Movies I Watched In May 2024 - Greenfield Writes

Beau Travail - dir. Claire Denis

They weren’t lying. It’s the last shot that brings it all together.

I can’t say anything about this film that hasn’t been said by many, many other intelligent people–it’s about the strange inhumanity of colonialism, of its agents, the way they distort their own natural desire for love, connection, and passion into tools for violence, into cold materialism, etc, etc.

Galoup’s desperate, frenetic dance at the end damn near brought me to tears. The ultimate expression of repressed masculinity. He served his time, did his job for the glory of the nation, kept the subjects in line, under the belief that it would satisfy. But of course it didn’t.

Why would it? 8/10.

Dune - dir. David Lynch

Sci-Fi

Lynch’s first L.

I wanted to like this. I find Villeneuve’s direction insufferable. I couldn’t wait to be smug and annoying about preferring Lynch’s.

Sadly this shit is fucking garbage.

The reason Dune doesn’t translate to the screen is because the book largely takes place in its character’s minds. Conveying that on screen is tough. Villeneuve’s adaptation put me to sleep, Lynch’s is just impossible to take seriously.

My proposition? Force Terrence Malick at gunpoint to adapt Dune. Trust me. It would be very good. 3/10.

True Mothers - dir. Naomi Kawase

Drama

Look man. I can’t help but fuck with Naomi Kawase. I can’t help but respect her artistry and her style. It’s barebones, it’s documentarian, and a part of me will always love how she captures nature.

But when I tried watching all her movies, I couldn’t do it.

She has a tendency to pull away and get cold. Her true artistic genius emerges only when she allows the audience to bask in the emotions of the characters. Cold observation with light music simply does not make me feel immersed in the psychological realities that these characters are experience.

In Sweet Bean, Kawase effortlessly captures a billion different emotions with what seems like pure cinematic magic. There’s a warmness that just can’t be described.

And the more I watch the rest of her work, the more I think–why can’t she simply allow us to experience the emotions of the characters?

I felt so distant from everyone in this film. Why is this the case?

At the end of the day, I respect this movie, but I was bored to tears. 4/10.

Cleopatra - dir. Júlio Bressane

Period Drama/Erotic

This feels like a play (derogatory). 3/10.

Southland Tales - dir. Richard Kelly

Dystopian/Satire

Aesthetics are important in cinema, for audiences at least. People will commend an absolutely dogshit movie if it masquerades itself as a good one. If it has all the sleek and elegance of a masterpiece it will be considered, at worst, passable by the majority of film audiences.

Southland Tales LOOKS like a bad movie. It has gaudy special effects, a cast comprised of non-art house actors (The Rock, Stiffler, Timberlake), and its editing is schizophrenic. It does not give off the scent of a good movie.

I’m not the first person to make the argument that it is, and frankly I don’t even want to. I guess I just want to explain why I unironically believe it’s an 8/10 movie, worthy of discussion and analysis.

Southland Tales is the first movie I’ve ever seen in my life that feels like an intelligent approach to nihilism, specifically in the context of post-9/11 America. It’s so steeped in this historical context that approaching it from any other angle would be a fool’s errand. Kelly made this movie as a reaction to the culture of paranoia that enveloped the United States after 9/11, and as an abstraction of the death of culture and truth that occurred as a result.

The landscape of the US changed after 9/11, in ways that only those alive before it could really explain. I’m too young to do this, but through research, conversations, and lived experience I feel I can attest to the nihilistic reality Southland Tales presents.

Arguably, the most American film ever made. Or, at the very least, the perfect encapsulation of the apocalyptic late-stage capitalist mindset that took root in our collective psyche in the turn of the millennium.

Perhaps it wasn’t just 9/11 that really fucked the US in the brain, but a confluence of all kinds of economic factors. A real mishmash of armageddon. Weirdly, the movie feels more relevant than ever before, in an era where every piece of mainstream media is produced on a factory line by machines and even the basic reality of a pandemic is transformed into a debate about freedom and patriotism, a world where our government is fully at the beck and call of multinational conglomerates and every year just seems like a slow slide into a dreadfully gaudy, boring apocalypse. A world where everything moves a million miles an hour, where things happen at an inconceivable, imperceptible rate, but still feel absolutely, unmistakably meaningless. A world where you can scroll through your timeline to find out that your friend got married, that Israel just bombed a hospital, and that one of your favorite celebrities just committed suicide, and STILL feel utterly, implacably bored with the tedium of it all. 8/10.

