The A.V. Club - Better Late Than Never?

DVD: Better Late Than Never?:Ghostbusters

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

We all have cinematic blind spots: notable directors, eras, or entire genres of film we’ve glossed over, either by accident or design. I admittedly probably have more than most of the cinephiles who populate the A.V. Club offices and comment boards. But whereas most people are pretty tolerant of my ignorance of Dogme 95 or the oeuvre of Luis Buñuel, the blind spot that’s always earned the most indignant “What do you mean you’ve never seen ________?” outcries is blockbusters of the early-to-mid-’80s. Indiana Jones? We’ve already covered that. The Goonies? Haven’t ...

Film: Better Late Than Never?:The Seventh Seal

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Spoiler alert: In the end, everybody dies. There’s this phase people go through—it happens differently for each person, and some people never get it, and some people never really get out of it. But for most of us, it’s a phase. It isn’t just that you’re suddenly aware of death; it’s that you suddenly feel as though you can see through everything, like realizing that the whole world is made up of atoms playing at being solid, only instead you’re seeing corpses everywhere that don’t have the dignity to rot. Like Peter ...

DVD: Better Late Than Never?:Hoop Dreams

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:10:00 -0500

When I wrote up 1994 for the epic A.V. Club miniseries My Favorite Movie Year, I was almost forced to make an embarrassing public confession: I did not write about Hoop Dreams, the classic documentary that appeared on more top 10 lists that year than even the likes of Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, and the consensus choice for the greatest film ever made, The Shawshank Redemption, because I hadn’t seen it. This lapse in my film and cultural education is inexcusable. If ever there was a film custom-made for my sensibilities, it’s Hoop Dreams. For starters, I ...

Film: Better Late Than Never?:Roger & Me and Fahrenheit 9/11

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

My dad worked for a major business-equipment company for 30 years. He was a “customer services technician,” and it was his job to travel to businesses that owned equipment made by the company and fix broken machines. It was complicated, stressful work, and I remember how often he’d get paged in the middle of the night, how many overtime hours he used to put in, and how I got to hate the sound of his beeper. It was almost like being related to the weather; there’d be weekends with a 50 percent chance of Dad, but you always ...

DVD: Better Late Than Never?:Jerry Maguire

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:00:00 -0500

There is no earthly reason that I should not have seen Jerry Maguire by now. I was alive and going to the movies regularly in 1996. That year, I saw five of the top 10 highest-grossing films (Independence Day, Mission: Impossible, Ransom, The Rock, and A Time To Kill), and I’m fairly certain that I already knew enough to appreciate Cameron Crowe. I certainly loved Fast Times At Ridgemont High (which Crowe scripted) by then, as well as Say Anything… (his writing-directing debut). Post-2000, the reasons for me not seeing Jerry Maguire get even fuzzier: Crowe made Almost Famous ...

Film: Better Late Than Never?:Top Gun

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:23:00 -0500

The summer of 1986, when Top Gun was released, was the last summer I spent as an unemployed teen. Back then, I had no car and no money, and outside of the month I spent at a summer camp for honors students—and the month I spent moping around the house, pining for the girl I met at that camp—I mostly blew whatever cash I had on albums and video rentals. And because I fashioned myself a sensitive alterna-teen, I tended to rent David Lynch movies and ’70s auteurist stuff, not Hollywood blockbusters. In fact, I was pretty insistent ...

Film: Better Late Than Never?:Big Trouble In Little China

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:12:00 -0500

In many Better Late Than Never cases, viewers/readers/listeners go into the experience with a lot more information than they probably should have. (If there’s one piece of Roger Ebert advice we’ve chosen to completely ignore, it’s his suggestion that we never watch movie trailers.) For example, Tasha Robinson’s 2008 appraisal of Titanic was colored by her almost-complete knowledge of a movie she’d never actually sat down and watched. In the case of Big Trouble In Little China, I’m in a different boat. (Get it? Boat? Titanic?) My colleagues here at The A ...

Film: Better Late Than Never?:Do The Right Thing

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:00:00 -0500

My grandfather passed away a couple years ago. His funeral was strange, dull, and distantly depressing, in the usual way of funerals for people you aren’t particularly close to. It’s not that I didn’t love him: We hugged whenever I came by for dinner, usually around Christmas, and he was generally decent to me. (One time he made fun of my weight, which was sort of hilarious.) I sat at the funeral watching my grandma cry, thinking I should be more upset than I was. I was trying to think of something specific about the man, like ...

TV: Better Late Than Never?:Mr. Show

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:24:00 -0500

In a way, it shouldn’t be too surprising that I’ve never really seen Mr. Show. When it was still on HBO, the “underground” sketch show was batted around the schedule from one horrible time slot to another, and often pre-empted by a sports-chat program or postponed by a late-night sex show. Worse, the network seemingly underfunded the program at every turn. All of which led Mr. Show to dissolve a mere 30 episodes and three years after it began in 1995. So chances are, most people today who spout Mr. Show quotes also missed out on it the ...

TV: Better Late Than Never?:Freaks And Geeks

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:03:00 -0500

“Now how can that get canceled? That was funny!” Seth Rogen was speaking about a hospital scene in the commentary track for “Chokin’ And Tokin’,” the 13th episode of the sole season of Freaks And Geeks. But really, the sentiment applies to the entire series. As a question, it’s more existential than realistic—NBC canceled Freaks And Geeks because no one watched it, Seth. It’s a common question, too: Just swap out “that” for Mr. Show, Arrested Development, Undeclared, and a host of others. I was among the millions who didn’t watch Freaks And Geeks—I only ...

