anticipation of next week’s release of Paul Feig’s action-comedy The Heat with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, the topic of this Top Ten is the venerable buddy cop subgenre. Wikipedia traces its history all the way back to Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, but the modern strain seems to come into its own in Walter Hill’s 48 Hrs., although one of the “buddies” is not a cop but a thief brought in to help track down a cop killer. In whatever configuration they appear, the buddy cops are mismatched, either quite humorously or in a combustible way; even in relatively serious exercises of the subgenre, the interplay and tension between the leads results in some lighthearted sparks. The Heat, whatever its merits as a movie, is at least a rare entry in such an excessively masculine canon, pairing bankable female stars for an R-rated action-comedy vehicle. Whether straight-ahead cop drama or more comedic fare, let us know your favorites in this well-worn but still effective cinematic category.

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In anticipation of next week’s release of Paul Feig’s action-comedy The Heat with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, the topic of this Top Ten is the venerable buddy cop subgenre. Wikipedia traces its history all the way back to Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, but the modern strain seems to come into its own in Walter Hill’s 48 Hrs., although one of the “buddies” is not a cop but a thief brought in to help track down a cop killer. In whatever configuration they appear, the buddy cops are mismatched, either quite humorously or in a combustible way; even in relatively serious exercises of the subgenre, the interplay and tension between the leads results in some lighthearted sparks. The Heat, whatever its merits as a movie, is at least a rare entry in such an excessively masculine canon, pairing bankable female stars for an R-rated action-comedy vehicle. Whether straight-ahead cop drama or more comedic fare, let us know your favorites in this well-worn but still effective cinematic category.

Reviews -2
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Having just recently turned 91 years old, Alain Resnais remains, with the Portuguese Manoel de Oliveira and the Hungarian Miklós Jancsó, one of the oldest yet most vital working filmmakers in the world. If he’s undoubtedly aged in body, his recent output suggests youthfulness in spirit tempered by an experienced imagination. In this newest phase of a career preoccupied with the collapse of the past and the present filtered through personal memory, Resnais has adopted a more literally theatrical, even operatic, style, orchestrating ensembles like sets of instruments as well as like bodies in front of a camera. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet! is the marvelously ironic English title of his newest completed film, a self-reflexive romp at the intersection of love, death, myth, theater, and cinema.

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In recognition of the wider release of Noah Baumbach’s new film, the Greta Gerwig-starring Frances Ha, I wanted to look at modern black & white films. Avowedly emulating the look of such Gordon Willis-shot Woody Allen works as Manhattan, Baumbach is in a long line of filmmakers who chose against the grain, whether for aesthetic or budgetary reasons, to eschew the now-conventional color palette. Some films attempt to capture a bygone era while others simply think it’s “cool”; in any case, films in the past few decades made in black & white tend to stand out as striking. So let us know in the comments which of your favorite modern or contemporary movies fit this stylistic mold.

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In recognition of the wider release of Noah Baumbach’s new film, the Greta Gerwig-starring Frances Ha, I wanted to look at modern black & white films. Avowedly emulating the look of such Gordon Willis-shot Woody Allen works as Manhattan, Baumbach is in a long line of filmmakers who chose against the grain, whether for aesthetic or budgetary reasons, to eschew the now-conventional color palette. Some films attempt to capture a bygone era while others simply think it’s “cool”; in any case, films in the past few decades made in black & white tend to stand out as striking. So let us know in the comments which of your favorite modern or contemporary movies fit this stylistic mold.

Top Ten NAOMI WATTS and TOM HOLLAND star in THE IMPOSSIBLE
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In honor of the home media release of The Impossible by Entertainment One on April 23rd, this is a special edition list of my Top Ten Survival Films. Survival in a cinematic context is inherently dramatic and exciting, whether a lone individual struggles against the forces of nature or a ragtag team is outmaneuvered and imperiled. Action, horror, drama, suspense, even comedy or philosophical treatise…the sheer existential act of surviving an ordeal is integral to so many genres and scenarios that limiting the list to merely ten was nigh-impossible. Weigh in with comments below and don’t forget to enter our contest to win a DVD of The Impossible by letting us know your own favorite survival films.

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One of the great music movies of the 1990s also happens to be one of the decade’s great comedies. Co-written by and based on the very dialogue-heavy debut novel by Roddy Doyle, The Commitments follows the creation and combustion of a soul band of working-class Irishmen and Irishwomen. A strong cast of affable unknowns mostly made up of actual musicians anchors the band’s believable rise and fall, darting between jokey rehearsals, buoyant performances of Otis Redding and James Brown classics, and home lives of kitchen-sink realism. As the band’s manager and organizer, true-blue soul fanatic Jimmy Rabbitte, Robert Arkins is a quick-talking hype man with outsized dreams of stardom, able to talk his motley crew into putting themselves out there and transforming raw talent into a relatively finessed style. The film balances an Irish lust for life and unpolished profanity with a likeable, warm camaraderie of the talented neophyte actors.

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Reading our friends at Movie Mezzanine this week putting together their lists of favorite films from the 1990s got me to thinking about the genre contours of that decade. In the United States at least, the boom in independent filmmaking brought with it a self-conscious attitude, and a pop culture-suffused sarcasm that could shift tones and registers on a dime, that still hasn’t quite left the mainstream. Alongside it came a wave of gross-out, over-the-top comedies expanding on the 1980s trend of testing the boundaries of an audience’s good taste. Animated films continued their ascendency to an all-encompassing mode of humor aiming to be amenable to every age group. As in all eras, verbal jokes and physical gags, highbrow and lowbrow, obvious and dry, vied for supremacy on movie screens of all sizes. Of all matters of taste, the sense of humor seems to be the most subjective and least susceptible to analysis, so I look forward to reading the gut reactions of our readers as to their own favorite funny films of the 90s. Have at it in the comments!

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