Mae West keeps her eye on the prize in Sextette This week, Berkeleyside’s film writer John Seal looks at a movie he recommends you check out on DVD. “Why are you watching this?” If you’re at all like me, you’ve been asked this question on more than one occasion in your life. Thankfully, I always […]
John Seal
Freelancer John Seal is Berkeleyside’s film critic. A movie connoisseur with a penchant for natty hats who lives in Oakland, John writes a weekly film recommendation column at Box Office Prophets, as well as a column in The Phantom of the Movie’s Videoscope, an old-fashioned paper magazine, published quarterly. He also writes regular film reviews for IMDB, which can be read here.
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Big Screen Berkeley: Micmacs
Dominique Pinon prepares to blast off in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs I promised something a bit more highbrow for this week’s column, and I’m a man of my word: though Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s new film, Micmacs (currently screening at the Shattuck Cinemas) won’t be mistaken for a Merchant-Ivory production or an Alain Resnais head-scratcher, it features neither […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: Best Worst Movie
George Hardy in Troll 2 If you thought the subject of last week’s column — 1953’s Invaders from Mars — was a little on the lowbrow side, wait ’till you get a load of Best Worst Movie, a new documentary opening Friday June 4 at the Shattuck Cinemas. It’s the fascinating, hilarious and occasionally bittersweet […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: Invaders from Mars
Some images stick with you for a lifetime: here’s one that’s been haunting me since the 1970s. The alien brain from 1953’s Invaders from Mars gave me quite the scare when I was ten, and now you can experience the same frisson of fear thanks to Pacific Film Archive’s Friday night L@te program. Helmed by […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: The Good the Bad the Weird
Kang-ho Song in The Good the Bad the Weird With a title like The Good the Bad the Weird (apparently punctuation and conjunctions are hopelessly old-fashioned these days), director Ji-Woon Kim’s new film — currently screening at the Shattuck Cinemas — is bound to be a letdown. By intentionally drawing comparisons to one of the […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: Ladybug Ladybug
Promotional poster for Ladybug Ladybug This week, Berkeleyside’s film writer John Seal looks at a movie he recommends you check out on DVD. Many film fans have at least a passing acquaintance with director Frank Perry’s first production, 1962’s bittersweet boy meets girl in a sanitarium drama David and Lisa. That film was the first […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: Locally Grown Produce
Tear Gas in Law Enforcement Sometimes you’ll find locally grown produce in the most unexpected and unusual places. Take, for example, a little industrial film entitled Tear Gas in Law Enforcement. Recently aired late one night on television’s best channel — Turner Classic Movies — this 25-minute film was (according to its prologue) ‘designed to […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: Exit Through the Gift Shop — a two-finger salute to craven art-world poseurs?
The less you know about Exit through the Gift Shop before you see it, the more you’ll appreciate it. Of course, if you go into the film expecting to learn anything about its purported subject, you’ll probably be bitterly disappointed. Directed by guerrilla artist Banksy, the film is, ostensibly, both a behind the scenes look […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: The Eclipse
Iben Hjejle and Ciaran Hinds in The Eclipse Director-writer Conor McPherson’s new film The Eclipse is almost impossible to classify: blending elements of drama, romantic comedy, and horror, it offers appeal to a wide range of filmgoers. Unfortunately, the film’s aversion to easy pigeon-holing also means marketing it is no easy task: The Eclipse is […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: Blood and guts in The Warlords
Andy Lau, Jet Li, and Takeshi Kaneshiro in The Warlords If you enjoyed the balletic elegance of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or the epic scale and outrageous haute couture of Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower, you might still enjoy director Peter Chan’s The Warlords, a Chinese historical drama from 2007 only […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: (Almost) locally grown produce
Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort in Harold and Maude This is the second post in an occasional series by John Seal on movies made in Berkeley. Read the first, on Hall Bartlett’s Changes, here. I’ve read for years that Harold and Maude was partly shot in Our Town. It’s demonstrably true that director Hal Ashby’s […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Noomi Rapace in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo First things first: the new Swedish thriller, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, has been re-titled for American consumption, and done so in clumsy but understandable fashion. Based on a novel by Stieg Larsson entitled Män som hatar kvinnor — Men who Hate Women — the […]