Books: Better Late Than Never?:Jim Bouton’s Ball Four

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500

It isn’t too much of a stretch to split baseball literature into two distinct eras: pre-Ball Four and post-Ball Four. Publishers didn’t have terribly high hopes for a season-long diary from a journeyman middle reliever for an expansion team (with an invaluable assist from editor Leonard Shecter) but Jim Bouton’s Ball Four quickly became a pop-culture phenomenon, a real game-changer. In the parlance of Scharpling & Wurster, it was a “lid-blower,” a scandalous tell-all that enraged owners, players, fans, and baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn. It also made Bouton persona non grata with his former team, the ...

Music: Better Late Than Never?:Pearl Jam, Ten

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Damn. To think that I almost made it two decades without hearing Ten, an album that I understand was pretty popular in the '90s. Whenever general hatred for Ticketmaster has been aired or there's been mention of Eddie Vedder and his warbling vocal style, my sole reaction has been an involuntary, "You know, I've never heard Ten." This usually produces a shocked, "Really?" or the occasional, "Crazy!" But it isn't meant to shock or dazzle people in a carnival freak-show manner, as if a red-striped-vest-wearing barker should follow me around proclaiming, "Step right up, folks! Gaze upon ...

Film: Better Late Than Never?:Paris, Texas

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

I didn’t grow up in the sort of dusty nowhere in which Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas begins, but I didn’t grow up in the sort of place where a lot of people talked about Wim Wenders movies, either. Dayton, Ohio had, and still has, an arthouse theater, but it wasn’t always easy to get to from the suburbs, especially in the years before I drove. I don’t think it was open when Paris, Texas played in 1984. (I was 11, anyway, and more interested in Temple Of Doom.) I’m guessing the theater played Wings Of ...

Books: Better Late Than Never?:Better Late Than Never?: Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0600

So you run. You do it for all sorts of reasons—because the road is flat, because the kids are loud, because your wife keeps giving you that look, because your husband is a fucking moron, because the shoes you’ve got on are just the right kind of snug and you ache for it, you ache for the pavement to bounce beneath your feet and the world to slide past you like it was set on wheels. You run because the days are just so damn tight lately. Because every hour that passes kills another life you never had ...

DVD: Better Late Than Never?:The Pink Panther / A Shot In The Dark

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Memories can be misleading, but I vaguely recall an evening in 1977 or '78 when my family was having dinner at another family's house, and my brother and I were hanging out with a bunch of other kids in a basement den, watching a network broadcast of The Pink Panther Strikes Again. It was one of the funniest movies any of us had ever seen, and during the commercial breaks, we'd adopt outrageous French accents and act out the slapstick (in a safe, slow-motion way) and laugh ourselves silly. Then it was time to go home, about an ...

Film: Better Late Than Never?:Better Late Than Never?: From Russia With Love

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:03:00 -0600

First, let me note that I'm no stranger to James Bond. I grew up in an era when Bond movies were staple programming on ABC, which meant I saw all the stunts, gadgets and gunfights I could squeeze in before bedtime—though I was usually doing homework during the talky parts. And in the '90s, after Pierce Brosnan took over, I was professionally obligated as a working film critic to see each new Bond film as it came out. But I've never gotten around to re-watching those early Bonds that I only saw in bits and pieces as ...

Film: Better Late Than Never?:Better Late Than Never?: Titanic

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:03:44 -0600

Throughout the 1990s, I had an unintended but still well-maintained habit of missing the big Oscar-sweeping prestige picture of the year, especially the ones that nudged the three-hour mark and made a billion dollars. I've still never seen Dances With Wolves. I only caught up with Braveheart a few years ago. (Same goes for 2000's Gladiator.) And I completely missed out on Titanic. Not once did I grumble to myself "Well, if it's that popular, it must suck. I ain't a-gonna see it. Kids these days, and their blasted crap entertainment, muzza fruzzle wumble grmp. Get ...

Film: Better Late Than Never?:The French Connection

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:03:36 -0500

I don't have a good reason for never having seen The French Connection. In fact, I don't even have a bad reason for not having seen it. It's one of those movies that regularly turns up on all-time-best lists. It stars actors I like in a genre I like. Everyone I know likes it. I just never got around to it, just as I've never gotten around to plenty of other classic films that I'd name here if I wanted the comments section to fill up with posts beginning, "What do you mean, you've ...

Books: Better Late Than Never?:To Kill A Mockingbird

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:01:00 -0500

Sometimes you miss things. I read a lot; it got me through the hell of junior high, the self-loathing of high school, the confusion of college, and all the crap in between. And while I do re-read books (Gravity's Rainbow three times so far, Misery about 16 kajillion), the sheer number of hours spent holed up in my room scanning pages means I've covered a decent share of literary ground. But still—you miss things. There are gaps in my education, and Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the larger ones. It's understandable ...

Film: Better Late Than Never?:Watchmen

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:05:06 -0500

Throughout my tenure at The A.V. Club, I have cheekily proposed running a story titled, "Comic books: now they're just for kids!" to lampoon the endless deluge of well-intentioned but thoroughly bone-headed "Comic books: they aren't just for kids anymore!" articles that still pop up in newspapers and magazines. By now, it's old news that the comic books can tackle subject matter more mature and nuanced than Jughead's love of burgers and Scrooge McDuck's periodic swims in his money vault. It is no exaggeration to call Watchmen creator Alan Moore and The Dark Knight ...