A solid prototype if ever there was one
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Nixon 1995
Can’t believe how much I dug this. Such frenetic shifting of formats and bizarre one-off choices ironically in service of a slow burn rise and fall, whose high point is still pretty miserable. It also seems to be the only sensible way to house Oliver Stone’s brand of direct, explicit criticisms coming from everyone in and out of Nixon’s circle. Some of the most pointed cuts I’ve ever seen, to an almost petty degree if they weren’t taking jabs at…
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Something's Gotta Give 2003
Didn’t buy for a second that Keanu Reeves was a doctor, but I believed without hesitation that he was in love with Diane Keaton.
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Napoleon Dynamite 2004
I’d seen the first ~15 minutes and all the famous scenes and random clips on tv, but I never sat down to actually watch it in full. I think it can rightfully be called an impressionistic portrait of the Midwest, and it’s surprisingly sweet. I have a weird time dilation thing with this movie where to me it’s always been around, but I remember Nacho Libre coming out. In my mind’s eye this is what my older brother’s high school was like.
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Nope 2022
I don’t think this is “less metaphorical” than Peele’s other films or “dropping the commentary to make way for spectacle” when the commentary is directly about image capture and who spectacle comes at the cost of. If anything, I’d say Us is the one that drops its acute metaphor to play out genre antics for its middle chunk. Even if that were the case here, Peele is finally at the level of constructing set pieces that his scripts have always…
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Black Swan 2010
Been putting this off for years because I wanted to watch some prerequisites first, but I never did. I was finally held at gunpoint, and it’s good!
A fascinating artifact between the two Suspirias. I always thought of Guadagnino’s film as “Suspiria if it actually focused on the dancing,” but this movie made me realize that his camera is still pretty distant from the world of dance. Black Swan engages with the choreography on a camera-blocking level and displays a…
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Broadway Danny Rose 1984
For a film that never seems to top any Woody Allen list, it’s crazy how effortlessly it still breathes gold. Mia Farrow is unrecognizable, Gordon Willis is doing some of his best work, and Nick Apollo Forte should’ve been a star. I could’ve lived in the Carnegie Deli framing device. Also, I know this is a silly comparison because it’s just history, but this blows through pretty much the entire scope of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in about 10 minutes, and of course with much more tactility (and tact).
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McCabe & Mrs. Miller 1971
Not Altman’s highest rate of windows shot through (by the camera, at least), but considering this movie has some of the most pristine images I’ve ever seen shining through prefog, extensive filters, rain and snow coming down in addition to snow and steam getting kicked up by wind, and a ton of grain that’s only accentuated by restoration, I think he makes up for it. And there are still a lot of window shots!
Like every other Altman film I’ve seen it’s probably a 5 but I’m giving it a 4. Arbitrary I know, but if I don’t qualify it, it’ll kill me