#coming back to this movie because of its beautiful cinematography

[movielosophy]

xxxHolic (2022) ~ invitation

[steampunkforever]

Comparing Joker 2 to movies like Morbius or Madame Web is intellectually insulting. Joker: Folie À Deux is a well crafted, beautiful film made by artists passionate about the story and is nowhere near the cash grab superhero slop that people have been making it out to be. You HAVE to stop equating financial success with whether or not a movie is good. The fact that this movie flopped would be an outright tragedy if it wasn't for the fact that the plot and pacing are solidly mid.

If this were not a DC Superhero property and rather an A24 film you would eat this up. It's an extremely interesting concept, a concept interesting enough to be the film's downfall. Because after the last film who would predict the pivot to a Courtroom drama/musical hybrid tackling the aftermath of the events of the previous film. And if that didn't kill the movie for the fanbase, the central theme of taking responsibility for your actions would.

I liked the first film well enough. If you go back and read my filmpost on it you'll see I was pretty underwhelmed by the film but appreciated it for the work of art that it was. And overall, if not as tight of a film, the sequel maintains the same quality. It's good enough as a sequel. Which is probably one of the worst parts of the movie. It's a solid 2.6 out of 5 film. Average. Good enough.

The key failures of the sequel are that It didn't lean into the musical aspect and a slow plot. I understand that the average superhero fanboy isn't going to be receptive to a Lady Gaga-run musical, but I feel that the film could've gone 20% more theater kid with it and maintained the poise Joker 2 prizes. All the songs were good but none stuck with me the way a proper musical makes songs stick with you.

This is a psychological drama focusing on a man caught up in a mess bigger than he is. It's going to be slow, well thought out, and "boring" in ways I do not mind at all. Even so the pacing needed to be sped up so that it didn't feel like the film was a drag either. Audiences wanted the whole film to be the third act, with costumes and fire and energy, and even with the courtroom scenes broken up by those musical numbers, it comes off as a very dry, introspective movie with not enough plot moving the film forward as an unfortunate side affect.

The introspection itself is, I think, the films moment of self-destruction. Turning the story that the first movie's audience set upon as a sort of incel icon into a movie about not being able to blame the world for your actions is not going to play well with the edgelord fanbase.

The film prophesies its own downfall here: the core theme of the movie, as it puts the first film on trial, is Arthur Fleck having to decide between playing the character of Joker to appease a fanbase that's wrought him into a figurehead he does not condone or owning up to his own actions and facing the music without an insanity defense. And predictably, the fans hate the film for it.

It's a drop dead gorgeous movie. It's a movie that kept me interested, even if it was pretty average quality. The performances, musical and otherwise, are fantastic. Just the cinematography alone puts it head and shoulders over the past decade of Marvel studios productions! To simply rank a film with purpose and passion next to the borderlands movie is a gross miscalculation. This flopped for other reasons.

Once the film hits streaming I know people will do watch parties to see how bad it is, just as they did with Morbius and Madame Web, and I think they'll be surprised at the artistic quality of this one compared to other bad movies. And in 15-20 years when we revisit the movie I think it will be marked as underrated and misunderstood, though I think it's a film that's perfectly understood, just miscategorized.

Yet at the end of the day, for all my strident defense of the film (It's not Morbius! You people don't know what you're talking about!) it's just average. Above average but barely so. And so barely worth the watch, a movie I'd rank as an interesting film, if not wholly a good film.

[annerbhp]

So I think you’ve written some of my fav HP fanfic ever like ever ever and I see you’ve been obsessing over the untamed lately. Is there anything similar narratively that drew you to it or another reason why you’d recommend someone watch the untamed?

Thanks so much! That is very kind of you to say, and REALLY nice of you to give me a chance to blather on about The Untamed!

You know, sometimes I just think the right piece of media comes along at the right moment and just hits all the right buttons. I swear I can never see it coming until it does.

Part of the reason I started watching The Untamed in the first place was because I kept seeing random posts about it and I was looking for something to distract me. It was still during the most isolated time period of COVID. I'd also found that my attention span and ability to focus on one thing at a time was severely challenging at the time? Like I couldn't even watch TV without also playing a game on my phone or doom-scrolling. So when I started The Untamed looking for something to watch, the fact it was in a foreign language and I had to read subtitles like...fixed this for me? It allowed me to fully focus on something for the first time in a long time. I also really like the formats of Chinese dramas in general, in that they are long (50 episodes in this case) enough to get really invested in the characters and character arcs, but are filmed at the same time with a complete plot from beginning to end. It's just so much nicer than the American TV show format of "here's a season, maybe you'll get another, maybe not, maybe the plot will wildly change, maybe we'll keep upping the ante and randomly kill people off when actors get different jobs." So the combo of subtitles and format really appealed to me.

But as for why The Untamed in particular is great, well, there's a lot of reasons!

It's a world that has magic, which I always find fascinating. This fantasy setting is based off Chinese Daoist traditions.

It has the theme of young people forced into war far too young. (Sometimes it feels like the show is actually three different genres in turn: high school hijinks, gritty war movie, and a murder mystery caper, and each one is awesome.)

Which kind of leads to another of my favorite things: the character arcs. I love a show with thoughtful character growth and change over time and this one does that really well.

There are so many characters to love, all with their own drives and interests. I can't say this show does overly well by its female characters when it comes to plot, but when it comes to character development, they are all fully fleshed out and have their own drives and none of them exist to just be a love interest, which is nice!

There are Jane Austen-levels of romantic longing. Like, the show is based off a novel that is explicitly gay, and I do mean explicit. Yet thanks to censorship, everything is subtext that is played so well by the actors and clearly very carefully put in place by the creators of the show through music and things like framing and glances and symbolism and hand touches, did I mention the LONGING GAZES? They know what they are doing. This show is so romantic, I can't even get over it, especially since it could never really be explicitly stated, even though it totally is!! (I am such a sucker for romance.)

There is also absolutely beautiful music, cinematography, and costuming.

Phenomenal acting, even when some of the CGI is laughably bad, and most people playing instruments don't look at all like they are actually playing.

This show has tragedy and humor and highly competent people and complicated evil and historical trauma and a complete denial of black and white thinking. It never holds back from exploring the ways society can fail us and we can fail ourselves. And how we can still find ways forward.

Also, the show has some jaw-dropping plot reveals that I just did not see coming, though maybe other people did. It was one of those, "WAIT A MINUTE" moments when the moment the show ended I was determined to watch all 50 episodes again immediately with my new understanding. I love media that can pull that off.

Look, the opening scene is literally the main character falling to their death off a cliff and you get to spend the rest of the series trying to figure out how that happened and where the world goes from there. It's beautiful!

If you do try to watch it, the first episode or two is SO CONFUSING, and that's fine, just go with it. By episode 10 if you are not completely sucked in, then maybe it's just not for you. We get some non-linear story telling approaches that are so effective.

Also, not really a "why is the show so great" or anything, but the fandom for this show is so active and HUGE. Like, there are currently over 43,000 fics on AO3 for the main pairing in this fandom alone. You'll be reading for ages. Some of them are the best fics I've ever read.

Hmmm. I think I'll go read some Olympics AUs.

[kaelio]

DECEPTIVE MOVIE TRAILERS FOR DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES IF THEY WERE A CINEMATIC SERIES:

I love imagining misleading movie trailers, it's just a thing I do. If I had infinite money and time and a time machine and the rights to adapt the Anne Rice vampire novels, these are examples of extremely dishonest trailers for those movies I would enjoy:

Devil's Minion: Have it appear to be some kind of psychological thriller, either about a guy who is perceiving his stalker as a literal monster, or a guy who feels some Presence stalking him and envisions it as a mysterious, beautiful young man. He's not really my favorite but we need Christopher Nolan directing, like really hitting that Memento tone. What's real?? What's not real?? Daniel appears to be using drugs and the audience is like ohhh is this about addiction? And then it totally seems like a dark addiction metaphor, like Oscar bait maybe. Even when Daniel gets a handjob it isn't clear because Requiem for a Dream got a lot of awards.

(*Don't try to smoosh in with Queen of the Damned, you have enough going on here.)

Tale of The Body Thief: A romantic drama that doesn't seem to realize its intensely worrisome undercurrents (a la "Passengers"). We see a woman of the cloth ministering to a homeless man who, following a severe medical crisis that lands him in her care, seems to be having spiritual delusions. She connects with him over their shared faith... and their desire for meaningful intimacy. We get a swell of orchestral music... some sort of scene of them kissing in the rain... another scene from which we can infer they're in bed together, but the camera is centered on a crucifix on her wall. "I will find the power to come back to you..." he says.

