Speaking of cultish following of directors: https://www.criterion.com/boxsets/9...e=braze&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=kubrick
I don't really get following directors. I hardly even look at the director's names of the movies I watch.
Dead Man (1995) The further west the train goes, the stranger it's occupants seem to get. Then again, mild mannered accountant William Blake has never been west of Cleveland before. But he's going to the very end of the train's line to the frontier town of Machine, where he has a lucrative job offer waiting. Which falls through in spectacular fashion. That night he gets caught in a domestic altercation, and ends with the accidental reputation of being a murderer. Wounded, penniless, and hunted, with nobody to befriend and guide him, he flees west. And things only get stranger. This eighth Jim Jarmusch movie I've seen is the complete opposite of a standard Western, but unfortunately a key part of standard Westerns is a concrete plot with clear resolutions. This veers between being psychedelic and bizarre. I get how the various unconnected vignettes tell how the outlaw gets that way mostly through accident and the men charged to bring him to justice have murky justifications and utter lack of morals, but the scenes seem set up to be strange mostly for the sake of being strange. The movie is at its best when it wordlessly dwells on mood, with the sharp black-and-white cinematography, the impeccable set dressing, and the wonderfully evocative soundtrack.
I have a few favorite directors, like Fuller, Dassin, Carpenter and De Palma that I am pretty completionist on. And then there are noir directors, if I have seen a noir I like from a certain director, I will definitely check out some of their other work, if I have the chance. And then there are the occasional directors I will latch onto regardless of the genre, like for instance Jack Arnold (mostly known for his creature horror but has done interesting work in genres like western and noir as well).
I used to pay some attention to directors and would go see the "latest" David Lynch or David Cronenberg movie because of the director. But, like most things, I just don't care that much anymore. Not sure there is a director out there, other than Nolan and, maybe David Fincher and Tom Twyker, who I recognize and might see a film partly because they directed it.
Part of the reason is if I know a director is releasing something, I know it's going to be good. If I see Brian De Palma on something I'm going to give it a watch because I've never been disappointed in his work. If I see the Coen Bros directed something I'll watch it because I know it'll be great.
The Inland Sea ~ L. Carra A visual travelogue of Japan's Seto Inland Sea following a famous book from 20 years earlier by Donald Ritchie, a cultural and film critic living in Japan. While the visuals are quite striking, the narration from Ritchie based on his earlier writing is simultaneously fetishizing Japanese culture and being incredibly condescending towards the Japanese. His argument modernization is coming to ruin Japan. It's not quite MJGA, it's more focused in cultural and environmental preservation, but it is still delivered from an irritatingly paternalistic perspective.
Loving your reviews, Quango. Very diverse set of movies you're watching. But could you add the year of the movie? Most of the time I have to go look it up.
Sure and thanks. Based on your posts in the Stage thread, I think you'll enjoy my July theme, Shakespeare in the Park.
One Battle After Another ~ P.T. Anderson (2025) Pat and Perfidia are revolutionaries fighting against the state, embodied by a smarmy military man, Lockjaw. Perfidia has a baby, suffers post-partum depression, gets caught, and turns on the resistance, leaving Pat to raise their daughter in hiding as Bob and Willa. Cut to 16 years later, and Lockjaw has reason to come after them. Anderson is a great filmmaker, and the film looks great. It obviously has some timely political views around fighting a white nationalist infused police state. It's paced well and enjoyable, but I guess my main issue is the characters being a little cartoonish, and in Sean Penn's Lockjaw, entirely too much so. I also feel using post-partum depression as the trigger for Perfidia's arc isn't great or handled all that well, nor is the cut to Bob 16 years later somehow still in a state of crippling denial. For a movie centered around parenting, there's very little it has to say about it. It's still a good movie, but I guess these are the pieces that I think kept it from being great.
