In Cormac McCarthy’s violent 1985 novel Blood Meridian, Judge Holden, one of the leaders of a raping, murdering gang in 1847 on the border of Mexico and Texas, philosophizes, “If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement.” Whether you label the author a Gnostic, Nietzschean, or a nihilist, McCarthy’s first feature length screenplay reflects this pitiless vision of life: The Counselor will freeze you to the bone and leave a rictus on your face.   Read More ...

Six categories covered most of my favorite films in 2013, with one stand-alone. . The result is a Top 20 list, but it was a very good year.
The Wolf of Wall Street Films on Love and Sex
Non-Fiction / Fiction Blends
Films with ’60s Ambience
Films on Race Relations
Films regarding Servitude
Art Films
Capsulation's of all 20  Read them here ...

Like their 2000 hit O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen Brothers latest musical film, Inside Llewyn Davis, is a skillful blend of great songs, picturesque characters, and arresting images. The tone of this film is more somber than the earlier effort, but it still manages to tap into the collective consciousness of the early Greenwich Village folk scene, or the ‘great folk scare’ as it euphemistically referred to at the time.

Despite endless travails on his journey to non-stardom, the title figure, Llweyn Davis, remains indefatigably romantic and idealistic, exuding the dreamy, warm-hearted love of an affecting lyric and patient melody that inspired a generation that came of age with the election of President John F. Kennedy. It was a generation fascinated by the Beat generation, which rebelled against the homogeneity and hypocrisy of the Eisenhower decade. The film reminds us that, despite the commercial changes looming on the horizon, this was a time when folk music mattered and greatness wasn’t (necessarily) measured in dollars, vocal acrobatics, and overstuffed arrangements. Still, folk was show business, and not so welcoming to every wayfaring stranger. read more...

In Spike Jonze’s new film, Her, novelist Eric Segal’s Love Story assertion that “love means never having to say you’re sorry” takes on a whole new meaning. Joaquin Phoenix gives a relaxed and convincing performance as Theodore Twombly, a middle-aged man whose heart learns to adore an operating system, the OS1. Voiced by Scarlett Johansson (her lines were delivered in real time from an isolation booth), the OS1 is calm and implacable. She is HAL from 2001, but equipped with a soothing and sexy voice simulator that can manipulate emotions with sly ease. Think of the artificial vocal emissions of today’s customer service lines and the robotic commands of Stephen J. Hawking’s speech synthesizer replaced by the voice of the world’s sexiest women. And she, that is the operating system, can make use of calculations at a speed that is beyond human comprehension. OS-1, or Samantha as it/she is called, computes, assesses, and acts on (at light speed) every need, mood, and desire. Facebook and Twitter on steroids, she reacts (perfectly) to Twombly’s every utterance. Because there is no competition with a physical body, this new ‘girlfriend’ exists only in the hearer’s imagination.  Read more...