A Master of Melancholy

Yeah, it's cool to kiss off Charlie Kaufman. But it's also idiotic.

"...In short: Charlie Kaufman sings in the key of melancholy, and he is absolutely singing my song...."

Oct. 14, 2008 Screens Post by Kimberley Jones

A Land Shaded in Melancholy Hues

The Austin Museum of Art exhibition "Visualizing the Blues: Images of the American South, 1862-1999" connects the blues aurally and visually, and reveals how the South, like the blues, is full of contradictions: dark and woeful yet beauteous and jubilant.

"...region, coloring life there, shading the South in blues, melancholy hues that describe the racial divide between blacks and..."

March 8, 2002 Arts Feature by Robert Faires

The Saddest Music in the World

Strange, marvelous, and unique, Guy Maddin's new film starring Isabella Rossellini is his best work to date.

"...the saddest tune, in the belief that the more melancholy the population, the more beer they will drink. "If..."

June 4, 2004 Movie Review by Marjorie Baumgarten

Big Fish

Tim Burton is all grown up and getting serious.

"...style are muffled here in favor of Forrest Gump-ish melancholy and cheesy, obvious attempts at heartstring-yanking that contrasts with..."

Dec. 26, 2003 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

Frisco Bay Blues

It's a thin line between love and hate for San Francisco in Barry Jenkins' 'Medicine for Melancholy'

"...Francisco, writer/director Barry Jenkins' first feature-length film, Medicine for Melancholy, is a love/hate story. The movie opens with Micah..."

March 7, 2008 Screens Feature by Sofia Resnick

We Have an Issue: “The Light That’s Leaving”

On Bill Callahan’s likably melancholy new record, and another month of painful closures of Austin fixtures

"...liable to send you into a mellow kind of melancholy – "lonesome in apleasant way," in Callahan's own words..."

Sept. 18, 2020 Column by Kimberley Jones

Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki

Behind the scenes as the Studio Ghibli mastermind returns to film

"...one might expect to the creator of genre-defying, whimsically melancholy masterworks such as Kiki’s Delivery Service and Howl’s Moving..."

Dec. 14, 2018 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

Colette

Famous French author underserved by prosaic biopic

"...the film seems to end on a note of melancholy, which does the famed author no justice, as she..."

Oct. 5, 2018 Movie Review by Josh Kupecki

The Lure

The Polish Mermaid musical you never knew you needed

"...the ear, or the throat. A pervasive sense of melancholy, loss, and longing pervades both the predations of the..."

April 21, 2017 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

T2 Trainspotting

The sequel to the 1996 classic

"...Pop on the soundtrack; T2 is rife with regret, melancholy, lost youth, and (of course) a new, nihilistically updated..."

March 24, 2017 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

A Tale of Love and Darkness

Natalie Portman adapts Amos Oz's acclaimed memoir

"...note in 1945 and ending in 1952 with a melancholy denouement. His tight-knit family – mother Fania (Portman) is..."

Sept. 2, 2016 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

Grandma

Lily Tomlin leads a dynamic cast down roads less traveled

"...Elle’s melancholy is interrupted by her granddaughter Sage (Garner) knocking on..."

Sept. 11, 2015 Movie Review by Marjorie Baumgarten

Inherent Vice

Highbrow mixes with lowbrow in Paul Thomas Anderson's screen adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's novel.

"...thankfully, gets that. His blend of noir, slapstick, and melancholy takes both the weight and the levity, and the..."

Jan. 9, 2015 Movie Review by Josh Kupecki

Nebraska

Woody is a man of few words who might not be all there, but Bruce Dern is all there and that's more than good enough for us.

"...distress, SNL alum Forte is a surprising fount of melancholy and frustrated ambition, while Dern takes a tough part..."

Nov. 29, 2013 Movie Review by Kimberley Jones

Shepard & Dark

The turbulent but creative connection between theatre legend Sam Shepard and writer and collector Johnny Dark is explored in this documentary. The film also features the work of a couple of Austin film mavericks: editor Sandra Adair and musician Graham Reynolds.

"...There’s much to savor in Wurmfeld’s insightful and oft-melancholy film about two old friends who’ve maintained said friendship..."

Oct. 25, 2013 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

Celeste & Jesse Forever

This romantic comedy starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg is far funnier than you’d expect a film about a tortuous split to be – and more deft.

