The A.V. Club - Scenic Routes

Film: Scenic Routes:The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0600

Clearly, no running column devoted to memorable movie scenes can neglect the fine art of hoofing. Dance has always been an integral part of the medium’s appeal, even if the death of the live-action musical (Chicago and the forthcoming Nine notwithstanding) means that most notable choreography can now be found on TV reality-show competitions. Trouble is, what I don’t know about dance could fill a complete set of the Encyclopedia Ignoramus. Over the last few weeks, thumbing through my DVD collection, I’ve looked at classic routines by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly and Donald O ...

Film: Scenic Routes:Devils On The Doorstep

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Judging from some of the comments that have been made over the last few entries in this series, I need to clarify the Scenic Routes mission statement a bit. Contrary to what you might reasonably expect, this column is not simply a collection of the Greatest Movie Scenes of All Frickin’ Time (though many will certainly qualify for that distinction). Nor, despite a certain degree of willful eclecticism on my part, is it meant to be either Awesome Scenes From Otherwise Unremarkable Films or Overlooked Moments in Musty Classics. It’s all of the above, actually, and a lot more ...

Film: Scenic Routes:The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Genuine weirdness in movies is exceedingly rare. Oh, there are plenty of bizarre films out there, ranging from the aw-shucks surrealism of David Lynch to the fuck-you grotesquerie of Harmony Korine. But you generally know what you’re in for in those cases, or at least recognize within the first couple of minutes that you’ve entered unfamiliar terrain. What can really throw you for a loop, on the other hand, is a movie that chugs along fairly normally, lulling you into a false sense of security, then abruptly throws a hidden switch and veers hard into the nonsensical. I ...

Film: Scenic Routes:Barton Fink

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Last month’s Toronto Film Festival found me spending much of my precious between-movie time arguing with colleagues—including The A.V. Club’s Scott Tobias and Noel Murray—about A Serious Man, the latest Coen brothers joint. Most everyone was impressed, to varying degrees. I, however, was not. My beef, in paradoxical essence, is that the new film is so nakedly personal in its depiction of the Coens’ Midwestern-Jewish upbringing that it winds up being oddly impersonal, because the brothers only fully let their guard down when they’re safely hiding behind genre tropes. In fact, I persisted ...

Film: Scenic Routes:Shock Corridor

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Once upon a time, this installment of Scenic Routes was going to star a gaggle of homicidal nymphomaniacs. Those of you who’ve seen Shock Corridor—arguably Samuel Fuller’s most bugfuck movie, and that’s saying something—can confirm that I’m not remotely exaggerating for effect. They leer, they lust, they devour. I’d only seen the film once, back in 1998, and while I loved it pretty much from start to finish, it was definitely the hero’s unfortunate visit to the nympho ward that wound up lodged most securely in my memory. Still, I figured I ...

Film: Scenic Routes:Good Will Hunting

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:21:00 -0500

Sometimes just a scant few minutes of a movie can build a permanent home in your memory. Scenic Routes is a feature devoted to exploring cinema's most remarkable individual sequences: the sublime, the exasperating, the iconic, the ineffable. As I used to say back in my debating days: RESOLVED: That the use of a therapist, psychiatrist, psychologist, or any other variety of mental-health practitioner, licensed or unlicensed, as a major character in a fictional motion picture should be prohibited by law. Back when the AVC brass and I were kicking around the idea for this column, my sole concern ...

Film: Scenic Routes:Double Indemnity

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 19:00:00 -0500

Sometimes just a scant few minutes of a movie can build a permanent home in your memory. Scenic Routes is a feature devoted to exploring cinema's most remarkable individual sequences: the sublime, the exasperating, the iconic, the ineffable. Sexual attraction—especially in cases where it happens instantaneously rather than building up over time—is a phenomenon that's nearly impossible to capture in words. I had a girlfriend once who told me, years after the fact, that she knew the precise moment when I first wanted her; she then related an incident I'd completely forgotten, in which we ...

Film: Scenic Routes:Nowhere To Hide

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:03:00 -0500

Sometimes just a scant few minutes of a movie can build a permanent home in your memory. Scenic Routes is a feature devoted to exploring cinema's most remarkable individual sequences: the sublime, the exasperating, the iconic, the ineffable. Lonely conviction can be a frustrating thing. For almost a decade now, I’ve been raving about the gonzo formal majesty of a little-known South Korean filmmaker named Lee Myung-se, with only a chorus of chirping crickets for an audience. That’s largely because few people have seen the guy’s work—Nowhere To Hide got an eyeblink U.S. release ...

Film: Scenic Routes:Boogie Nights

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:12:00 -0500

Asked to explain what makes a movie work, Howard Hawks reportedly defined the formula as “three good scenes, no bad scenes.” Or at least that’s the catchy sound-bite version—the citation for that remark on his Wikipedia page leads to an interview in which he actually says, “If I can make about five good scenes and not annoy the audience, it’s an awfully good picture.” In truth, the precise ratio of awesome to rancid doesn’t really matter, so long as we give Hawks credit for recognizing, long before the advent of home-video made random access possible, that ...