The funniest – and shrewdest – politically-minded film of the year has arrived, and its name is Team America: World Police. Profane, offensive, and hilarious, it’s hands-down the best puppet movie ever made.
On the other end of the spectrum, Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s latest – the poetic Café Lumière, screening at this year’s New York Film Festival – is another one of the director’s moving meditations on the relationship between the past and present.
You can find my incredibly thought-provoking reviews of both at Slant magazine.
Team America: World Police (Slant magazine)
Café Lumière (Slant magazine)
And in addition, I’ve got reviews of four other Hou Hsiao-Hsien films – as well as a write-up of the awful 1986 thriller The Hitcher, starring C. Thomas Howell and Rutger Hauer – posted below. Enjoy.
3 responses to “The Lewd and the Lyrical”
“hands-down the best puppet movie ever made”
Do you count muppets (e.g. “The Dark Crystal”) and dolls (e.g. “Child’s Play”) in that?
BTW, did you ever see “The Puppet Master”? Apparently they went up all the way to #5 — http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6303200915/ref=pd_sim_video_4/103-2462088-2635825?v=glance&s=video
I was referring to movies featuring only puppets. Muppet and doll movies are entirely different genres, and must be judged accordingly.
I never saw The Puppet Masters, though I’ll soon be re-reviewing Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s “The Puppetmaster” (a biopic) for Slant. But hey, any horror film with Donald Sutherland has got to be sorta fun….right?
Joe asked the question that I was going to ask about what counts as a puppet movie. As a result, I bring nothing to the table. Carry on.