Tale of The Body Thief (Part 2): Wham! Actually a lot of the audience doesn't realize that last trailer never gave you a title! Maybe they think it's a gimmick! It takes them a moment to realize this old man (Indiana Jones??) racing around the cruise ship is accompanied by the same actor as the homeless man described above. "GET THAT MAN!" David shouts as Raglan does some sort of parkour that isn't quite extreme enough to cue in the audience that he's supposed to be inhuman. We see Lestat-in-body pushing through people in a rave taking place on the cruise ship dance floor. It seems like a cynical tie-in because everyone is young and hot there (not really the primary demographic for cruises). Camera pans over some sort of jacuzzi tub with a bunch of women in bikinis in it. "Excuse me, ladies!" someone says as they jump over the tub and since he has a ripped shirt and he's hot the girls in the tub go "ooooooh!" And maybe they have cocktails so it's supposed to be funny. But really sell it as an action-comedy and then WHANG! "Tale of the Body Thief" appears in huge text onscreen like "COMING THIS SPRING" and Mojo's little head pops up from the bottom of the screen and barks.

The Vampire Lestat: Oh you just shoot it like The Favorite, like the exact same cinematography, or maybe Chevalier, but it's about a sensitive stage actor in pre-Revolutionary France, trying to focus on his art as the world becomes more fraught around him. It invites you into his sensitive artistic soul.... Is there time for gentleness, for optimism, for art, in an era of nascent conflict? What will social forces have in store for him, or for his troubled companion? And then maybe you do give away the game where at the last second you see the window explode and the big evil Nosferatu-Magnus bursts through the door with his big gummy mouth with the two fangs like "Rrrrraarrhg!!"

Memnoch the Devil: Starts with some overplayed song for 45-50 year old men in the background of a scene of Lestat and David stealing the artifacts from the dead Roger. Inter-cut with bits of Lestat dismembering Roger's body. They get into a car (no rooftops, Anne, it would look silly on screen! We can't!) and smirk at each other—apparent heist film. Lestat turns the knob for the radio and then another song for loser guys starts to play. "Dora's gonna get mad," David says, as if we're taking precious seconds of this trailer to no-homo the whole thing and establish regressive attitudes about women all at once. Lestat probably says something like "Chicks, man." The movie promises no actual content or any reason to be interested in it, as with most heist movies.

Memnoch the Devil: Hey? Is that the same guy? They're using the same guy for... what is this, a remake of It's A Wonderful Life? God this is worse than when Chris Pratt started voicing both Mario and Garfield. Find another actor!

Blood & Gold: We see a clawed hand sticking out of a glacier and suddenly... it moves!! Ice cracks around the hand! A huge, mysterious, looming figure bursts out of the ice, covered in rags and holding a giant battle axe!! Thunder and lightening appear in the background suddenly for no reason, and a song from Iron Maiden kicks in. Implies heavily that it's some sort of dark action film that may or may not be trying to lean on the popularity of Marvel's "Thor" movies. Like that Winnie the Pooh movie where he kills people. "THE OLDEST STORY..." the trailer narrator guy says, "... IS REVENGE"

The Vampire Armand: You start off with all of the boys sitting around, having a good time, talking about their futures, all the places they're planning to go, the things they want—like, highschool yearbook signing energy. And then there's this one kid who seems kind of smug and suddenly he's like, "pft, you guys, you think so small. You're focused about what the master can get you with his power... but I want the power 😏". And then you'd cut to him on his way up a big fancy marble staircase and you'd see him puffing himself up, excited, maybe even telling the narrator about the amazing situation he's in, but how since he's totally the favorite he's going to do what his peers are either too humble or doltish to consider: ask to learn the magic itself. And it's building tension and he's just-just-just about to ask and then you hear "No." Or "You're not ready. The magic isn't for you." Gives you this great set-up, like a Sorcerer's Apprentice thing. You're already in this kid's corner. How come he doesn't get the magic? Why would anyone try to keep someone from self-actualizing?? Not very cool. Anyway this would be almost exactly the same energy as the trailer for that new Disney movie Wish.

[wellntruly]

The 4077 Film Festival

I watched three (plus) movies that they watched on M*A*S*H; this is my book report.

“Marlene Dietrich is back in town.” / 2x24 ‘A Smattering of Intelligence’

Okay so this one is actually just referenced in dialogue, not a specific film we watch them watch, but it happened that I watched two of Josef von Sternberg’s Marlene Dietrich films right before starting the M*A*S*H fest programming in earnest, so prologue, baby, prologue!

I had moved Shanghai Express (1932) up my watch list ever since it kicked off the Little Gold Men podcast’s Pride month Oscar flashbacks series this year, reminding me that I really wanted to see another Marlene Dietrich movie. Just stepping forward a few years into the 1930s also felt good, felt right after watching just so many (all) of Buster Keaton’s movies from the 1920s. Hot Chronological Summer!

I ended up watching both it and Morocco, because Shanghai Express SO enchanted me. Morocco (1930) is the one where Dietrich dresses in a tuxedo and steals a kiss from a woman, but Shanghai Express actually felt more pervasively, albeit subliminally queer to me, perhaps because she and her fellow sapphically inclined co-star Anna May Wong were rumored to have had an affair at some point. There’s just something about the scenes of the two of them lounging in a train car together just listening to music or silently playing cards and coolly eyeing anyone who comes in that says ‘gay culture.’ The actual romance plot is heterosexual of course, but it was wild how much more I was into that relationship than I was her one with Gary Cooper in Morocco, a much more famous and famously handsome star than [looks him up yet again] Clive Brook, and yet Brook all the WAY for me, girl. If we have to choose between Marlene Dietrich’s male love interests in von Sternberg pictures.

Anyway in the second season M*A*S*H episode ‘A Smattering of Intelligence’, Radar is engaged in a bit of hoodwinking (the 4077th’s second favorite pastime after flirting), and to indicate that he’s surreptitiously swapped some papers to further confuse some spy vs. spy antics going on, lights a cigarette and strikes a leg-up pose silhouetted in the doorway, causing spy #2 to ask if that’s the signal, and Hawkeye to remark, “Either that, or Marlene Dietrich is back in town,” and honestly describing Radar as being in drag as a famous bisexual woman from the ‘30s is not necessarily the least accurate description of Radar’s gender that I can think of.

Should you watch Shanghai Express? Babe yes, so moody in the best way. The play of light and shadow! This mysterious cast of characters all thrown together on a train! The Chinese civil war??? SHANGHAI EXPRESS.

Should you watch Morocco? Also looks so so beautiful, but if you only have room in your life for one Marlene movie, easy choice it's the above.

Blood and Sand (1941) / 3x05 ‘O.R.’

And now we reach the movies they actually watch on the show, although the first is a slight feint: this one we only hear. Early in the third season episode ‘O.R.’, recognizing that they’re all going to be working through the night, Radar asks Henry if he should pipe the audio from the movie in over the PA system, and Henry approves of this. I IMMEASURABLY approve of this, and think hearing the sound of old movie dialogue and Spanish guitar playing half muffled overhead as they operate is one of the most spellbinding atmospheres this show ever captured.

But the interesting thing about the choice of Blood and Sand for this episode, is that what this movie was most known for was actually its bold Technicolor visuals. Reportedly, director Rouben Mamoulian would carry around spray paint with him so he could change the color of props at a moment’s notice, and was also known to just paint shadows onto the walls sometimes if he couldn’t get the effect he wanted with light alone. The efforts of Mamoulian and his crew nabbed them the Academy Award for Best Cinematography: Color for 1941 (this was the era where there were two cinematography categories for color and black & white; ran until the 1960s actually!), as well as a nomination for Art Direction.

Though the film got no other notices and somewhat mixed reviews overall, Tyrone Power and Rita Hayworth were big deal movie stars, and their star-power is probably what contributed to much of this movie’s commercial success. When Father Mulcahy, hearing a scene playing over the speaker, asks what this is, Henry just states the title and their names. From another table, Hawkeye adds as a piece of description: “The Frank and Hot Lips of Old Seville.”

As it happens, Hawkeye’s joke is not so far off really! Tyrone Power is playing a passionate dumb matador married to a beautiful and innocent Linda Darnell (secret stalwart of the M*A*S*H programming, she's in two of these!), but gets swept up in a tumultuous affair with a powerful temptress played by Rita Hayworth. Something I learned watching Blood and Sand is that when Loretta Swit is playing Margaret in glimmering, half-lidded seduction mode, a big loose enticing smile on her lips, she is absolutely channeling Rita Hayworth in movies like this. And given the way Blood and Sand goes (I am so sure you can guess), Hawkeye would seem to be implying that Margaret is fully capable of destroying Frank’s whole hapless married ass.

Verisimilitude Corner: What plays over the speakers is 100% a scene in Blood and Sand, but I believe that the Spanish guitar I so love is actually lifted from a different part of the score and layered in with this particular Power & Hayworth dialogue. It creates a much more distinctive auditory profile to weave through the background of this scene; I completely understand why they would have done this.

Should you watch Blood and Sand? Naw, it’s sure got a look, but story and construction aren’t exactly anything to write home about

Leave Her to Heaven (1945) / 3x18 ‘House Arrest’

The first thing I noticed about Leave Her to Heaven should have occurred to me earlier: 20th Century Fox. All three of these titles turn out to be Fox movies, making all the sense in the world, as M*A*S*H the show was produced by the Fox television arm, after the success of the feature branch’s surprise hit, M*A*S*H the Altman film. Licensing clips of movies is definitely easier when they are also your movies.

