The experience of watching this film is going “hey what a fun little number about postman boot camp” only to realize that this opening scene is Tati’s equivalent of Lewis Abernathy walking us through the CG simulation of the Titanic breaking apart at the start of Titanic (and having familiarized us with the basic physics we’re in store for, we’re then subjected to each minute mechanic getting milked in every conceivable direction), except instead of the tragic death of thousands it’s an alcoholic mailman chasing down a plane.
-
-
Rashomon 1950
Trying to make a more concerted effort to address my more embarrassing blind spots. Turns out Rashomon is remarkable Thursday afternoon viewing. Not totally sold on the priest’s reversal at the end, and the general discussions of truth and folly of man etc are already pretty self-evident from just the conflict between segments themselves, but it kind of goes without saying that this has some of the most gradually devastating interplay of cross-cutting and composition, like, ever, particularly in the…
-
Marie Antoinette 2006
As a recent Age of Napoleon fanatic, I couldn’t help but desire to see events covered here that never would’ve fit into Coppola’s framework (which, for the record, is more refined than ever). As an even more recent fanatic of Bow Wow Wow’s “Fools Rush In,” however, I got more than I could’ve ever bargained for.
-
-
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 1975
I would never consider watching this at home, but for the longest time I was worried I had missed the post-Sight & Sound boat when this was screening everywhere. Maybe my fears that the newly-coronated Best Movie Ever would never screen again were a little premature, but I still felt fortunate that Metrograph was playing it, not to mention I had no idea going in that DP Babette Mangolte would be giving an intro, so right out the gate this was…
-
Bottoms 2023
I left thinking Seligman and co. could’ve taken things further, but when you read back the rap sheet there’s not exactly a shortage of otherworldly shenanigans or violence here. Props for taking the high road and doing everything in their power to avoid the obvious temptation of devolving into actual Fight Club parody or having any deeper relationship to that movie beyond an offhand remark — the only reading a pairing of the two would yield is that in this world,…
-
Oppenheimer 2023
Definitely worked a lot more for me this time around. I maintain that Nolan is a little out of his depth with dialectical screenwriting (which hinders things when the last hour tries to boil all the mythology of the first two hours down to a matter of principle with diatribes like “when will anyone tell the Truth™”), there’s basically negative pathos wrt Oppy’s two romantic relationships (which really hinders things when Nolan pulls directly from these relationships to ascribe gravity…
-
Scratch-Off 2023
It is time.
Enjoy my latest entry in the SSIACCU (Spencer Steeby in a cubicle cinematic universe)
-
Lost in Translation 2003
Definitely a movie that that I imagine would hit a lot harder at a different time in my life, didn’t really feel all the ennui I was hoping for. Don’t you just hate it when you over-anticipate your ennui?
-
Buffalo '66 1998
nvm she texted back: The Movie. In fact, the sheer jubilation and embrace of love at the end is so hilariously sincere and so triumphant that it almost completely deflates the gravity of all the brooding and introspection that precedes it. Almost. But Gallo shoots this with spiritual reverence for these ghostly spaces, and every interaction is just a couple degrees off, leaving so much space between the lines for us to fill in a world of emotional history. So…
-
The Virgin Suicides 1999
1999 was the year of period pieces with school dances set to Styx’s Come Sail Away.
Finally opened myself up to Sofia Coppola after a lifetime in the dark (this movie actually played at San Sebastián Film Festival the weekend I was born). A masterwork on the basis of bedroom clutter alone — in film school they showed us the Mt. Fuji scene from Lost in Translation to demonstrate mise-en-scène (ridiculous lecture), but any bedroom cutaway here would’ve been a…
-
Talk to Me 2022
On a level of basic mechanics, one of the cleanest horror movies I’ve seen in recent years. I liked it best at its most Insidious-coded moments and less so in the stretches of The Invisible Man (2020)-esque neutral-gray modernist mansion production design. It also gets a little too ham-fisted in literalizing the moral dilemma through dialogue when we get some already-overt foreshadowing with the kangaroo at the beginning, but the movie is lean enough to breeze through it, which brings…