The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell - dir. Sérgio Machado

Comedy/Drama

I believe this movie was supposed to be a comedy. 3/10.

Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie - dir. Jang Sun-woo

Punk

Really respect this work of gutterpunk art.

But 2 and a half hours is excessive. 4/10.

Barking Dogs Never Bite - dir. Bong Joon-ho

Black Comedy

Bong throws around a few ideas he’d better elaborate on in his later films–the envy and resentment that stews amongst the impoverished when given a glance at the delectability of fame (Hyeon-nam’s disappointment at the crank call is PALPABLE, lest I mention the ending), and the drastic action taken when they are pushed to their limit (see Parasite, Snowpiercer). Unfortunately, this is a pretty half-baked story without anything that resembles a payoff, emotional and/or plot-wise, which makes it hard not to compare to his later films. Even Snowpiercer, which I would consider a weak Bong effort, at least has an ending that brings the whole class war idea full circle.

I think hardcore Bong Joon-ho fans should still make time to see his origins, because if anything, it’ll at least make you appreciate his development as an auteur of class struggle. 5/10.

Driveways - dir. Andrew Ahn

Coming-of-Age

Yawn. 3/10.

Memories of Murder - dir. Bong Joon-ho

Crime

Look directly into the camera; slowly fade to black, like the tunnel, like the crevices of the gutter that light won’t reach. Look into the lens for the picture we’ll use for the poster, look into the eyes of the audience, to try and divine their intentions.

How much truth can the naked eye perceive?

One of those movies that didn’t truly blow me away until that final shot. 8/10.

Some Like It Hot - dir. Billy Wilder

I could’ve pulled Marilyn Monroe honestly. I’m just built different.

Billy Wilder writes some of the sharpest damn scripts I’ve ever seen. What’s funny is that Monroe and Tony Curtis doing drag have more chemistry in their half-hour screentime together than Bogart and Bergman have in the entirety of Casablanca. I felt significantly more invested in Joe and Sugar, that’s for sure. Apparently I care more about characters when they aren’t made of cardboard? Good to know.

Jack Lemmon is fucking hilarious. Pure neurosis. As a Jew I gotta respect that shit. To anyone reading this–watch Save the Tiger. He’s brilliant there. The contrast is insane though. Those two roles prove to me that he may be one of the best to ever do it in classic Hollywood.

Beyond the comedy, I think the way Wilder is able to cheekily weave in commentary on gender is pretty remarkable. Being a woman, having a slumber party with the gals, it’s all so damn fun. Makes you wish dudes did that shit more often. At the same time, you get creepos leering at you everywhere you turn. So, uh… pros and cons, right? 7/10.

Okja - dir. Bong Joon-ho

Sci-Fi

This is the first time I’ve ever felt like I didn’t want to give a rating. Okja is a propaganda piece for animal liberation, and for that reason, I don’t want to give it the low score I believe it deserves. It’s a cause I have deep sympathies for, and the amount of tears I shed at the end are a testament to that. I want this film to reach people, even if, in my opinion, it’s terribly written and extremely corny.

How the fuck could I NOT cry?

It’s so unfair. You can’t just write the most hilariously corny movie in your career and then show me sad lumbering beasts forced to slaughter and make me bawl my fucking eyes out.

Challengers - dir. Luca Guadagnino

Sports/Melodrama

I really can’t disclose enough how much it shocks me to be adding a movie from the 2020’s into my Top 100.

Unbelievable script. Just unreal. One of those once in a lifetime achievements of artistic genius, where every conversation, transition, and beat builds effortlessly. Two hours flew by.

Morons won’t appreciate this movie, but luckily it seems to be hitting each and every demographic with the force of ten tennis rackets.

It’s fucking awesome to see a modern film that isn’t screaming its subtext and themes at you, that trusts its audience enough to pick up what it’s putting down. It’s not the most subtle thing in the world, but it stirs plenty in my mind that I’m having a tough time elucidating on.