The next framing element we need to discuss is that once more, this film was known for its vivid Technicolor cinematography, again the winner of the Academy Award for Cinematography: Color its year! And yet, what they’re watching on M*A*S*H is definitely Leave Her to Heaven, and definitely in black & white. Come to think of it, all films they watch are.

I have tried to figure out what’s going on here, and in the process have learned a lot more about the mechanics both physical and economic of Technicolor film, but have not come up with any definitive explanation (yet), just an educated guess. Which is, as it so often is, especially with the Army: cost. Shooting Technicolor film was outrageously expensive, involving huge cameras that you had to rent by the day from the Technicolor company, through which you would run three strips of film that were treated in different ways, so would respond to light and then dye differently (yes they dyed the film! incredible! are you seeing why it was SO ‘SPENSIVE), and then they’d all be layered together, et voilà: the richer-than-life colors you see in Technicolor films from the 30s-50s.

And as a side product this process also resulted in: a black & white negative. Now I have not yet found anyone confirming this, but my suspicion is that the studios would also make some copies off this negative that were not run through the pricey dye process, and those black & white reels would have been available for cheap if you were, say, the U.S. Army, looking for a discounted way to distract for a couple hours the people you’ve sent to fight a war from the fact that you’ve sent them to fight a war. I think it’s a good theory! But if anyone has actual info PLEASE let me know, I’m so so interested in what was going on here.

But meanwhile: in the third season M*A*S*H episode ‘House Arrest’, Hawkeye, on the titular house arrest, learns that Gene Tierney, striking in any color scheme, is in the movie they have that week, and is ready to move Heaven & Earth, or at least Father Mulcahy, to be able to see her. What Hawkeye does not know at this moment, nor would anyone watching this episode who has not seen John M. Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven, is that it also predominantly takes place in SMALL TOWN MAINE. I love the idea of M*A*S*H writers putting this easter egg in here, winking “and this will be one for the Criterion crowd :)” (also predicting the emergence of the Criterion Collection ten years later).

Verisimilitude Corner: For reasons I cannot fathom, the Leave Her to Heaven clips playing on the wall of the Swamp are happening all out of order. The first scene we see set at a table takes place in the early middle of the film, then we cut way back to the beginning portion in New Mexico, before swinging all the way to a piece in the last act. There is no wedding scene in this film, no matter what Father Mulcahy says, but it is in fact even funnier that Henry cries at the one he does, as this is actually one of Gene Tierney's big dangerous femme fatale moments (for all that like, they all are—tbc!!), and his weeping at it tracks with how Nurse Able is mystified by his reaction, and earlier he'd complained that after looking away for two seconds he had lost the plot.

Should you watch Leave Her to Heaven? So turns out Leave Her to Heaven is considered one of the few COLOR NOIRS, and it kinda fucks totally. It looks so Douglas Sirk melodrama gorgeous, but with a plot straight out of Gone Girl. And like, you ever seen Vincent Price, young? NOT I. Impossibly tall. Shows up in a rain storm in the New Mexico desert. Martin Scorsese has said this is one of his favorite movies—the taste.

My Darling Clementine (1946) / 5x22 ‘Movie Tonight’

And finally, from the Potter era, and from Potter’s heart, comes the fifth season episode 'Movie Tonight', where we watch really a remarkable amount of the battered copy he’s managed to track down of his favorite film, the John Ford western My Darling Clementine.

Harry Morgan is so cute, the phrase “My Darling Clementine” is so cute—with its lilting song to match—and this episode itself: it’s cute. The film screening works just as Colonel Potter hoped it might: a way to bring his campful of grown theater kids together during a tense patch. It’s very funny how little urging it takes for them to begin using every unplanned projector failure intermission as an opportunity to get up and start doing impressions for each other.

But do you know what’s so intriguing? When I finally watched My Darling Clementine, I found it actually struck a kind of harmony with M*A*S*H’s more melancholy currents. Filmed in 1946, it’s been called one of the first true post-war westerns, and there does feel something sort of haunted in it, this sense of loss. It starts in the song even, which after those first lines you remember is actually about a young woman “lost and gone forever.” So many of the characters are carrying some sort of wound, physicalized in coughs or injuries if not simply the toll clearly being wrought on them by the deaths that keep falling around them.

And then there’s that the two main characters are a brooding, Shakespeare-loving, TB-stricken outlaw surgeon (oh okay!), and their reluctant but-I’ll-do-it new marshal, a mellow, even-voiced, semi-secretly then not at all secretly total fucking weirdo, who caused me to message a M*A*S*H friend part-way in, hey, did we know Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp is Such A BJ. Fun, FUN. That would have been fun in the mess tent.

The film itself isn’t devoid of humor, either, should mention! Particularly around Old West Hunnicutt. It's that element as well as its dreamy bleakness that pairs well with a mobile hospital post in Korean War sitcom purgatory. Colonel Potter, famously, loves horses, so his 2/3rds horse-based explanation for why he loves this movie raises zero questions, but what that doesn’t indicate is you’re also going to get scenes like one where Doc Holiday is having alcohol poured over his hands so he can do emergency surgery on a pair of scrubbed tables in the saloon. This was a good pick, M*A*S*H writers, is what I’m saying.

Should you watch My Darling Clementine? Oh yes if I was not clear: Yes

4077 Film Festival: Closing Remarks

I enjoyed this process so much. I love conceptual experiences and homework, so, really optimal for me. And I love old movies and I love M*A*S*H and I love their use of old movies on M*A*S*H! Contemporary cultural elements like this do wonders I think to recall you to their actual time period, as this show is so much about the 1970s and Vietnam, that remembering it's actually set in the '50s can give me an enjoyable swoop in my stomach as I suddenly fall back further in time. It was the 1950s... The records that show up in 'Your Hit Parade' are all jazz... M*A*S*H: good show, good movie & music supervision.

Up next: NOT Bedtime For Bonzo (1951), a real movie, that also underscores my statement above as I just need to express to you: starred future president Ronald Reagan. M*A*S*H!!!!

[aliveandfullofjoy]

Well, it may be a few days late, but it's here! One of my favorite new year traditions: my ten favorite new-to-me films of 2022!

This year was particularly challenging for me, but we made it through, and thanks in no small part to these beautiful films. They're wildly different, but they all moved me and got under my skin in ways I couldn't shake, so please consider this a strong endorsement for each of them!

The same rules as always: no movies from this past year (2022) or the year prior (2021). Every other year is fair game.

01. After Life (dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda, 1998; Japan; 119 mins.) “I was part of someone else’s happiness.”

It starts with a great premise: After death, people get one week to select one memory from their lives to hold onto for the rest of time. I knew I was always going to love After Life because I tend to love Kore-eda’s films. This is almost certainly his most compassionate film (which is saying something, considering compassion is pretty much his whole deal), and, as usual for him, the actors all give terrific performances. What I wasn’t anticipating was how much After Life ends up being, of all things, a love letter to dramaturgy. It goes back to the film’s very premise. The memory people keep forever isn’t really their memory – not exactly anyway. It’s a performance, a reenactment painstakingly crafted and filmed by the people who work in this bardo. When the client selects their memory, the storytellers begin building it as a narrative, as something with a script and a clear arc. I can imagine some people finding this to be depressing, but it almost sounds like my dream job. 

Side note: I watched this film about a week before my birthday, and at the time I was also playing a lot of the gorgeous video game Spiritfarer on Nintendo Switch, which is all about ferrying wayward souls to the other side. Turns out my capacity for cosmic yearning and spiritual angst knows no bounds.

After Life is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

02. Jackie Brown (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 1997; USA; 154 mins.)

“I’ll send you a postcard.”

Tarantino is a hit-or-miss filmmaker like no other for me, but holy cow, y’all, when he hits, he hits. Everything about Jackie Brown comes together as gracefully as possible, and it’s stunning, frankly, that it was only Tarantino’s third feature. It’s pulpy, it’s twisty, it climaxes with as thrilling a sting as I’ve ever seen, and every scene – every second, really – feels effortless. To watch Jackie Brown is to feel safe in the hands of a storyteller at the top of their craft. Since I’m a sap, it helps that this is most likely his most tender film: every character is so well-drawn and well-realized, and every actor is doing great work (Bridget Fonda, Micheal Keaton, a weirdly against-type Robert De Niro), but the film’s three leads turn in career-best performances. Pam Grier makes Jackie a heroine for the ages, Samuel L. Jackson is a terrifying and magnetic tour de force, and Robert Forster, the heart of the film, is breathtakingly decent in a typhoon of violence and crime. The three performances, rich enough on their own, are at their best when they’re sharing the screen. It’s nothing short of electrifying.

Jackie Brown is currently available on demand.

03. Barry Lyndon (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1975; UK/USA; 185 mins.)

“Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.”