"...tortuous split to be – and more deft and melancholy than any other comedy I can recall that co-stars..."

Aug. 24, 2012 Movie Review by Kimberley Jones

Safety Not Guaranteed

Love and time travel commingle in this debut feature which stars Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass.

"...working for a glossy, trendy Seattle magazine, she's droll, melancholy, and transcendent in equal measures. (And of course there..."

June 15, 2012 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

The Intouchables

The unlikely friendship that forms between a wealthy, white quadriplegic and a streetwise, black ne'er-do-well who becomes his live-in companion is the subject of this French film.

"...(Tell No One), as the broodingly bemused and terminally melancholy Philippe and Sy (who picked up the aforementioned César),..."

June 8, 2012 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

The Trip

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon co-star as best friends on a road trip in Michael Winterbottom's colicky, melancholy, and very amusing comedy.

"...not quite this and not entirely that: a colicky, melancholy comedy that is all shadings and little arc. It's..."

July 15, 2011 Movie Review by Kimberley Jones

The Kids Are All Right

A grin-cracking great portrait of a modern American family in minor and major crises.

"...marriage – with all of its giddy peaks and melancholy, abyssal trenches. It's about the eternally unknowable curveballs life..."

July 23, 2010 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

The Runaways

A grittily femme perspective governs this otherwise conventional music saga about the Runaways, America's first all-girl rock band.

"...Southern California doll parts stitched together to form a melancholy femme-bomb just waiting to blow. Shannon's Fowley is a..."

March 19, 2010 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

A Single Man

Tom Ford ditched fashion designing for filmmaking with this smart adaptation of the Christopher Isherwood story about a grieving gay man in 1962 California.

"...from the Austin-born fashion designer/icon Tom Ford. It's a melancholy meditation on love and death and hidden lives, and..."

Jan. 15, 2010 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

What Comes 'Up' ...

Director Pete Docter on the intersection of uplift and melancholy

"...ingeniously obscure sight gags, and more than a little melancholy, and at any other studio that initial green light..."

May 29, 2009 Screens Feature by Marc Savlov

Tokyo!

This triptych of short films by directors Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, and Bong Joon-ho is a gorgeous, sprawling mess.

"...is more whimsical and in keeping with the elegiac, melancholy pseudo-twee of his underappreciated The Science of Sleep. In..."

April 10, 2009 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

Seven Pounds

Will Smith stars in this dramatic film about a man who whose melancholia compels him to devise a unique plan to redeem what remains of his life.

"...Smith proves himself adept in the art of conflicted melancholy – always speaking at the wrong volume, rarely looking..."

Dec. 19, 2008 Movie Review by Josh Rosenblatt

Dark Streets

A collection of blues originals by the likes of Aaron Neville, B.B. King, and Etta James lightens this otherwise dreary exercise in modern film noir.

"...right visual complement to this tale of urban decay, melancholy, and murder caused director Samuels to overshoot symbolic murkiness..."

Dec. 12, 2008 Movie Review by Josh Rosenblatt

Shutter

Shutter is a shabby American remake of a Thai movie about a couple who sees mysterious images in photographs.

"...of Thai filmmakers Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom's sublime, melancholy, and ultimately ghastly (and identically titled) 2004 T-horror take..."

March 28, 2008 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

Paranoid Park

Gus Van Sant's new film about young male skateboarders is breathtaking, heartbreaking, tragic, gorgeous, and psychically true all at the same time.

"...Alex (Nevins), the troubled protagonist of Van Sant's new melancholy masterpiece. "Something besides teachers, breakups, girlfriends. Like different levels...."

March 21, 2008 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

Into the Wild

Sean Penn adapts Jon Krakauer's bestselling mystery adventure to the screen with frequently stunning but ultimately unsatisfactory results.

"...of society, somewhere along the way he misplaced that melancholy that made McCandless’ story so devastating. Krakauer’s hero was..."

Oct. 19, 2007 Movie Review by Josh Rosenblatt

The Night Listener

This taut, wiry exercise in eerie bad vibes, about a writer-cum-radio personality and a disturbing teenage literary sensation, is emotionally dense but never fully takes flight.

"...the edges of Williams’ mouth are tentative and confused. Melancholy sits atop both the night listener and the night..."

Aug. 4, 2006 Movie Review by Marc Savlov

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