Naked ~ M. Leigh (1993) After pushing a consensual sexual encounter to non-consensual, Johnny steals a car and fleas Manchester for London to avoid getting beaten up. He then, using his weaponized charm and erudition, plows through the lives of everyone he meets like a bulldozer. The cinematography is great with a lot of really standout scenes, and David Thewlis gives a tremendous performance as Johnny. The story, however, centers on a man that commits multiple acts of physical, emotional, and verbal abuse against women. If Leigh was framing Johnny as a total villain who takes out his insecurity on the women around him, this might be a masterpiece, but the film seems to want to empathize with him despite his "flaws." Leigh even writes in a Patrick Bateman-esque total psychopath side character as a counterpoint to say, Johnny's not as bad as this. Just removing that character entirely and placing more blame on Johnny for his actions would have made a better point. The film just never fully commits to acknowledging that Johnny's a piece of s**t. Despite my frustration with the story, I have to give props to David Thewlis's performance. It was absolutely tremendous. He does so much with his eyes when just hanging out on a street corner or when his grin turns into a smirk. He has a look of vulnerability that convinces you that women would fall for him, even though it's actually masking complete malice. I'm not sure if Leigh believes the long, pretentious monologues Thewlis delivers, but Thewlis seems to understand that the words are beside the point. The verbal assaults are all about winning. He's a 1993 internet troll, spamming pseudo-philosophy like a machine gun to mask over his insecurity.
Continuing the 90s run. Independence Day Year: 1995 Platform: Hulu Summary: Aliens invade the Earth with aims to destroy it. Rating: 6.5/10 First time seeing this. Not a bad movie but some complaints: Longer than it needed to be. An hour and half, two hours would've been fine. Two and half hours was just too long. That's my biggest complaint. Other things was it just seemed generic in general. That said, Jeff Goldblum, Will Smith, Robert Loggia, among others makes a good cast, this is a fun summer movie. The visual effects were great. Action was good.
If you want a great podcast series that covers this, Mother Country Radicals is something I'd recommend listening to. It's hosted by a guy who was a son of the leading members of the Weather Underground and goes in-depth on them, his upbringing, and he talks to people his age who were involved with it. He talks to his parents too. Related note, I once photographed Bill Ayers (A leading member of the Weather Underground) for my college paper back in the late 00s. He didn't look much like a radical type, he looked like a professor.
Miss Tulip Stays the Night (1955) Dir. Leslie Arliss English mystery writer Andrew Dax returns from a trip to America. His glamorous wife Kate picks him up in their car. Instead of returning to their London home, she has a drive planned to a cottage in the country. Her intention is to make her husband focus on his work, as his latest manuscript is overdue at their publisher's. After car trouble on the way over, the pair arrive later than planned at the rental cottage. Just as they are about to turn in for the night, there is a knock at the door. An older woman by the name of Miss Tulip bursts in. Apart from being rather presumptuous and rude, Miss Tulip informs them of the fact that she is running from unknown parties, who have been sending her threatening letters. And asks the Daxes if she can stay the night. Deciding it cannot harm to indulge the strange woman for a night, they agree. Only to find her murdered the next morning. And the local DCI, a Mr. Thorne, zeroes in on Andrew as his primary suspect for the killing, not helped by his pre-existing dislike for mystery writers. A comedic murder mystery, with most of the comic relief coming in the form of P.C. Feathers, as played by Jack Hulbert and his very expressive face. Knew director Leslie Arliss more from noirish British thrillers, like for instance The Night Has Eyes. This is very different fare, much lighter and somewhat sillier. Patrick Holt cannot quite hide the 19 year age difference between himself and his co-lead Diana Dors. Lacks profundity to be memorable, and the comedy aspects don't make up for the thinness of the murder mystery.
Center Stage ~ S. Kwan (1991) Maggie Cheung Double-Header pt. 1 A biopic of an early cinema star in China, Ruan Lingyu, who commits suicide after becoming embroiled in tabloid scandal. The biopic is interspersed with a documentary of the cast, primarily Maggie Cheung, and crew meeting with people familiar with Lingyu's career and life, the filming of the movie, and existing original footage of Lingyu's films. It's an interesting format for the film to take, centering Cheung's reactions as an actress at a similar career point to the character she's portraying. There are some shots with terrific lighting, but a few where it's just darkness. Not sure if that's just an issue with the transfer. The film is maybe a little too slowly paced, but overall worth it for Cheung's performance.