I’m glad I finally crossed Barry Lyndon off my watchlist, even if it’s clearly the kind of film that rewards multiple viewings. Kubrick’s meticulous world-building has rarely been more accomplished or authentic than it is here. The sprawling world of Barry Lyndon stretches beyond the edges of the screen, with a huge cast of great character actors giving superb performances. The film’s legendary design work is every bit as staggering as its reputation suggests: John Alcott’s jaw-dropping cinematography, Ken Adam and Roy Walker’s extravagant art direction, and Milena Canonero and Ulla-Britt Söderlund’s gorgeous costumes. It’s also surprisingly funny! A genuinely magnificent piece of work from a master filmmaker.

Barry Lyndon is currently streaming on HBO Max.

04. F for Fake (dir. Orson Welles, 1973; France/Iran/West Germany)

“Our songs will all be silenced. But what of it? Go on singing.”

At least 80% of F for Fake is footage of Orson Welles stream-of-consciousness monologuing about art and culture and history and making himself chuckle in different fields and parks and cafés while wearing little hats and jackets. Naturally, I loved it. A strange, poetic, and fascinating magic trick of a film, further proof that Welles was truly in a class of his own as a storyteller, a filmmaker, an illusionist, and a self-made myth. What a gift.

F for Fake is currently streaming on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel.

05. There Was a Father (dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1942; Japan)

“There’s nothing to be sad about.”

Yasujiro Ozu is rightly regarded as one of the world’s greatest filmmakers, but I’ve long had a pet theory that he was one of the great dramatists of the 20th century. All of his films play out as carefully plotted chamber dramas, their enormous emotional power hidden in the smallest, most subdued interactions between its characters. There Was a Father is as bleak and beautiful as any of Ozu’s films, and maybe the most gutting. At the heart is frequent Ozu collaborator Chishu Ryu, who gives a stoic, honest, and shattering performance as a man whose worldview left him detached from his family and emotionally numb. It’s hard to imagine this being approved by the Japanese national censors during World War II, but thank goodness we have it.

There Was a Father is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

06. Betty Tells Her Story (dir. Liane Brandon, 1972; USA; 20 mins.)

“I guess I still haven’t solved the way I felt about that. The uncomfortableness of being praised for a prettiness I never had, but, you know, kind of excitement about feeling very special suddenly. And it’s gone.”

A short masterpiece of solo storytelling. Liane Brandon fixes her camera on Betty, who recounts a story about buying and losing an expensive dress to wear to a gala. She tells the same story twice – once for the factual sequence of events and once to describe the way she felt as it was happening – and the contrast is amazing to watch. Wherever Betty went after telling Brandon her story, I hope she was happy. Betty Tells Her Story was just inducted into the National Film Registry, ensuring this devastating, empathetic, monumental piece of filmmaking can be preserved forever. Thank God for that.

Betty Tells Her Story is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

07. Donkey Skin (dir. Jacques Demy, 1970; France; 90 mins.)

“Donkey Skin! What a beautiful name.”

What a treat. Donkey Skin easily stands alongside Jacques Demy’s earlier musicals The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort as some of the most blissful films in the genre. As with his other films, the production values are off the charts, including some truly outrageous costumes, and an exquisite score from Demy’s frequent collaborator Michel Legrand. The cast is great, too, including the always magnetic Catherine Deneuve, an endearingly goofy Jacques Perrin, a brooding Jean Marais, and high-camp MVP Delphine Seyrig. The humor is delightfully weird, it looks and sounds amazing, and there are a handful of truly inspired musical sequences. It’s a magical film.

Donkey Skin is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

08. Shoes (dir. Lois Weber, 1916; USA; 50 mins.)

“Whatever happened, life must go on. Whatever boats are wrecked, the river does not stop flowing to the sea.”

Lois Weber’s Shoes must be one of the most affecting melodramas in Hollywood history. Anchored by Weber’s beautiful direction and a haunting performance from twenty-year-old Mary MacLaren, the film becomes something of a neorealistic fable in its depiction of an impoverished young woman doing whatever she can to get enough money to buy a much-needed new pair of shoes. The characters feel authentic and Weber’s depiction of poverty is unflinchingly raw, but the simplicity and intimacy of the film are its strengths. A landmark American film.

Shoes is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

09. Edward II (dir. Derek Jarman, 1991; UK; 90 mins.)

“My father is deceased. Come Gaveston, and share the kingdom with thy dearest friend.”

A transgressive, furious film that beautifully draws parallel lines between the late 80s and early 90s and Marlowe’s source material. Everything about Jarman’s Edward II is bleak as hell, boldly queer, and utterly fascinating: Tilda Swinton playing a spurned sociopathic queen in elaborate costumes! Men screaming in the pouring rain! The realm everyone fighting and dying for being a pitch-black labyrinth of concrete! What’s lasted for me, though, is the utterly stunning sequence where Annie Lennox(!) sings Cole Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” while Edward and Gaveston part ways. A beautiful puzzle of a film.

Edward II is currently available on demand.

10. Detour (dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945; USA; 66 mins.)

“That’s life. Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you.”

This is one lean, nasty noir. Clocking in at just over an hour, Detour is a relentlessly paced and relentlessly mean thriller, one that puts a fittingly mopey Tom Neal in a runaway car in the opening minutes and never, ever lets up. He’s joined (if not supported) by Ann Savage, who gives a truly venomous performance, practically spitting every lethal line she has. It’s bleak, it’s powerful, and it’s gorgeous in its own hellish way. I’ve never connected with film noir quite as much as I would like to, but this is as perfect an example of the genre as I’ve ever seen.

Detour is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and Prime Video.

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order): At Land (dir. Maya Deren, 1944); Bright Star (dir. Jane Campion, 2009); Brown Sugar (dir. Rick Famuyiwa, 2002); The Cameraman’s Revenge (dir. Ladislas Starevich, 1912); Cops (dir. Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline, 1922); Daybreak Express (dir. D.A. Pennebaker, 1953); The Dover Boys at Pimento University (dir. Chuck Jones, 1942); A Fish Called Wanda (dir. Charles Crichton, 1988); Full Metal Jacket (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1987); Inside Man (dir. Spike Lee, 2006); Inspiration (dir. Karel Zeman, 1949); Ivan’s Childhood (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962); La Ciénaga (dir. Lucrecia Martel, 2001); The Last of Sheila (dir. Herbert Ross, 1973); Les Diaboliques (dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955); Les Vampires (dir. Louis Feuillade, 1915); McCabe & Mrs. Miller (dir. Robert Altman, 1971); The Meetings of Anna (dir. Chantal Akerman, 1976); Nitrate Kisses (dir. Barbara Hammer, 1992); Pépé le Moko (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1937); Police Story (dir. Jackie Chan, 1985); Portrait of Jason (dir. Shirley Clarke, 1967); Postcards from the Edge (dir. Mike Nichols, 1990); Pyaasa (dir. Guru Dutt, 1957); Reluctantly Queer (dir. Akosua Adoma Owusu, 2016); The River (dir. Jean Renoir, 1951); The Secret of Roan Inish (dir. John Sayles, 1994); The Slumber Party Massacre (dir. Amy Holden Jones, 1982); Speed (dir. Jan de Bont, 1994); The Story of a Three-Day Pass (dir. Melvin Van Peebles, 1967); 13th (dir. Ava DuVernay, 2016); Wasp (dir. Andrea Arnold, 2003); You Were Never Really Here (dir. Lynne Ramsay, 2017)

And finally, some miscellaneous viewing stats:

First movie watched in 2022: Bright Star (dir. Jane Campion, 2009)

Final movie watched in 2022: The Thin Man (dir. W. S. Van Dyke, 1934)

Least favorite movie: Garden State (dir. Zach Braff, 2004)

Oldest movie: Cinderella (dir. Georges Méliès, 1899)

Longest movie: Les Vampires (dir. Louis Feuillade, 1915 – 422 mins.)

Shortest movie: Western Spaghetti (dir. PES, 2008 – 2 mins.)

Month with most movies: December (26)

Month with fewest movies: April (8)

First movie from 2022 seen: Turning Red (dir. Domee Shi, 2022)

Total movies: 190

Yay! Movies are good sometimes! Good stuff!

[jules-and-rue-and-lexi-too]

So there's this post about the new Peter Pan and Wendy movie bemoaning the creative bankruptcy of the movie because of the reason for Tinkerbell not glowing. I can't exactly blame Tumblr for this line of thinking, given most Disney live action remakes are creatively bankrupt, plus the fact the movie wasn't actually out yet. I'd probably also have implicitly agreed with the post and moved on if it were about the new Pinocchio or Little Mermaid or something.

Peter Pan and Wendy is out now though, and I really liked it, which compelled me enough to check up on the context of that quote. And while it's not so different from what the tweet describes, I do think there's some nuance that deserves sharing.

Here's the full quote from SFX:

To me, this doesn't read like somebody who removed this particular aspect of Tinkerbell's visuals out of a completely shallow attempt at realism. Not only was it simply what was arrived at as the most fitting look for her, it doesn't even seem like removing the glow was much of a conscious choice. "That's something that never even occurred to me" doesn't make it sound like something he's taken a super hard stance against, as many seem to interpret it.

