A.A. Dowd's saved articles

Well shit, I just went to the theater, watched this movie and died. It was probably movie’s awfulness that did it, but we’re still gonna sue.

Whenever King Kong isn’t on screen, the other characters should ask, “where’s Kong?”

“At one point, they shoot a rectal exam from the rectum’s perspective. It may be the defining image of a film so far up its own ass.” Read more

Some really nice writeups this year. For a while I was distracted by how intent you seemed on comparing what you liked with the opinions of others, as if you suddenly didn’t trust your own reactions, but then I remembered what you wrote in the first instalment about how much the presence of other critics and friends we… Read more

I second the love for We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, which is also my favorite film of the festival so far. There’s always a danger with a film like this, a genre-bending project that plays coy about what kind of film it even is, that it’ll end up being less than the sum of its parts. That’s how I’ve felt about… Read more

We’re supposed to read all these words!? Read more

I believe it is available to stream on Disney Plus. 

Laughing at the first two photos here, which tell a story of Elizabeth Moss being arrested for violating a park’s no-smoking ordinance.

“Underwhelming” is a really nice way of putting it. I watched New Mutants a few weeks ago hoping it would be a good enough movie to just enjoy. The premise was ok, and the framing device of using Horror tropes was neat, but in the end it just wasn’t a strong movie. It felt more like Twilight with a thin coat of… Read more

“The structure of the film subtly underscores a disconnect between the rhetoric of change and the reality of how long it can take: While Walsh’s staff calmly, dryly debates how to address Boston’s high eviction rate, we meet a desperate man for whom the issue is far from theoretical.” Read more

He then becomes an actual filmmaker (using the digital camera that came, rather inexplicably, with the jacket) Read more

I finally watched the Joker this week and ended up feeling like it’s a weird movie to generate so much praise and hatred. For context I afterwards watched King of Comedy, and it struck me that what Joker misses is some sort of psychological and/or moral clarity about the character we’re watching. Without that it’s… Read more

This is an amazing piece, and real food for thought for me. I never thought about why IT resonated so strongly with me, but I suspect I do now. Read more

I could have written this article. I was a little younger than you when I read It; I think about nine. My father was (is) an abusive alcoholic, and I used to jokingly explain my life with the comparison that while my friends’ families were like Full House, mine was more Roseanne—although that just captured the blue… Read more