Hi folks, just wanted to drop in and say hello. I haven't been seeing too many films lately, since I've been dealing with a lot of other work: grading freshman papers (done, for now); reviewing another h...
2023-03-06 03:06:42 +0000 UTC View Post
I should mention right away that I have not read the Miriam Toews novel on which Women Talking is based. (There are only so many hours in the day, and for better or worse I do not share Scott Re...
2023-02-24 20:48:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Jennifer Reeder's new film Perpetrator is getting very strong reviews since premiering at the Berlinale, and to be honest it took me a while to figure out exactly why. Granted, I am not the worl...
2023-02-22 04:22:52 +0000 UTC View Post
It's incredibly rare for first-time filmmakers to make great work their first time out. So as a general rule, it's preferable to see a debut film with great ideas but shaky execution. Anyone (except mayb...
2023-02-20 03:45:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Before trying to say anything halfway cogent about A New Old Play, I wanted to read 2023-02-17 03:17:34 +0000 UTC View Post
or, Notes on Two Prominent Art-Horror Flicks from 2022
Resurrection (Andrew Semans, 2022)
First of all, I was surprised to learn that Andrew Semans' first film was Nancy,...
2023-02-15 05:11:30 +0000 UTC View Post
As the deadline for the 2023 Skandies rapidly approaches, I have time to watch a couple more eligible films. So this is a FLASH POLL. Which one(s) should I prioritize?
Thanks.
2023-02-10 20:33:15 +0000 UTC View Post
A quick glance at Letterboxd confirms it: "a Dardennes version of Run Lola Run" is the popular characterization of Full Time, the second feature film by Éric Gravel. Trouble is, this a...
2023-02-10 19:23:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Walk Up is a slight change-up for Hong, whose structural conceits have generally been somewhat abstract affairs (doubling, mirroring, repetition). Here, Hong uses an architectural motif to organ...
2023-02-07 05:29:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Marx Can Wait is perhaps a bit of a detour in Bellocchio's career, since he hasn't made very many documentaries, and his late style is characterized by an expansive, operatic mode that's in star...
2023-02-05 04:39:18 +0000 UTC View Post
The state-of-the-media doc Fantastic Machine left me in deep despair, but probably not for the reasons it's makers intended. Starting off with the usual chestnuts -- Daguerre, Muybridge, the Lum...
2023-02-04 03:38:19 +0000 UTC View Post
More so than in the past (I think -- I'd have to crunch the numbers), notable experimental filmmakers are shooting their shot with feature films that, while certainly not conventional by any means, are a...
2023-01-29 07:06:17 +0000 UTC View Post
I watched Grémillon's The Love of a Woman without realizing it was his final film. So quite by chance, I participated in the pastime of hardcore auteurists, seeing exactly how an old master con...
2023-01-27 02:43:34 +0000 UTC View Post
So I decided to start (admittedly a bit late) on my Grémillon odyssey with an early silent, one with a someone odd reputation. Maldone is a film that was produced by its star, Charles Dullin, s...
2023-01-24 20:18:02 +0000 UTC View Post
So a few weeks ago, I wrote about Through the Olive Trees, and as far as I was concerned it was my first viewing of it. Guess what?
I was going through my 2014 viewing log, mostly to recor...
2023-01-24 04:01:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Expanding on the layered, accelerated style she has developed in her shorter films, Fox Maxy arrives at Sundance firing on all cylinders. Though Gush is Maxy’s first feature-length project, th...
2023-01-21 21:16:49 +0000 UTC View Post
There's a strange thing about "realism" that I've never quite understood. In many respects, the world we live in is cruel, ugly, and inhumane. And in the course of trying to protest against those conditi...
2023-01-21 21:03:30 +0000 UTC View Post
An underwhelming Golden Bear winner from a less-than-stellar competition, Alcarràs feels very much like a compromise vote. There is nothing terribly wrong with Carla Simón's sophomore feature,...
2023-01-18 03:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
I receive email notifications when someone new joins this Patreon. And I was confused today by a sudden uptick (to put it mildly) in subscribers. As it happens, it was all due to the great Peter Labuza, ...
2023-01-14 03:01:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, 2022)
I will say this much: it's not boring. Part of the secret of EEAAO is that it moves at such a ...
2023-01-13 07:04:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood (Richard Linklater, 2022)
I turned this film off after 30 minutes earlier this year, but watched in full due to the acclaim it's gotten. And I ...
2023-01-10 03:39:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Well, well, well. In addition to getting a touch of flu, my dad has gone into the hospital. He has pneumonia, and is improving, but there are a lot of things Jen and I have to manage, along with our usua...
2023-01-09 02:40:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Okay, so I needed a little break from all the 2022 films I've been mainlining, and this film turned up on a torrent site, and it occurred to me that I'd never actually seen a film f...
2023-01-06 04:44:15 +0000 UTC View Post
A brief note on a Croatian film that has flown a bit under the radar during the 2022 festival season. Safe Place is a rare animal indeed: a debut feature, autobiographical in nature, with the di...
2023-01-04 01:37:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Considered by many to be Yang's masterpiece, A Brighter Summer Day certainly earns its four-hour runtime. For one thing, the film's episodic organization keeps things moving at a brisk, varied p...
2023-01-03 23:48:22 +0000 UTC View Post
There There (Andrew Bujalski, 2022)
As I said on my now-deleted Letterboxd remarks, this is a film that I admire in theory, because it shares some DNA with the structural-experimen...
2023-01-03 06:16:24 +0000 UTC View Post
Baumbach's adaptation of the "unadaptable" Don DeLillo novel has at least two direct quotations from Godard. The traffic jam in Weekend is here recreated to demonstrate the gridlock of panics su...
2023-01-03 05:35:21 +0000 UTC View Post
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022)
An essentially literary premise is given rather regal cinematic treatment by virtue of McDonagh shooting on two ridiculously pictu...
2022-12-30 03:12:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Just so's you know, I got the Eclipse 34 set for Christmas, so January's director of the month will be Jean Grémillon.
Deal with it.
2022-12-28 08:43:43 +0000 UTC View Post
