Chance Solem-Pfeifer

1 week ago | wweek.com | Chance Solem-Pfeifer

The Long Goodbye (1973)Every generation gets the Los Angeles snoop it deserves. In The Long Goodbye (1973), Elliott Gould plays Philip Marlowe—the noir detective originated by Dick Powell and immortalized on screen by Humphrey Bogart—as five-o’clock shadow personified. From the moment we meet Marlowe, he’s exhausted, suit rumpled, jaded by free love, cigarette dangling from his bottom lip for minutes at a time.

2 weeks ago | wweek.com | Chance Solem-Pfeifer

Bull Durham (1988)Just imagine the soliloquy that minor league catcher and philosopher Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) would deliver about the 2025 New York Yankees’ new “torpedo bats.” “Optimal weight distribution to maximize power?” the Bull Durham star would probably scoff. “Sounds like a lot of technocratic joy-sucking from efficiency snobs who don’t know shit about sex or baseball.” But Bull Durham isn’t a movie about being good at baseball. It’s a movie about being good at enjoying baseball.

3 weeks ago | wweek.com | Chance Solem-Pfeifer

Speed Racer (2008)It’s challenging for a movie to become a genuine reclamation project in the 21st century—what with instantly metabolized film opinions and counter-opinions, not to mention studios averse to risk in the first place. But don’t underestimate Speed Racer (which is also the moral of Speed Racer). The Wachowskis’ 2008 follow-up to The Matrix trilogy flopped on arrival.

1 month ago | wweek.com | Chance Solem-Pfeifer

It Happened One Night (1934)Despite Claudette Colbert famously dissing the film’s quality, it’s not hard to imagine a moviegoing public in the throes of the Great Depression connecting with It Happened One Night on a deeper level than just Clark Gable and Colbert’s screwball comedy chops. Arguably Frank Capra’s first classic, the film hinges on an impossibly wealthy heiress, Ellie Andrews (Colbert), suddenly humbled by her circumstances.

1 month ago | wweek.com | Chance Solem-Pfeifer

Y Tu Mamá También (2001)In most coming-of-age movies, we expect the characters to evolve. But sometimes the things they learn slam doors on childhood rather than open windows to adulthood. Though perhaps best remembered for its group sex and minting two Mexican movie stars, Y Tu Mamá También is a bracing depiction of adolescence’s sudden end.