Relationships, obviously. It’s using tennis to explore the dynamics of love, friendship, and sex. The primitive masculine desire to fight a rival to secure a mate placed within the boundaries of a tennis court. The power struggle of male and female, masculine and feminine.

What I found very interesting was the parallel of Tashi using her feminine guiles to get the two besties to start making out and her using that same guile to get them fucking–in the form of the most intense tennis match she’s ever seen in her life.

“I just want to see some good fucking tennis.”

What she means by this is that she wants to see boys kiss. Tashi is a puppetmaster who values tennis (i.e. sex) over all else. We aren’t given a clear understanding of why she is kind of a sociopath, but it doesn’t really matter–we’re not watching a character study of Tashi (per se)–we’re watching the dynamic she inspires in the throuple. We’re watching a three-way relationship play out over a decade plus.

Unbelievably simple. Unbelievably kinetic. Unbelievably brilliant. 9/10.

Blue Moon - dir. Ko I-Chen

Experimental

Gave it like 30 mins and it did not work for me at all, is what it is. 2/10.

Amores Perros - dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu

Drama/Epic

These sprawling character mosaics seem like they would be my kind of thing in theory, but in practice they never do much but get me mildly impressed. Amores Perros works like Magnolia, though it doesn’t spread its web of characters too thin. The problem with these kinds of narratives for me is that I typically only gravitate to one of the characters at the expense of the rest, which is the case here as well. Gael Garcia Bernal’s Octavio’s story is dope, but the other two narratives feel like afterthoughts. 7/10.

Blue Velvet - dir. David Lynch

Neo-Noir/Mystery

Inland Empire and Eraserhead go way harder.

Eyes Wide Shut does the whole “average guy stumbles upon weird kinky underbelly of his society” thing way better. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Kubrick was influenced by Blue Velvet, so credit where it’s due–if this were the first time I’d ever seen a “rotten suburbia” type flick it’d probably seem like a masterpiece.

I like Lynch’s dialogue, the camp works for me. The mystery here sucks, though. Kind of a situation where I was just like, wait that’s it? Really?

Not even too visually interesting either, by Lynch standards. Film really peaks in the first 5 minutes aesthetically.

Bummed because I went into this ready to love it, and slap a 5 star rating on it. I have a lot of faith in Lynch’s creativity. He took a good swing here, but for me it was mostly a miss. Still, not a bad time. 6/10.

Martyrs - dir. Pascal Laugier

Extreme Horror

Effective brutality, often EXTREMELY difficult to sit through, but intentions seem muddled. I have no issues with shock for the sake of shock, but I could never give something like this a high rating because to me it feels like an amalgam of two different ideas. Those ideas are interesting and worth exploring, that being the nightmarish personification of childhood trauma and secondly, the philosophical musings on martyrdom and the afterlife.

The problem with blending these two is that it’s not a seamless thematic overlay. You can take the childhood trauma angle and crank it up to eleven, that’s fine, but what does the martyrdom cult represent, exactly, within that equation? Uhhhhh shitty parents? Uhhhhh something something pervy uncle at Thanksgiving? I’m sure I could bullshit my way to an answer, but at that point, that’s like me doing the work for the movie. At the end of the day, I perceived no clear connection. Feel free to educate my ass in the comments though. 6/10.

21 Grams - dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu

Drama

It’s like Amores Perros but without any of the charm. Takes itself oh so seriously, which is ironic because Amores Perros is far more brutal and unforgiving. 4/10.

Among the Living - dir. Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury

Horror

I have boundaries. 2/10.

Blood and Black Lace - dir. Mario Bava

Mystery/Horror

Opening credits had me grinning. So much color, life, and cheese. It’s just a damn shame the story and characters were so forgettable. I feel like, for the most part, you could’ve swapped out each character with literally any of the others and the story would’ve remained unchanged. It exists seemingly as a vehicle for colors, which, in all fairness, were fire, but I can’t pretend I was invested in the mystery at all. 6/10.