I also want to defend the decision as it relates to how this movie looks, both in terms of the movie's themes and just the cinematography in general. David Lowery, the director of the wonderful The Green Knight and the other-apparently-not-terrible-disney-remake Pete's Dragon, has not only done this purposefully, but it's his entire style. Green Knight and A Ghost Story are both acclaimed movies that deal with supernatural and mystical elements, but forgo effects and dramaticism in favour of a more low-key, spare and picturesque visual style. This isn't some $200m movie that Disney has filled to the brim with CGI garbage, as seems to be the case with Little Mermaid, and this isn't Cruella shooting scenes on green screens with flat lighting for no reason; this is a director with a purposeful style achieving such with real locations and practical sets and costumes. And while Peter Pan and Wendy's visuals aren't mindblowing or anything, I do think it manages to look quite nice at times.

Critical to all this, I want to emphasise that Lowery choosing to do a Peter Pan movie with a sense of realism is not merely some outdated idea that realism = more mature or something. It is an active component of the movie's themes. Neverland looks and feels like a random island out in the middle of nowhere because that's what it is in this movie. It is not the perfect paradise of fun and adventure that Peter makes it out to be, and Wendy recognizing this is a part of the movie's core message: that one shouldn't be afraid to grow up, because there is beauty and happiness to be found even in the mundanity of real life, not just in the fantastical ideas of childhood whimsy. Does Neverland seem so much less whimsical than that of the 2004 movie version? Sure. But that doesn't mean it isn't also beautiful. And that's how she realizes she doesn't need Neverland to be happy, that she doesn't need to run away, she can find purpose and happiness in the challenges and joys that growing up will put before her.

Tying back to Tinkerbell, all of this is to say that perhaps the toning down of her magical elements wasn't totally without nuanced thought. Maybe it could have worked, maybe it couldn't, I'm not the director and didn't see what they tried. But given how well I think this movie balances its realistic tone and its magical elements (it's not a complete rejection of anything magical; the fairy might not casually glow, but she is still blowing magic fairy dust on kids to make them fly from happy thoughts) I'm inclined to take him on his word that he knew what he was doing. Maybe trails of sparkling fairy light everywhere she went did come off a little too whimsical for how he wanted Neverland to appear. You may not personally enjoy that take, but I do think it's one born of creative intent, and it's one I like a lot. And isn't movies daring to take a stance over appealing to the widest possible common denominator something we've been yearning for?

I implore people, if you think you might be interested in this movie, go watch it. Pirate it, if you have to. It's a legitimately good movie that's being screwed over by a complete lack of marketing from Disney and internet chuds reviewbombing every online score because they're still mad about a black Tinkerbell. Trust me, even if the movie isn't setting the world on fire, it deserves better than that. Especially when Little Mermaid is gonna make ten bajillion dollars in a month.

[bereft-of-frogs]

I hope I have appeased whatever ocean spirit possessed me this summer. Here is the final list of everything I read/watched/listened to/played/etc over the last several months while my entire personality became about the ocean. (Almost - planning on watching Deep Star Six (1989) after I finish writing this post and making dinner!)

The Deep, Nick Cutter | Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield | “Fear of Depths” + “Fear of Big Things Underwater”, Jacob Geller | Into the Drowning Deep, Mira Grant | Underwater (2020) | r/thalassophobia + r/submechanophobia | The Deep House (2021) | 47 Meters Down (2017) + 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) | The Toilers of the Sea, Victor Hugo (trans. James Hogarth) | Dark Water, Koji Suzuki (trans. Glynne Walley) | “Fear of the Deep”, Nexpo | Sea Fever (2019) | The Abyss (1989) | Open Water (2003) | From Below, Darcy Coates | Love, Death + Robots, “Bad Traveling” | “The Fog Horn”, Ray Bradbury + “A Descent into the Maelstrom”, Edgar Allen Poe (collected in Stories of the Sea ed. Diana Secker Tesdell) | Subnautica (2018) | Breaking Surface (2020) | They Came From the Ocean, Boris Bacic | The Cave (2005) | Sphere, Michael Crichton + its 1997 adaptation | “Thalassophobia”, Solar Sands | Whalefall, Daniel Kraus | Sanctum (2011) | The Rift (1990) | Leviathan (1989) | Sand, Salt, Blood: An Anthology of Sea Horror, ed. Elle Turpitt | 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne (trans. Mendor T. Brunetti) | Moby-Dick, Herman Melville

So that's 12 books (including 2 anthologies), 13 films, 4 video essays, 2 short stories, 2 subreddits, 1 game, and 1 TV episode.

Top 5 (in no particular order)

Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield -- beautiful, both in the descriptions of the deep sea and in its depictions of grief. Florence Welch blurbed it and Florence + the Machine takes 3 spots on the playlist so this definitely set the vibes of the summer.

Whalefall, Daniel Kraus -- reminded me of NOPE (2022) and that's a high compliment. It's also about grief but the kind of grief where there should have been a reckoning, and you'll never get that closure. Truly excellent, honestly I still have the library book because I'm not ready to give it back.

Sea Fever (2019) -- obviously owes a lot of its plot to the 1989 slate of ocean horror films coming out that were in imitation of Alien (1979) and attempting to preempt James Cameron's The Abyss (1989), in that it's about a creature from the deep that possesses the crew of a fishing trawler off the west coast of Ireland...but a moody atmosphere, gorgeous cinematography, and mythological inspiration just makes this a good watch.

"Fear of Depths", Jacob Geller -- honestly all the youtube videos on this list are worth it but I'm highlighting this one because I just love it when youtubers go on field trips. Like yes Jacob go stand in that cave and read your script for our entertainment and edification, yesss

The Toilers of the Sea, Victor Hugo -- ok the thing about Hugo is that his novels often carry social messaging - about poverty, class, the nature of justice, investment in cultural hegemony - and Toilers' thematic messaging is just: what the fuck are you doing in the ocean why are you going in there, don't you see how fucked up the ocean is, leave it alone- (...perhaps a more relevant text for billionaires than Les Misérables? XD) Ok, I'm mostly kidding but truly his depictions of the sea are some of my favorite bits of Hugo prose, I really think this book is underrated in the anglophone world.

Please feel free to ask me for more reviews of the other works on the list and I can give more thoughts! For now I'll just say that I had a lot of fun with the cheesy 80s/90s movies (the later ones don't quite carry the same charm but were still pretty fun even if they weren't 'good'), the books are pretty solid with the exception of They Came From the Ocean by Boris Bacic, which is my only 'do not recommend' on the list. (It wasn't well written, didn't use the setting very effectively, and got weirdly homophobic towards the end in a way that was impossible to tease out from a character decision and made me feel kind of weird?) There is also a smaller, slightly less cohesive list for the second part of this series but it gives away the thematic shift so I'll stick to ocean horror for now. This was an interesting summer. I guess I should probably...read something other than ocean horror now. XD

letterboxd film list | playlist on spotify

Bonus:

Books on (or…near in one case) the beach

[savpumpkinhead]

oh my gosh okay. so I saw barbenhiemer a few days ago and i habe just been sitting in my thoughts and I have so many things to say. THIS HAS SPOILERS FOR BOTH!!!

i saw Oppenheimer first so:

the cinematography was gorgeous. this movie was absolutely stunning. not only were the colors and shots beautiful, but I adored the black-and-white shots used for Strauss' perspective (which reminded me of asteroids city's use of b&w for perspective/setting changes!!!).

Florence pugh. oh my goodness. she was BEAUTIFUL I kept turning to my friend and saying oh my god she's gorgeous. I loved her acting, she embodied her character spectacularly. (also she so me for flirting with Cillian a bit during an interview)

CILLIAN MURPHY !!!! i adore him and I went into this very excited because I adore the dark knight and he was spectacular in that. anyways I loved his acting and how he delivered his lines, he added so much to the story. for such a long movie I loved his whole performance, and im super excited to watch it again (can u tell I love cillian murphy)

I understand it was a biopic so they were focusing more on the man himself and not the situation, but my friend who i went with actually googled the movie while we went to dinner- and found that the bomb test they showed had actually hit both Mexican and Indigenous people that were living in/near Los Alamos (mostly with radiation and fallout), which if we can find in one google search, is kinda weird we didn't see it in the movie at all. anyways I went to piss in the middle of the movie (Ik i should have peed before but WHATEVER anyways) when i got back they had already bombed both cities?? i was so surprised i had missed it, they didn't cover it much after that until around the end when the moral quandary is brought up more. anyways im seeing it again so ill definitely pay attention to these details!!

