Just gonna use this as a place for rough thoughts on things--star ratings are purely polemical and no word is final.
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A Rainy Day in New York 2019
A movie out of time -- both classic and modern, so also neither -- about an old soul in a new world. A zoomer self portrait by Woody Allen, and as a look at someone who doesn't really see a place for himself in the working world and finds pleasure in things others more respectable and ambitious look askance at, I can't say it isn't relatable. There's a strange melancholy amidst the surface awkwardness, for example when Chalamet plays the…
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May December 2023
Dark Waters 2 -- but this time soft and sun-drenched, and instead of Mark Ruffalo investigating environmental crime it's Natalie Portman investigating an age-gap relationship.
More proof if it was needed that the zoom is the greatest formal maneuver the cinema has; and the edit here is where you know you're in the hands of a master -- I involuntarily let out an audible "woah..." at one scene transition cut to a cloud
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Mank 2020
why do you love me?
With Fincher it always comes back to this: loneliness, plus its attendant causes and effects -- alienation and self-isolation, ambition and failure, love and disappointment, desire and loss, etc. etc. The questions of why certain people stick around and others leave when someone is who they are and does what they do. I find Mank and his wife's relationship quite moving, and as such is a great example of how Fincher subtly operates with this…
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Blonde 2022
idk.... I'm at a loss here because I can't remember the last time I watched a film this long & this resistant to caring about conventional narrative rhythms, standards of character psychology, the purpose of images, time/audience management, etc etc etc etc. ...
I'm skeptical of those who are quick to hate it / or quick to love it, I can't imagine having a Definitive Take on this messy movie. The film seems to be asking the question of me: why…