Monkey - dir. Giuseppe Andrews

Experimental/Absurdist Comedy

I want to pick Giuseppe Andrews’ brain to uncover his casting process. Where does he find old people willing to say these lines? Where does he find elderly crackheads willing to pretend to fuck a VCR with a sausage for a penis? I genuinely have nothing but respect for everyone involved in this because as an artistic experience I’ve never had one like it.

Not the kind of film I can recommend to people. At all. But believe me I will. “Pink Flamingos” for straight people? Maybe? Even that feels dishonest. Andrews clearly has different intentions than Waters, but both operate in the same avenue of trailer park camp.

I would’ve liked this a lot more if I’d gotten more invested in the idea of kicking addiction, which is what the film is, theoretically, about. I feel like a lot of the randomness here will click with you, or it won’t. Some of it clicked with me. People shitting out of their mouths was very funny. But the face-punching rock bit was overplayed, though you could argue that it’s supposed to represent addiction or some shit. In response I would probably argue that the monkey with the bag of rocks is a more likely candidate for that symbolism. Let’s be real, though, this argument isn’t happening any time soon lol.

I recommend this to people who like their shit weird, gross, and uncomfortable. 6/10.

The Revenant - dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu

Period/Revenge

Lubezki is the GOAT cinematographer, this much is true.

Runtime is absolutely agonizing. For all the spectacle, I legitimately gave zero fucks about Glass’ survival.

I wonder how the Man vs Bear discourse will impact DiCaprio’s legacy? 4/10.

The Lost Daughter - dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal

Drama

Watching this reminded me of the first draft of the feature I wrote a couple months ago.

Made me realize that my script was fucking trash. Or, and I think this is even worse, totally inoffensive.

In principle I always thought cutting between past and present would be interesting and engaging, but the use of it here felt weirdly robotic and disengaged, to the point where I’m questioning if my script should even be relying on it.

Maybe it wasn’t the time cuts, but more the artificiality of it all. This movie feels so fake. Can’t put my finger on it. 2/10.

Trust - dir. Hal Hartley

Surrealist Romance

This movie gets it. Holy fuck, Hal Hartley gets it. He simply gets it. This movie understands it on such a primal level. Trust in outdated routines, trust in traumatic family structures, trust in systems and hierarchies that just don’t make any fucking sense.

But above all, trust in love as a tangible thing, as something that can be broken down into its parts and then reshuffled, congealed back into a whole.

The grenade–the symbol of his father’s violence, inadequacy, passing down the baggage of a bomb, the trauma from the war. Matthew’s father loves him but he can only express it through violence. To strangers, his son is a genius. But when his son stands in front of him, all he sees is a fool. Matthew must pull the pin to escape the cycle, even if it lands him in jail.

The glasses–a symbol of Maria’s coming-of-age, her gradual maturity and self-actualization, her newfound ability to SEE THROUGH her psycho mom’s bullshit. The glasses are that time period between your teens and twenties, the cusp of adulthood. They allow her to see.

It took me a minute to connect to Hartley’s dry, esoteric dialogue, but it feels so remarkably accurate in conveying the uncomfortable feeling of young adulthood. I said earlier that this movie gets it, and by “it” I mean how I always seem to be feeling these days, at 21. I’m doing it all wrong. My parents cut a path through the jungle for me and I’m still finding brand new ways to disappoint everybody, especially myself. Sucking at being a good employee, a good son, a good student, a good boyfriend, a good friend, a good person, just trying to figure out how to do it RIGHT.

“I’m ashamed of being young,” Maria writes. “I’m ashamed of being young and stupid.”

Fuuuuuuuuck me.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

So unhurried. So profound. So uncomfortable. So agonizingly real. 10/10.

Su-ki-da - dir. Hiroshi Ishikawa

Romance

Boring and impenetrable. Not a fan of these movies that bank on emotional investment without allowing you any sentimentality. 4/10.

Birdboy: The Forgotten Children - dir. Alberto Vázquez, Pedro Rivero

Dystopian/Fantasy

In theory this is for adults but I think only 14 year olds would actually find this deep. 2/10.

Taste of Cherry - dir. Abbas Kiarostami

Minimalist Drama

Reminiscent of Tarkovsky in that Kiarostami is less interested in these big sweeping gestures and more interested in the philosophical wonder of something altogether minute. Or, I suppose, extracting visual and philosophical splendor from something that would usually be spun into melodrama.

