msicism

The Cold, Hard Facts of Deregulation

The GOP has received its propaganda brief and they are going whole-hog with it. Sadly, the Trump crowd will lap it up, because as we know, Democrats (especially AOC) are Satan and responsible for everyth...

We're All Going to the World's Fair (Jane Schoenbrun, 2021)

Jane Schoenbrun's new film is, as we used to say back in grad school, a complicated text. There are a number of aspects of We're All Going to the World's Fair that speak very particularly to con...

Rohfilm (Wilhelm and Birgit Hein, 1968)

When Mr. Thatch...

Contemporary Design Solutions for the Advertisement of Wordily-Titled Films

Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time (Lili Horvát, 2020)

In order to wrap my puny brain around Preparations, I had to come to terms with a niggling problem that is, in all fairness, more mine that Horvát's. That is, this film is a non-comedic, non-mu...

Cahiers explain

the presence of Sophie Letourneur's Enormous on your 2020 top ten. I just tried watching it and had to bail after 25 minutes. Not only is the film hyper-aggressive in its assertion that certain ...

Lightning (Mikio Naruse, 1952)

First things first: if you haven't checked out Dan Sallitt's wonderful e-book on Naruse, you really should. I'm finding it incre...

The Truffle Hunters (Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, 2020)

Given the evident mastery behind this documentary, it's strange that I feel so ambivalent about it. But this is a case of a film doing exactly what it's supposed to do, without being particularly revelat...

Teenage Emotions (Frédéric Da, 2021)

DISCLAIMER: It feels a bit odd to write a review of a film made by one of the subscribers to this very Patreon. But I've written about the work of friends and acquaintances before. (When you focus on the...

"You wanna get Capone? Here's how you get Capone."

One of the irritating things about the academy (and believe me, the list is long) is the simultaneous fascination and repulsion some scholars have with Donald Trump. There is an entire wing of Rhetoric a...

Rotterdam 5

Pebbles (Vinothraj P.S., 2021)

Nothing struck me as particularly award-winning here. What we've got is 66 minutes (plus seven minutes of credits) of a drunken jerk of a dad (Karuth...

Late Chrysanthemums (Mikio Naruse, 1954)

My second Naruse, and given the subject matter, I kept thinking about how this treatment of the lives of former geisha differs from Mizoguchi. There are no elegant, scroll-like tracking shots, and very l...

No IFFRs, Ands, or Buts (expanded)

Friends and Strangers (James Vaughan, 2021)

I fear I'm am falling into a habit with these capsule reviews, comparing every new film to some older one, or a combination of older one...

Flunky, Work Hard! (Mikio Naruse, 1931)

Without really meaning to, I began this month's Naruse project with the director's oldest surviving film. To say I was blindsided by Flunky, Work Hard! would be a bit of an understatement. It's ...

"'Dam, 'Dam, 'Dam!!"

Aurora (Paz Fábrega, 2021)

Essentially a two-hander character study, Aurora reminded me a bit of Nadav Lapid's The Kindergarten Teacher, although the circumstanc...

When I Say "Rotter," You Say "Dam!"

Based on the action on Letterboxd, it seems I'm the only person who isn't doing Sundance by remote. So far, Rotterdam has been a meager substitute, but I'll take what I can get. And of course, I'm always...

A Quick Word About the Golden Globes

This year's COVID edition of awards season should really be ignored, or at least marked with a gigantic asterisk. The very idea that junk like Mank and Promising Young Woman would be in...

A Lil' Bit o' Rotterdam in My Life

I am not sure how many films I will be watching with my IFFR Press credentials. I must admit, nothing looks unmissable so far. But I wanted to provide quick notes on the films I do see. I'm afraid full r...

Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955)

Although I am well aware of the canonical status of Lola Montès, I can't help feeling a certain ambivalence toward it. For one thing, there is the brute fact of history. This was simultaneously...

SOPHIE (1986-2021)

This is devastating news. SOPHIE was a groundbreaking artist whose life and career had just begun. Rest in power.

I tried to embed her video for "It's Okay to Cry," but YouTube isn't letting me. So...

From Mayerling to Sarajevo (Max Ophüls, 1940)

I just read that From Mayerling to Sarajevo was a flop with both audiences and critics. Although this surprises me, the more I think about it I can understand why viewers of the time may not hav...

Le Plaisir (Max Ophüls, 1952)

Prior to watching Le Plaisir, all I really knew about it was that it supplied the final shot of Godard's The Image Book. At the end of the film, Godard shows us a masked man in a top ha...

"What if we Occupy Wall Street in a DIFFERENT way?"

If the SEC closes out the Reddit investors, and Biden lets it happen, we may witness an insurgence that makes the Capitol bozos look like, well, a bunch of musket-wielding rednecks.

I mean jesus. S...

Getting to Know You: February Run-Off

Like last time, I'm doing a follow-up poll with the three top vote-getters.

Tomorrow I'll write about the (somewhat disappointing) Le Plaisir. And I have saved the last for best. Lola Montès is on deck.

Atlantis (Valentyn Vasyanovych, 2019)

A few years back, I decided to watch a random selection of films on Festival Scope. My thought was, maybe if I randomized the list of available films and watched a few on a whim, I might discover some ge...

Caught (Max Ophüls, 1949)

Caught is probably the strangest of the Ophüls films I've seen so far. In my lexicon, that would typically equal "best," but I am really not sure how I feel about this film on the whole. Obviou...

Getting To Know You #2

I still have a couple of Ophüls films to watch and write up. But I figured I'd go ahead and get the February poll underway.

What will I be watching?

Lux Æterna (Gaspar Noé, 2019)

Following the critical and commercial success of Climax, Gaspar Noé did an odd thing. He accepted an assignment to produce a promotional film for Yves Saint Laurent. While I doubt that any work...

Some Kind of Heaven (Lance Oppenheim, 2020)

Some Kind of Heaven is a tough film to evaluate. As a documentary, it more than accomplishes what it sets out to do. By focusing on life in The Villages, Florida -- the largest retirement commun...

The Reckless Moment (Max Ophüls, 1949)

The Reckless Moment may be the perfect auteurist specimen. The story itself is not all that convincing, largely because we have to take so much on faith. Would a mother like Lucia Harper (Joan B...