Brianland

One Scene After Another . “To make a film is easy.  To make a good film is war.  To make a great film is a miracle.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . […]

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Casting a Spell . . One Battle After Another is rightly being hailed as a masterpiece for the ages. I saw it on both opening night and closing night in Toronto on different IMAX screens, plus six more times in between at various other theaters. Months before it opened, I saw the photo of Leo […]

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Best Movies Watched in 2025 . Since people seem to love year-end lists — from critics’ picks to people’s own music streaming results — Sky suggested I make one for the best movies I watched this year.  Never did one of these before, but thought I could share some highlights that might lead some to […]

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Art Is My God   Late on election night November 2024 as the nightmare of America’s choice of ugly over decent became clear, I wrote in my notes — “spend every minute in the world of art.”  And that’s what I’ve done ever since. You can’t control elections — like you can’t control sports.  I […]

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Traversing the Impossible . Fifty years ago this month my life changed forever and for the better. I had transferred a couple years earlier from a private boys school in Winnipeg into the public school system because, frankly, I wanted to be around girls . . . and out of the almost military-school-like life I’d […]

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The PTA Movie We’ve Been Waiting For Since Boogie Nights . . Fifteen minutes into Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another I jotted the note — “The movie we’ve been waiting for since Boogie Nights!”  Sumpthin else I wrote down a couple of times (and thought many more) – “Great cinematic storytelling!”  Words like […]

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. The Jerry Garcia-directed film “The Grateful Dead Movie” will be back in theaters for one night (Thurs Aug 14th) — and for *the first time* it’s been remastered in 4K for IMAX and remixed for their high-end surround-sound speakers.  (!) Revisiting the film, here’s some deets you may not know … or knew and […]

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  I’ve been on a James Mangold deep-dive recently and this guy needs to be in any conversation about the greatest directors working today. He’s averaged a new film roughly every two years since his first low-budget indie (Heavy) in 1995, which won a Special Jury Recognition for Directing at Sundance and kind-of jump-started his […]

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  I recently stumbled on a Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA) interview about Boogie Nights from 1997 and began revisiting of his work. I’ve now seen all of his nine written-&-directed films, most more than once, and he’s certainly up there with the greatest of the active mid-career contemporary filmmakers. Since Boogie Nights he’s been compared […]

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Highlights of Golden Nights    By the laws of physics, taking a trip while you’re on a trip exponentially amplifies the experience. Here’s some of the peaks in the weeks with the freaks . . . The Black Dot “Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it […]

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