Just like Tarkovsky’s work, I find myself appreciating and respecting this film more than I actually connect to it. I’m not bored, I’m not even disengaged–I love the artistic conversation this film has–but I’m not gonna pretend I’m head over heels for it. 7/10.

Typhoon Club - dir. Shinji Sōmai

Coming-of-Age

I’ve written the opening paragraph of my review twice now, and I still can’t really figure out what exactly I want to say about this film.

I experienced Typhoon Club the way I believe Shinji Sōmai intended, as a mood. A hangout film, if you will, with darker undertones. I got wrapped up in the cozy, rainy environment of the film without a hitch.

I watched it like I was sitting inside of that building with them, experiencing their apocalyptic sense of freedom as they did. It reminded me of one of my experiences on shrooms. I was in Yosemite, having a horrible trip, but through the 4 grams of hazy stupor I was still able to appreciate the cataclysmic beauty of the snow falling outside.

I spent that time reflecting on turning 20, wondering when exactly I was going to stop feeling like a kid.

I imagine that this was the exact feeling Sōmai hoped to convey. The realization that you probably never stop feeling like a kid. 7/10.

Wild at Heart - dir. David Lynch

Romance/Action

Could’ve been like half an hour shorter probably.

I don’t like a lot of the random stuff Lynch tosses into the script. His films really come down to how you react on a gut level. When it works, it works, when it doesn’t, it doesn’t. There’s no intellectualizing to be had here. You either fuck with the aesthetic he presents or you don’t.

I personally did not. It’s cute but it’s barely passable. 5/10.

Narc - dir. Joe Carnahan

Crime/Thriller

A well-written crime thriller with just a few weird racist moments that kept me from fully buying into it being “anti-cop”. 6/10.

Horsehead - dir. Romain Basset

Supernatural Horror

Pretty incompetent and not scary enough for me to overlook that. 2/10.

Smokin’ Aces - dir. Joe Carnahan

Action/Comedy

Absolute heater of a film from Joe Carnahan. Flows effortlessly.

Ryan Reynolds can act apparently? Such a bummer he’s basically played the same guy in every other movie he’s ever been in.

I’d give this a higher score, but it was probably a little bit too convoluted for its own good. I would’ve cut out some of the extraneous storylines. Like the kid with ADHD lol what the actual fuck was that? 6/10.

Crash - dir. David Cronenberg

Erotic Thriller

Traumatized people fuck the best, the movie?

I was having trouble piecing my thoughts together on this film, but I think the conclusion I came to is that Cronenberg was jerking off to car crash footage and realized that the autobiographical story of his freakiest kink would make for a pretty decent erotic thriller.

Jokes aside, what I actually think is that this is a really esoteric, roundabout, sex-fueled way to talk about trauma and the coping mechanisms around it.

James Spader is extremely dope, btw. 8/10.

Fargo - dir. Coen Brothers

Crime/Comedy

Delicious script. The Coen brothers write dialogue in a way that tickles my brain pink. Love the spin on the Western, the spin on the noir, the spin on the comedy/crime caper, the spin on the morality tale. An effortless subversion of tropes and archetypes.

While the Coens poke fun of Midwesterners, I find it charming in a way that the movie ends with what seems like a pretty clear endorsement of the Midwesterner lifestyle. Just an average couple cozying up under the blankets during winter while talking about stamps.

Besides all that–hilarious fucking movie. 8/10.

The Grey - dir. Joe Carnahan

Survival Thriller

Claire Denis explores masculinity in the context of militarism under the hot, sweltering sun of colonial Djibouti. Carnahan explores it in the unforgiving freeze of Alaska, through the eyes of men who suffer not from the punishment of rigid structure but from purposelessness. These are men who have been abandoned and desecrated, forced by a combination of circumstance and poor decision making to sacrifice their bodies and souls to an Alaskan oil drilling company.