For those who have a Letterboxd, and are so inclined, fun little thing to do might be to share the most popular and most obscure film in the ones we have logged on Letterboxd. For me these are the two: Most popular: Parasite 7.1 million views Least popular: A Korean in Paris 72 views Easiest way to find this is is ranking your films according to film popularity:
I'm differentiating the most popular rated and reviewed, since I think the first four most popular were things I probably gave a rating to when joining the site, but I haven't viewed since then. Most Popular: Interstellar 7.7 million views Most Popular That I've Written Review: Project Hail Mary 3.5 million views Least Popular: The Yellow Rose of Texas 156 views
Most Popular: Fight Club (7.6 million views) Least Popular: Surviving the Hunt (1 view) and The Trial of John Peter Zenger (10 views) Surviving the Hunt is a bit cheating, as I personally added its information to the database Letterboxd depends on. I've watched 10 movies with less than a hundred Letterboxd views. You might recall that when I added Fallout to my reviews it had 2 views. It seems to have undergone a (very) minor renascence since then and now has 17.
I thought my oldest film watched would be interesting, but it's Buster Keaton's The General (1926), which is hardly obscure. Maybe I will watch something older just for the sake of displacing it from it's perch.
Only have one of those. My oldest watched film on Letterboxd is 1934s Heat Lightning, I have seen plenty of older films, but for whatever reason, none of them during the time I have been posting my write-ups to Letterboxd. I also still need to continue moving all my older contributions to this topic to Letterboxd. Right now, I am only up to December 2017. My first post in this topic was May 4th, 2012.
Irma Vep ~ O. Assayas (1996) Maggie Cheung Double-Header pt. 2 Maggie Cheung plays a fictional version of herself, brought to Paris for a film remake of a famous silent film character Irma Vep. The production is a mess and goes terribly, while Cheung who can communicate with everyone in English, but not French, wanders through trying her best. A satire of French cinema. It has some really delightful scenes, one where Cheung takes method in her hotel a bit too far is great. The scene with the interviewer who hates the director she's working with and asks her if she knows Jean-Claude Van Damme is also good. Absurd, but funny, and Maggie Cheung is terrific as the calm eye (in a latex cat suit) of the hurricane.
The Night is Short, Walk on Girl ~ Yuasa M. (2017) "Senpai" chases after "The Girl with Black Hair" whom he's been crushing on as she goes on a wild surreal adventure through Kyoto on a college festival night. Hijinks ensue as his attempts to casually bump into her go sideways, and a cast of oddballs jump in and out of the story. I recognized the animation from Tatami Galaxy which I'd checked out briefly after reading Tatami Time Machine Blues and it's the same author working with the same director, so the wild absurdity didn't come as that big a surprise. It's mostly just a goofy, fun time, but maybe just a bit too much at points (especially reading subs during some of the frantic monologues).
Castle in the Sky (1986) It's the late industrial age in this place not Earth, and the mining town has seen better days. Given their dire situation, it's not a surprise to see child labor in the form of Pazu, an orphan who does odd jobs fixing and fetching items. He is eager and agile, which helps as this not Earth hasn't heard of workplace safety regulations. Then one very late workday he sees a girl his age falling from the sky. Or more accurately floating down slowly, encompassed in a blue glow from her necklace. She had been kidnapped, taken aboard an airship, and after airship pirates attempted their own abduction the resulting melee saw her fall down to not earth. Now the government and the pirates are both after her. More than a replacement for parachutes, the necklace may be the key to a place most consider a myth - Laputa, a floating city of vast wealth and power. You get this deep feeling of the history of Pazu's home despite being given very little direct information about it. The mines are petering out, and you see massive numbers of homes and workplaces built around them that are now abandoned. It's a town now but it used to be a city. All the equipment is old and worn. Whatever wealth was taken from here didn't stay. More than that, for a few seconds we get a eerie overhead view of the town and see it pockmarked with massive but ancient craters from a long-ago war. There's history to Laputa too, but it doesn't resonate because it's so alien. It's a more basic representation for power separated from ground-level concerns. What resonates is what happened to Laputa after history - something that anyone that has walked around an abandoned military base knows. But all that kind of stuff is a minor part of the movie time-wise. It's largely frenetic slapstick-level action and frequently unnerving for those of us with a fear of heights.