COSTUMING!!!! the costumes were beautiful, I adore the fashion of this era so it makes lots of sense but it was spectacular. my friend and I who both do makeup for theatre were caught off guard by the aging at the end as well, spectacular!!!

some of the dialogue was hard to follow and some moments definitely got a little complicated for me, but I definitely enjoyed the movie overall. Im going to go see it again soon at a theatre near me which is showing it with actual film!!! im very excited

I have a friend in film whod probably look at me like I was crazy for these reviews but that's okay cause I <3 him and I might get to see it with him soon :3

BARBIE:

god i adored this movie. ive seen twice and I've cried very much in that goddamn theatre. its a wonderful message about womanhood and girlhood and also just being human.

did you know all of kens clothes fit him.....

the movie itself was wonderful, the cinematography was nice and I saw some really beautifully framed shots!! the color scheme was spectacular aswell, I adore greta girwig for sure. not to mention the costuming, makeup, set design, the whole movie's tech was just spectacular I have no complaints for real.

this movie is very "first I laughed, then I serioused", the beginning was lots of giggles for me, I love the characters and all the references, it felt very nostalgic to see all the things I loved as a kid come up on the screen.

the feminist takes were very refreshing to see! I've seen many people comment on them being very broad and vague, and I agree some things like fatphobia and racism could have gone a bit deeper, but for what it was I was so happy. i felt my girlhood was really seen and I felt like I had a weight of my chest a lot of the time. thought its hard to separate many social movements from each other, this was a pretty good job

speaking of fatphobia I do wish that there was more fat representation, there was one main plus size Barbie and maybe one or two chubbier ones, but it would have been cool to see more of a body type range. its hard to ask for more because there already is SO MUCH diversity but I noticed a lot that the bigger ken was paired with the bigger barbie and that kinda thing, so I just wanted to mention that. i really do appreciate it though, and I love what Gerwig has given us.

did you know that all of kens clothes fit him.

allen is definitely non binary coded, I lack the words to properly explain this but I've seen many people bring it up!! there's also some more trans allegory I connected too throughout the movie, and I really enjoyed the healthy masculinity that came from some of the movie :3

everyone's gay and ND!!!!!!!!! margot robbies barbie is definitely aroace lesbian and maybe autistic and allen is nonbinary and queer and ken is probably transgender and adhd and he's just like me fr so on so fourth they are all queer. thank you :)

[filmrelicsworld]

Karwaan: A Lifetime Adventure

2018 was a really great year for movies, Bollywood movies in particular. Karwaan, which attempted to carry on the tradition of this genius, debuted in theatres on August 3rd but was unable to survive a positive first week of business. Nevertheless, this film is a work of art that is transformed into beauty before your eyes! It has all the right amount of entertainment that a Bollywood film needs, along with morals and teachings.

After learning that his father died in an accident, Avinash (Dulquer Salmaan), the protagonist of the story, is somewhat demotivated. When Avinash needs assistance, his close friend Shaukat (Irrfan Khan) comes with him to take up the father's coffin. If only it were that simple, the airport cargo mishandles two bodies and delivers an elderly woman's coffin in its place. Avinash now realises that he owed his father the right to a dignified funeral for his corpse, regardless of the difficulties they had as father and son.

The main plot point of the movie is Avinash's decision to drive to get his father's coffin and give the elderly woman's coffin back to her. The granddaughter of the elderly widow whose coffin they had to bring, Tanya (Mithila Palkar), is a rather rebellious young woman who they encounter along the route. Her mother had asked them to securely deliver her home.

There are many twists and turns in the road trip, but none of them seem implausible. Even though each member of the trio has a distinct personality, they manage to work together and share knowledge about their varied lifestyles. They choose to move on and pursue happiness after accepting their pasts.

This film is a masterfully shot work of art with an abundance of brightness in every aspect that is displayed. Several features that jumped out were:

Cinematography: Every image on screen has a purpose. It emphasises on every subject's existence, and occasionally even on their absence. We experience the journey with the characters in the third person rather than from their point of view, which helps us feel more connected to the individual and their adventure. Nothing in the movie feels rushed or like a waste of time; every scene has a purpose. Everything culminates in the finale.

Performance: It is my intention to draw attention to Dulquer Salmaan's brilliant performance on screen. With Avinash, the guy realises his greatest potential. He is a natural and succeeds in persuading the viewers that he has always been Avinash rather than Dulquer. Because of how natural it seems, it's plausible that Avinash's character was created specifically to fit his personality. Let's go on to Irrfan Khan, another creative genius in the field. This man's hilarious timing makes him a legend. Despite taking up most of the frame, his attitude throughout the movie seems to be the best choice the director could have made.

His punch lines are what keep the whole movie going; there isn't a single scene where it seems like he's a drag. Insofar as it was feasible, Mithila Palkar fulfilled her role; the only negative aspect was that her character didn't progress as much as the others' did. All that is known about her is that she is a free spirit and renegade. Still, I can't complain because it fits wonderfully.

Background Score: This movie's soundtrack is a fantastic complement for the tone. It is simultaneously calming and revitalising. The spectator is given a sense of life. This movie's soundtrack directors have done an amazing job with it. Bravo to Imaad Shah and Anurag Saikia!

Dialogues: The film's writers have undoubtedly received recognition for their great work. The movie is entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time because of the timing, tone, and intensity of each dialogue. When they are employed in the right context and with the right words, they create a beautiful lexicon that pleases the intellect.

Slice of Life: This film's genre gives the theme of life a very genuine touch. It shows humanity in its best light. The supporting cast members of the film serve as its main supports. Shaukat is captivated by a beautiful woman, followed by Tanya's mother and an ex-boyfriend of Avinash. It's a beautiful portrayal of life where all these people and more come together to help the main protagonists become the best versions of themselves.

The director of this film is fantastic; Akarsh Khurana did a fantastic job. Although the direction of his other films is likewise based on this one, this one has a stronger narrative and cast than the others.

The conclusion was flawless—everything that could have been imagined, plus a little additional enjoyment that nobody could have complained about. This film offers you everything you could possibly want along with some delightfully surprising surprises. It's satisfaction at its finest.

[lannisterdaddyissues]

A performance you think is underrated

A movie you think looks beautiful

A movie made better by the ending

AHHHHHHH YAY MOVIE ASKS THANK U SO MUCH @thethistlegirl YOU HAVE ENABLED MY ADDICTION <333

12. a performance you think is underrated - pretty much any tom cruise film because he should have won several oscars by now, but since that's a cop-out answer i'm gonna say richard madden in the 2015 cinderella movie. i hate disney and i hate so many of their shitty live action films but i really loved what he did with prince charming ok it's a comfort movie for me...

20. a movie you think looks beautiful - i'd say "beautiful" is a relative term because there are different kinds of beauty when it comes to cinematography... if you want a classically beautiful film i'd say the last samurai is one of the prettiest films i've ever seen, but if we're talking about the magnetism of the actors, the prestige is an absolutely gorgeous film. hugh jackman and christian bale were just shining every time they were on stage. i love rewatching it and seeing them again.

14. a movie made better by the ending - yet again, i would say this applies to most tom cruise films (edge of tomorrow, oblivion, jack reacher: never go back, etc) but for a non-cruise film one of my favorite endings to a film is, yet again, the prestige. i have to clap every time the credits roll because it's such a masterful wrap to the film. but since i already said the prestige, i'm going with shutter island on this one. i could rewatch it a million times just to see how it ends. it never loses its appeal for me.

[steampunkforever]

I saw Bablyon quite awhile back, in theaters, and was ready to love it. Chazelle is a great director and I was ready for him to make something so “out there” that the twitter letterboxd Ari-Aster-worshiper crowd that usually flocks to Chazelle’s movies would give it bad reviews rather than filming video essays about how “no, you don’t get it” in a way that serious film critics reserve for discussions on “Chopping Mall.”

The signs were all there. A 20s period piece. A great cast. An indulgent runtime. Bad reviews. I was ready for it to flop commercially but (as a connoisseur of indulgent, polarizing, and pretentious movies) sweep ME off my feet.

But it didn’t. This confuses me! Because the ingredients are all there for me to love the movie.

Amazing cast? Check.

Great performances? Check.

BEAUTIFUL cinematography? Check.

Jazz soundtrack? This is a Chazelle Movie, we live and breathe jazz here.

Complex characters? Check.

Fabulous colorwork? Check.

Sharp editing?  Check.

Unbridled nostalgia for old forms? Again, this is a Chazelle picture we’re talking about.

Everything in this film is shouting “this was tailor made for you to love me!” and if I did love it we’d be going into deep analysis on how the film tracks Ford Mustang Design Cues/our cultural shift away from pure nostalgia (post-9/11 brain) and into optimism and hunger for the future and a shiny new world.

Yet the entire movie was an uninspired slog! None of it was even fun. This is Chazelle letting loose with an R rating and it sucked! The nudity, the the gross out humor, the violence, all felt cheap, unearned, and overdone. Even the ever-lovable Margot Robbie couldn’t make her character a sympathetic awful person and instead had to settle for slightly charming but unlikable. The whole thing was gaudy and gauche and not in the way I hoped it would be. And I signed up for overindulgence!

