We don’t usually recommend streaming titles you have to rent as standalones, but when Don Hertzfeldt suddenly drops a sequel to World of Tomorrow, I’ll make an exception.
Judging by the reactions of friends, Hertzfeldt seems to fall pretty squarely in the love-it-or-hate-it column.
It’s an assumption, an article of faith, but it always bears repeating: every best-of list is a subjective snapshot, bound by what we could or would see, the genres to which we gravitate, the last-minute audibles called because we simply can’t bear to leave out a title.
There is almost no reason why, on paper, A Ghost Story should work. David Lowery’s fourth feature centers on the ghostiest kind of ghost – the bedsheet-with-eyeholes-cut-out variety. Its aesthetic is characterized by long takes and even longer silences. (At one point, we literally watch paint dry.)
Although their SNL shorts and music videos are generally cherished by comedy and/or cannabis enthusiasts, the Lonely Island boys haven’t had the best of luck on the big screen. Hot Rod raced through both theaters and the public consciousness, raking in all of $14M at the box office; a few years later, the Jorma Taccone-helmed MacGruber failed to recoup its budget, outpaced, as Matt Singer once pointed out, by Furry Vengeance, “starring Brendan Fraser as a real-estate developer at war with a raccoon.”