Author Archive: Jon Bastian
Jon is a playwright and screenwriter who lives in Los Angeles, where he has been currently appearing in Flash Theater LA when not working for Cesar Millan to keep his dogs rolling in kibble.
Fast Food Nation
If one were to compile a list of the most radical filmmakers working today–the political provocateurs and counter-cultural firebrands of our time–it’s a pretty safe bet that you wouldn’t find Richard Linklater near the top of it. A sardonic, Gen-X beat-poet, the writer-director of Dazed and Confused and subUrbia has always put character and conversation [...]
Little Children
Suburbia sucks. It’s a plastic purgatory, a Mecca of consumerism and conformity. It’s white picket fences, mini-vans and Wal-Mart. The women are peppy Stepford Wives, the men alpha-male drones. Everything is shiny and clean and sterile. And those who dare to be different, to have their own dreams and ideas, are either destroyed or assimilated. [...]
L’Enfant
Bruno, the arresting young subject of L’Enfant, is not your average movie hero. In fact, rarely has the word anti-hero seemed more appropriate. As played by the blonde and blandly handsome Jérémie Renier, he’s a Eurotrash James Dean, sans the charisma: a rebel without a cause, a clue, or a moral compass. Selfish and apathetic [...]
Mysterious Skin
When last I caught up with Gregg Araki here at Filmmonthly, it was in a review of his Splendor, his 1999 variation on screwball comedy. I noted in that review, “Splendor is an excellent sign that Araki is going to be with us for a while, and is only going to keep getting better.” His [...]
Hellbent
To properly cover Hellbent, I really have to write two reviews. Being a sub-genre of a sub-genre movie to start out with, I have to ask myself, “Did the filmmakers succeed at what they were trying to do?” But, as just a movie, I also have to ask, “Was it enjoyable as a film?” Hellbent [...]
Children of the Revolution
Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s humungous 1975 The Illuminatus! Trilogy, a dark satire that takes every conspiracy theory of its time to the extreme, has never been made into a movie, and probably never will be. It was adapted into an over ten hour stage play at about the same time Jim Jones was [...]
A Dirty Shame
In the course of a film career that now spans forty years, John Waters hasn’t gotten any more mainstream. Rather, the mainstream has caught up with him. He may have seemed to have dabbled in that territory with films like Hairspray and Cry-Baby. Happily, though, he returns to his earlier subversiveness with his latest, A [...]
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
I’ve never read any of the Harry Potter books. Other than having scanned through the first volume for research purposes, I’ve yet to crack a cover on any of J.K. Rowling’s works. (Full disclosure: I spent several years at Warner Home Video, and was intimately involved with the creation of the DVD versions of the [...]
American Wedding
I’ve decided after seeing the third installment of the American Pie trilogy that these three movies are the Star Wars of teen comedies. In fact, the trio of films follows the pattern of Episodes IV, V and VI to a T. The original American Pie, like Star Wars, snuck out unexpectedly, a new take on [...]
Vulgar
I first stuck Vulgar in the ol’ DVD machine as a distraction, because Tuesday night TV really, really sucks ass. Hell, why not? I snagged it out of the real-cheap used bin at the local video store, and Kevin Smith was involved. But a funny thing happened. A few minutes into the film, I found [...]
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