Oil drilling is the first thing we usually think of when we think of modern day capitalist amorality. Literally sucking up the blood of the Earth for a resource that wrecks the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s the short-sighted greed of capitalism manifest. Part of the ethos of patriarchal capitalism is the idea of breaking men’s bodies and souls into tools. Soldiers, oil drillers, bolt gun operators on the abattoir floor; no man with a robust ethical framework (i.e., a soul) or a clear vision of their future would willingly take part in any of these professions. Greed and murder aren’t things that humans take joy in. That’s why soldiers and slaughterhouse workers experience severe PTSD, and why some of these oil drillers would rather die of starvation in the woods than return to their jobs.

There is no God to save them, no deus ex machina, just their will and their camaraderie.

This movie is intense, brutal, and challenging to the masculine psyche. 7/10.

Where Is The Friend’s House? - dir. Abbas Kiarostami

Coming-of-Age/Drama

Watching this film places you right back in your brain as a small child the first time you get lost or separated from your parents. You feel utterly powerless.

Nothing short of genius. Abbas Kiarostami pays respects to the 400 Blows, a classic in the “being a kid fucking sucks ass” genre of film… then proceeds to make possibly the best take on this theme yet. In less than an hour and a half, Kiarostami made me feel frustrated, relieved, hopeful, disappointed, and awestruck.

Like Taste of Cherry, Kiarostami takes a simple story and elevates it to philosophically intelligent cinema. Only here, my emotions were magnified tenfold.

When Ahmad’s grandfather talks about how kids should do whatever you ask of them without question, it’s ironic because all this kid wants to do is help his classmate and not a single adult (except for the old Jewish man) listens to him. He asks the same questions hundreds of times and gets no help. If these adults practiced what they expected of kids, this entire predicament could’ve been avoided.

This film made me feel like a little kid again. Lost, scared, and overwhelmed. 10/10.

Stretch - dir. Joe Carnahan

Comedy/Action

Literally me?

I worked very briefly as a production assistant on a show and one of my tasks was to drive the celebrity hosts to and from set each day. It was actually exactly like this movie. Except with more severed penises.

I think I really like Joe Carnahan as a director. He hasn’t made a bad movie.

Some of the reviews on this one are pretty funny. “Edgy”. Yeah, man. The movie where David Hasselhoff monologues threateningly about torturing Viet Cong operatives for intel is very edgy and self-serious.

This is basically just Carnahan’s take on the studio comedy. Boy meets girl. Boy experiences Uncut Gems. Boy and girl end up happily ever after. 6/10.

The Cremator - dir. Juraj Hurz

Black Comedy/Horror

Boring and predictable, like most movies about and surrounding the Holocaust. To Herz’s credit, though, he at least manages to give the whole thing a cool gothic tone that I haven’t seen from a story of this nature before.

Main reason I say it’s predictable is because it’s predicated on the idea that our ideologies and spiritual beliefs, however innocent, can be used and perverted into fascism.

The problem, as I see it, is that our main character is already a lecherous weirdo from the get-go. As soon as he shows a single shred of sympathy for the Nazi cause I can basically guess exactly where the movie will go, and I’m not even surprised, because nothing about him suggests to me that he WOULDN’T be susceptible to Nazi ideology. 4/10.

Boss Level - dir. Joe Carnahan

Action/Comedy

Joe Carnahan’s take on the time loop movie is dope. I can’t say he’s ever cooked up any masterpieces but I respect his sharp writing, well-choreographed action sequences, and pacing. Visually this movie is probably his worst, with absolutely abysmal color grading, but it makes up for it by simply being a fun watch.

I told my girlfriend I wanted to look like Frank Grillo and she was disappointed. Fuck you, babe. He’s awesome. 6/10.

Madame Web - dir. S.J. Clarkson

Superhero

I love Marvel. 1/10.

The Dead Don’t Die - dir. Jim Jarmusch

Comedy/Horror

Noooo Jim what is you doin baby nooo… 3/10.

Real Life - dir. Albert Brooks

Comedy

Once you place a camera in front of the subject, does the subject cease to become reality?

This has to be one of the most fascinating and funny movies I’ve ever seen. Probably fucked up to admit but there were bits pieces of Brooks’ character that, as an artist, I found relatable. The desire to capture reality is a whole style of cinema in its own right, and Brooks is parodying the endeavor.

