Words On Films

Elizabeth Moss rains fire and brimstone as the scurrilous rock goddess Becky Something, a feral, untamable beast of a character, inflicting abuse upon her band mates and inner circle. Becky’s vitriol is so intense even us, as paying audience members, can’t avoid being hit with shrapnel; she acts as if possessed by some ramped up, adrenaline-burning demon, only coming to a pause upon concussion. The role is a career-best showcase for Moss, and the film, “Her Smell”, a different stratosphere for its creator, the fecund indie workhorse Alex Ross Perry. Wide in scope, spanning a downhill slide all the way to one final stab at redemption, the film feels like a sizable leap forward from anything the filmmaker has done in the past, a bold vision seen all the way through, leaving the audience with the feeling there was no compromise, each frame as intact as first conception.    Thrashing through the first hour plus, bluntness a prerogative and erraticism a set course, the film starts with some

Within every work of art lays a personal flourish emanating from its creator, details buried in the work related to the artist’s life, an expression of their inner workings, a scene or swath of canvas symbolizing past recollections, granting audiences a glimpse into the interior world of whoever’s helming the thing they’re experiencing – be it painting, play, or song. Everything from bubblegum pop hits to rudimentary cash-grab studio flicks contain personal touches, something akin to an inside joke, within their running time – be it a routine slasher or the tenth installation of a vapid comic book adaptation. Personal strokes are often whipped into movies surreptitiously, undetectable to the unaffiliated, leaving those not in the know none the wiser to meaningful details from, say, its author’s childhood.  A jutting head during the high-school prom scene can be an invented dance move attributed to a particular character, or a reproduced quirk the director’s varsity team buddy used to b

Once upon a time, movies enraptured audiences like no other medium, filling opera house size auditoriums to capacity, symbolizing the apex of the entertainment industry. This was before broadcast television, VHS, bootlegs, DVD’s, online pirating and streaming platforms, when the only juncture to watch movies was in a theater. Billboards advertising the upcoming release of even midlevel movies were plastered along highways, snipes pasted one-sheet posters onto city walls, radio stations played ad spots narrated with enticement, magazine racks held rows of print issues dedicated to movie coverage, water cooler chitchat revolved around the cool new release of the week. All these advertising portals are still in existence, just shrunken to a squint. Sales for physical media have been in decline for over a decade. Video rental houses are relics, or simply nifty retro novelties. No more Tower, Virgin, HMV, Blockbuster storefronts, barely a handful of mom and pop record shops catering to the