I wanted overindulgence like devils food cake, and this was overindulgence like a hot tub hangover. A spectacle in how spectacularly dull it managed to make sex, drugs, and violence.

The end of the film is the perfect example of how badly Chazelle fumbled this movie. After a meaningless 5th act (I lost count waiting for the thing to be over and then being sad about how I was waiting for this to be over) one of the main characters revisits the old stomping grounds of his once-successful career in the movies. Stepping into a theater, he seats himself amongst a crowd of movie goers and sees the fruits of the life he left behind, projected onto the big screen. He makes a sad face, sheds a tear, and we zoom out over the crowd to see everyone enjoying his work, oblivious as to the star who sits in their midst.

It’s an effective ending! For as much as I found myself asking why I liked every part of the film but not the final combination, I was impressed by the elegance of the ending. This was promptly ruined by a garish, flashing nostalgia montage unrelenting in its resolve to beat a dead horse named “Hollywood” into a liquid paste.

Coming out of the film on that note, it encompasses the biggest flaw of the movie, in that when describing it to friends with one word, I initially chose “overdone” but decided instead to just use “sucked.”

[lolathesleepy]

Scattered Thoughts On Barbie

Spoilers for Barbie!

This is not a review, it's just some of my initial thoughts that I wanted to share. I'll probably change my mind after a 2nd viewing.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've finally managed to see Barbie, my most anticipated movie of 2023! YAY!

So, how was it? Well, I've found it to be delightful, highly enjoyable, and an absolute mess in terms of themes.

There's a lot to be praised about this movie, starting with the cinematography, the costume design, the production design, and of course the unmistakable warmth of Greta's direction. They created a lively and charming world that you want to be transported into.

The actors did a good job at portraying the silliness of their characters without compromising their believability or likeability. Ryan Gosling, Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon, America Ferrera, Michael Cera and Rhea Perlman were a delight but Margot Robbie was the standout: She truly committed to the bit. Whether it's Barbie's earnestness, optimism, naivete, confusion or sadness; you believed her as a doll grappling with her new experiences.

I have two scenes that I loved the most:

1 / Barbie sitting on that bench, taking in the world with its small moments of joy and sadness and managing to find it beautiful in a quiet declaration to an elderly lady.

2 / Barbie meeting her creator Ruth for a second time, who offers her encouragement and hope in the form of words and in the form of images. That final montage of women brought me to tears.

The film is funny, its comedy light and good-hearted concerned with poking fun at Barbie, Ken, Mattel, and the audience but from a place of love. The Depressed Barbie ad is especially brilliant.

The score was unremarkable, save for Billie Eilish's song which is a highlight of the film.

Sincerity is this film's strongest quality and it's why the movie lingers with you.

Moving on to my problems with Barbie...

Simply, Greta seems rather unfocused. Her touch is there but her vision seems clouded, pulled by a different thousand ideas that she brings up but never follows through.

What is this movie about?

Is it about the tension between the ideal woman and the real woman? The imagined potential and the sobering reality ? Can girls truly be anything when they live under a patriarchy in a real world rife with obstacles one of which is a limited life span to make one's dream come true? The movie has a monologue about the unrealistically high expectations placed on women but the audience being dolls I'm not sure why it woke one from the brainwashing and inspired Stereotypical Barbie...Maybe I missed something.

Is it about interrogating Barbie and her legacy, the good and the bad? Because while the movie raises this question one time, it never explores it.

Is the movie about mother-daughter relationships and their expectations/hopes for one another? Because Gloria and her daughter are woefully sidelined.

Is the movie about ideas and their value to humanity?

Is it about patriarchy and the male psyche?

Apparently, all of them. But if you're going to tackle them all, you must do so with a priority in mind. And that's where I think Greta made a big mistake: The Ken-patriarchy plotline.

if this movie wanted to be about womanhood, Ken should have remained in the supporting role. Barbie should have been the focus by all accounts. Instead, we get an entire second half focused on the Kens and their new kingdom, don't get me wrong I enjoyed it - with reservations - and I loved seeing the Barbies unite, break free from the brainwashing one at a time and claim back Barbieland, it was wonderful! But the plot itself detracted from the movie as a whole. Why did Ken even have to want to implement a patriarchy? It's a big jump from wanting to be recognized and be seen to bringing down the Barbies and taking their houses.

I think Ken could have had a subplot where he's trapped in the real world and the real men try to convince him into joining the patriarchy to no avail simply because Ken doesn't want to dominate, subjugate or bully women/Barbies. He finds the idea distasteful and silly. He wants to be their friend and supporter so that everyone can be happy and never at the expense of someone else's. This would've positioned him as a positive male role model that would help " girls be anything " in contrast the real world men who make it hard for women to even dream of becoming anything. He rejects the patriarchy!

I am also conflicted about the depiction of Ken's Kendom. On one hand, that was my understanding of patriarchy when I was younger: It's men taking opportunities of self-determination from women ( property, money, jobs, sense of connection with other women ) and casting them in subservient roles to men. While it's not the complete painting, it's a good sketch nonetheless. I can also see that many boys ( and I mean boys, not men) who follow the patriarchy ( the gym bro aesthetic, the belittlement of women, the Zack Snyder cult ) out of a sense of insecurity and bitterness could relate to Ken.

On the other hand, it misdiagnosis the origin of the patriarchy rather dangerously. I'm afraid girls will pick up this idea that men hurt them because they feel underappreciated and it's up to women to fix that. The story of patriarchy is a story of greed, thirst for power and selfishness. The root of this system is men's desire to control women's reproductive abilities to further their own material gains at the expense of women's health, future, and autonomy. This can't be the case since dolls, as the movie eloquently explains, have no genitals and no reproductive system ( unless you're Midge ), and no need for material gains, it's Barbieland!

Barbie apologizing to Ken is just terrible. Offensive even.

I still struggle to be convinced of Barbie's desire to become a real woman and be someone who conceives ideas rather than be purely defined by them. It's a lovely conclusion and I would have loved it had we seen Barbie get a fuller experience with Gloria and womanhood in general. Maybe fighting the patriarchy is the fuller experience. Poor women.

Overall, Barbie wanted to touch on too many topics and it did, albeit superficially and disjointedly, without finding a common thread or a major theme that would unite them all. Almost all of its individual moments are great in some way, but they rarely build on one another to elevate the work. It's a pity because it could have been something truly great. Instead, it's a good movie not because of one strong thematic core but because of the mood and the sincerity Greta managed to put in this toy commercial, which is something to respect.

I highly recommend Barbie, it's fun, warm, and touching. And despite all its flaws, it does linger with you.

*Little Women remains my favorite work of Greta's, Barbie my least.

[tenjiiku]

do u have any movie / song recs atm 🥰?? i wanna be inspired to write like you do... but not in that sense if ykwim haha!! i just really love the way you write !! so im looking for inspiration,, if thats okay with u ofc ☝️

Heyyy lol ofcc I love talking abt media I love! Tbh I do not watch a lot of movies but I do have a lot of book recs some of which have movie adaptations.

Movies/Books;

The Hunger Games series, Suzanne Collins. Katniss and Peeta invented love and romance. I can go on about these two forever, but I will simply mention the beach scene b/t them in Catching Fire. That changed me fundamentally, altered my brain chemistry permanently, etc etc. Also of course the critique on capitalism in a Western society and how despite the violence such a system can breed Love will ever and remain forever as long as hope prevails.

Strange Weather in Tokyo, Hiromi Kawakami. I love dialogue, and this story has so much of it. And also I adore stories of the mundane. The fact that the protagonist is a woman in her late 30s brings such a refreshing perspective on the woes and joys of life. I read this book last Fall when it was a particularly rough time for me and I was going through a lot of changes. This really grounded my feelings.

Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami. I know Murakami gets a lot of shit for how he writes female characters but I adore the female characters in this novel, particularly Naoko and Midori. I love how he describes their emotions through dialogue. It is so cut and dry at times it hits straight to my gut. The conclusion and resolution left me thinking for months.

Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes. Until recently I just discovered this was a required reading in a lot of American schools, which was a surprise because I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and quite frankly most of my assigned readings in school were not as interesting. I really really really enjoyed learning more about the character of Charlie through diary entries. And how his style of writing changes as he goes through so many trials and tribulations to only end up back to where he started. Really a think piece for me.

Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata. I absolutely adored the imagery in this novel. It also left me thinking for days, and I still cannot articulate myself properly to describe it. Wonderful read.

Bones and All, Camille DeAngelis. I hold Maren so near and dear to my heart. The idea of using cannibalism as an allegory for coming-of-age brings such a unique and powerful perspective to girlhood, something I had been searching for in so many novels but never quite received. Maren and Lee’s relationship is both sweet and tragic. The movie is also wonderful.

All About Lily Chou Chou. I first watched this movie when I was 14 or 15, which I should not have done lol. Its subject matters are so dark, and I feel so badly for all the female characters in this movie. The message it sends is so simple, but the cinematography is both beautiful and haunting.

