My most treasured experiences with filmgoing are when the experience of sitting on front of a screen can become something similar to an act of communion; A truly magical film will enrapture the audience as nothing else can, transporting them into it's world and sharing it's truth to all willing to see it.
Still Walking is one such film.
(light, premise based spoilers ahead)
As with any family reunion, the mixture of different sub-groups that constitute a larger family will…
Satoshi Kon passed far too soon, but his filmography is one of the most distinct and compelling in the history of cinema. Perfect Blue is probably his most popular film, and for good reason; it has an excellent story with a really compelling hook, it tackles challenging subject matter in a very intelligent way that makes it a cornerstone of "adult" animation, and it's the closest Kon has made to a straightforward genre film, making it the easiest movie for…
A rewatch without me being as hyped up reveals more of the film's flaws for me; the plot is built on a series of contrivances that undermines some of the movie in hindsight, but the actual experience of watching it is still absolutely joyful for me. It's best moments outclass anything the first film had to offer (Show Yourself!!!), and the strength of the songwriting and it's implementation here the best that Disney has accomplished since at least Tangled, if…
God this is exactly the movie I needed today - it's so heartwarming, so funny, and so full of love! Everyone rocks in it and you can tell the personal angle behind it's creation gives it a lot of it's strength, which gives it so much of it's emotional depth. Plus, I'll always support Michael Showalter, the idea that he directed an Oscar caliber movie after starting his film career with the sublime work of art that is Wet Hot American Summer lets me know that there is justice in the world. What an absolute delight!
Popular modern filmmaking requires self-reflexiveness, it seems. Many of the biggest hits and best rated efforts this year demonstrate these qualities; whether the cinema of 2019 shows this through self-referential comedy/narratives (i.e. Endgame, The Irishman, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) or through narratives that lean into audience expectations in surprising ways (i.e. Parasite, The Lighthouse, Us), the trend going forwards seems to be that the movies we see are watching us ever more closely. This democratization of expectations isn't…
It would be impossible to produce any sort of writing on this movie without reducing it's power. An impression, sure, and were I to have studied knowledge of editing and camerawork I'm sure there's a way that I could point out the technical innovation and forwardness of the film's construction. Man With a Movie Camera is intensely experimental, however, in the sense that every literal frame is used to create a new impression. These impressions form vignettes, which form scenes,…