Artists/Songs;

Ethel Cain. By far my number one inspo lol. I do not use Spotify regularly besides to create playlists but I feel like she would be my number one listened to. I adore her ep Inbred, particularly the songs Michelle Pfeiffer and Crush. They are such yearning songs, and describe how I love so so personally. Of course, Preacher’s Daughter is a masterpiece of an album. Strangers and Family Tree are my favourites

Mitski. I honestly do not know how to express how much of an influence she has been on everything I produce. I’ve raved about her so much. Puberty 2 will always, always, always be the soundtrack to my highschool life lol it is honestly concerning how much I was listening to her in year 9. Bury me at makeout creek will always inspire me to write romance. It just gets me into the mood to both drown and create.

Gracie Abrams. I love the simplicity of her lyrics, and some of my works are written honestly based on one lyric that I might find out stuck out to me for many of her things. I find her music so universal and open to interpretation, and I love that! I think that it leaves a lot of room to think, it can apply to so many people and touch so many topics. I particularly love songs from the deluxe version of her album Good Riddance (405, Two People, Unsteady) I listened to Two People writing the hanshin expressway lol.

Beabadoobee. I love Beatrice, I have been listening to her for so long. I love how she is so expressive with all of her songs and genres and lyrics. Honestly, I love her entire discography. Like I do not think I do not have a song of hers I skip.

Japanese Breakfast. I love Michelle. Her songs all feel like warm hugs! And also some of them want to make me dance! I listened to her so much taking the train home back from uni when I needed a pick me up lol.

[ohmybitna]

↳ 8 Shows To Get To Know Me

i was tagged by @sorrowfulliming and @heesulovebot thank you both so much, I had a lot of fun doing this list! ❤️ I tried to choose some shows that have had kind of played a significant role in my life in one way or another, maybe you'll learn a bit more about me through this idk

one tree hill (2003 - 2012) i feel like this one is the most important show if you want to know me. It's half of my personality. I grew up with this show and all of these characters mean the absolute world to me, I relate to them on a deep level and I've rewatched all 9 seasons of this so many times that if you tell me a quote from the show I can tell you who said it and in what context and season (maybe even episode) it was said. It's probably the best teen drama ever made and except for lack of representation (which i can excuse to some extent because it started airing in the early 00s) this is really something everyone can and should watch. Nothing beats the friendships in this show. I'm still searching for the brooke & haley to my peyton tbh

the vampire diaries (2009 - 2017) this show is very special to me because I started learning english more intensely and on my own outside of school because I couldn't wait until they were showing the eps with german dub half a year after they originally aired. I had to wait 4 years until the show made stefan & caroline a couple and no other ship has ever come close to how I felt (and still feel) about them. best friends to lovers will always get me and they did it so well. we do not talk about anything after 7x05, the show ended there for me tyvm. they were by far the best part of the show for me since I dislike a lot of the decisions the show made a lot of the time. but they were the reason I created a tumblr account back in 2015 that I've since forgot the name and password for 😂 it was an account dedicated to making icons for tvd. ugh i miss shows with multiple seasons and 24 eps for each season

blueming (2021) this bl drama is always gonna be important to me since it made me decide to choose film as the thing I want to major in. I got really into independent movies after watching blueming because the cinematography of it astounded me and I wanted to learn more about it and how to create beautiful shots like those in the drama myself. I also rewatch it frequently. siwon is very dear to me.

taxi driver (2021 - 2023) i debated if i should put this or the devil judge/flower of evil/happiness here because i love them all dearly and they're all tied for my fav kdramas of all time but this one was the first kdrama i watched weekly as it aired and I was so obsessed with it and its cases and characters. i love darker themes and case-by-case dramas, it's my favorite genre when it comes to korean shows. kim doki is such a dear character to me and i love the way jehoon plays him. words can't describe how happy i am that it's back on my screen and just as good as it always was. (plus pyo yejin is one of my biggest celebrity crushes i love her sm)

the haunting of hill house (2018) one of the greatest shows ever made and imo the best of its genre. ep 6 of this show especially impressed me so much because it just consists of multiple one-shots. i love mike flanagan, he's my favorite director and if you're into psychological horror i more than recommend watching this and midnight mass because they're both masterpieces. mike has this way of connecting horror and sadness and he does it so so well. I could write essays about his filmmaking and he's my biggest inspiration when it comes to film.

my engineer (2020) this was the first bl I was really invested in, I even bought tickets to the online fanmeeting which i usually never do for anything. these characters and actors really helped me get through the lockdowns in 2020. one of the few bls where they managed to give everyone their fair screen time and made everyone's story enjoyable to watch. also very important part of why i loved watching it was the lack of fanservice they made the actors do and that we got them all in one room reacting to every episode together. it was the best and i wish more shows would do it.

light on me (2021) oh what a show. even though I don't like the ending and I think the last episode had some continuity issues and felt like a second thought in some ways I thorougly enjoyed the ride this drama took me on. the runtime allowed for the show to explore its characters well and made us able to connect with them. i miss that for newer shows a lot. shin daon is and probably will always be my favorite k-bl character, he felt so real and I could see an old version of myself in him. he deserved a lot better and I hope he's off to college living his best life, he deserves it.

one day at a time (2017 - 2020) let me just say that I am NOT a sitcom enjoyer. shows that are targeted to make me laugh usually don't and I get bored early on because I don't get the appeal. nothing against these shows, they just don't speak to me. HOWEVER odaat is a huge exception because I was hooked to the well-balanced use of humor and deep conversations and topics portrayed in this show. plus it also made me laugh!! and sometimes also cry both in the span of 5 minutes. these characters have a special place in my heart. elena halped me a lot in my journey of self-discovery and I loved the way the show portrayed her journey.

bonus: (i know this technically makes it 9 but i didn't know where to put it)

wish you (2021) I'm adding this as well but extra since I only ever watch the movie version of it. it's imo the only kbl that works as a movie. even though not a lot of people love this, it is my most rewatched k-bl (and I think bl in general). I adore Sang Yi, he's a lot like me and watching him be an awkward mess in front of his crush and idol is very cute to watch. the OST for this show is also so good i listen to it all of the time.

i will tag @ghostvalleymasters i hope you haven't done this yet :)

[theharpermovieblog]

#HARPERSMOVIECOLLECTION

2023

A CELEBRATION OF DAVID CRONENBERG

I watched Crimes Of The Future (2022)

Oh David Cronenberg, you're A Director who has amazed and disappointed me, but never left me without a sense of true talent and artistic vision. With a Cronenberg movie, you always walk away with his vision in your thoughts.

A man who grows new organs and surgically removed them as art must decide whether he must expose the idea that humans are evolving to eat and survive on synthetic materials.

Let's talk about David Cronenberg and his unique style.

David Cronenberg has always had a fascination with the human body, organic technology, and an interest in strange sexuality, which he tends to wrap in a plot that balks at the powers that be with a revolutionary or counter culture-esque middle finger.

Its not enough to show us the strange and unusual and disgustingly odd. It must be on display, front and center, because to Cronenberg, the disgusting is beautiful and deserves a place in the artistic spotlight.

This film is classic Cronenberg in this sense. In every sense really. It's almost as if he wanted to prove he'd mastered his own style.

Cronenberg is more than just disgust as beauty. Watch Existenz, Naked lunch and then This film back to back and you'll get a sense for his style. Slow, muted conversations, lingered reaction shots, even the sound of a crowd in the background, in a Cronenberg it's all his own way of doing things. Everything on screen from the things you like, to the things you don't like are, at the very least, a choice that he seems to have made.

Among Cronenberg's worst films is Scanners. It has a rushed, unfinished feel. But, even Scanners has, at it's core, very interesting ideas. There is thought and meaning behind it all. Cronenberg always brings originality and it's what makes him an artist over just some guy who makes movies.

Lucky for us, Crimes of the future is among Cronenberg's best films.

He's not only giving us a talented cast and a grotesquely interesting plot, but he's wrapped it all in the crisp cinematography he's come to be so fond of.

It's a film about the evolution of man, art, and sexuality. It's about voyeurism and the ownership of ones body. It's about the need to adapt to an increasingly synthetic world. It's not just weird for the sake of being weird. It's weirdness as a way of exploring these many things.

It is certainly a gross movie. New organs growing, surgery is the new sex, the weird ear guy......it's all pretty gross. So if you're watching for nothing else other than the body horror, you'll still get your fill.

For me the surgeries and body horror challenged me in a way I wasn't expecting. Not only was I uncomfortable with the thought of growing new organs or sexual surgery, I found myself not wanting the characters to choose to do these things, or change their bodies. I had to check my judgment a tad. If a movie can make me do that, it must have something to say.

You can pull a lot of meaning from this movie. It's a strange trip with many messages in it's artistic display. It's possible that this is Cronenberg's masterpiece. His perfect blend of style and substance.

Lastly here is a list of David Cronenberg Movies You Should See:

•The Fly

•RABID

•The Brood

•Naked Lunch

•A History Of Violence

•Eastern Promises

•Videodrome

•Dead Ringers

•Crimes Of The Future