There are so many metatextual layers you can peel back, too. The unreliable narration, the fact that Brooks is playing a fictionalized version of himself in what is ostensibly a film about reality, as well as how this film takes anachronistic jabs at the modern content creator phenomena, where people will attempt to place their audiences “in” their lives, to attempt to build a parasocial dynamic using falsified reality. Sort of feels like a precursor to the Truman Show, too–I think it would make for a good double feature. Do we REALLY want reality, or do we just want to be tricked into perceiving something as reality? 8/10.

Spirits of the Air • Gremlins of the Clouds - dir. Alex Proyas

Post-Apocalyptic

Cool set design and cool cinematography, but who cares?

One of my least favorite kinds of movie that film fans seem weirdly defensive over: the b-movie with shit writing but with “campy” sets and performances.

Only John Waters is allowed to do this. Because he is actually funny.

The rest of you are awful. Just stop. 3/10.

Modern Romance - dir. Albert Brooks

RomCom

Up there as one of the most difficult watches I’ve ever had in my entire life. Seriously, it’s like Albert Brooks chemically engineered every single scene to make me want to die. Watching this movie as a Jewish dude is like hooking up a car battery to your nuts and then revving up the engine.

I specify Jewish because just like Woody Allen, just like Noah Baumbach, Brooks is tapping into an all too common strain of Jewish male neurosis. We’re not the only people burdened with this special brand of insanity, but goddamn if we don’t seem predisposed to it.

The ending of this movie is funny on the surface but it’s actually just straight up fucking horrifying to me. I wonder how many relationships are in fact just held together with duct tape and prayer, constantly in a state of flux. I look at my own parents and I wonder if all that stands in the way of total breakdown is the existence of me and my brother. And if the examples of relationships you have are either dysfunctional or fantastical, well… are you just fucked?

I’ve been in a few relationships, situationships, etc. I look at Robert Cole and I think to myself that if I turn out anything like that I may very well end it all. I feel it’s all just a little bit too close for comfort. I pity Mary, truly, just like I’ve always pitied anybody who’s ever had the misfortune of loving me.

Albert Brooks pulls off a magic trick here. Because he simultaneously makes me sympathize with him and also want to puke. I spent an embarrassing amount of this movie sitting in Robert’s shoes, experiencing the regret of a breakup, the loneliness, and the failed attempts at healing. I spent the other part wanting to crawl out of my own skin. I went into this, for some reason, expecting something tender, maybe even comforting. I ended up getting something that has irrevocably fucked with my concept of romantic relationships and my faith in the idea of “love” as this beautiful, spiritual solution. This shit is the antidote to Terrence Malick.

Brooks walks another tightrope here, too–the delicate balance between the cynical and the sentimental. There are scenes here that are genuinely just fucking beautiful in how sincerely sad they are, stuff like Robert driving around with his attempted rebound in silence as the comedically timed “She’s Out of My Life” by MJ plays. Stuff that lives up to just how sweet and melancholic the poster is. And then there’s that final scene, the one that horrified me to my core, where Robert proposes to Mary and the realization dawns on me that these are two people who will simply never be free of one another, all because of some perverse interpretation of love.

Robert claims he’s doing all of this insane paranoid shit for love, and while we can sit here and say that he’s insane and paranoid and not actually in love the truth is that there is actually zero consistency with that accusation. We endorse plenty of romantic stories with equally insane behavior from their characters, the only difference is that here it’s not sugarcoated. The definition of love and its applications can vary so wildly that two people can experience it with NOTHING in common. One person may associate love with obsession, one with kindness. We’d like to believe our definitions hold up under scrutiny, but how much can we really know about our own executions of love? Is it love or is it limerence? Is it love or is obsession? Is it love… or is it abuse? The line can get uncomfortably blurry sometimes, and that’s the basis of the horror that I experienced watching this film.

I can’t get enough of these stories about horribly dysfunctional relationships. And it’s this movie that finally makes me realize that it’s because it’s all I’ve ever known. But maybe that’s normal? Maybe at 21 it’s normal to not have ever experienced, firsthand or secondhand, a functional relationship? What does that even look like? I genuinely need to know. Are we all just genuinely doomed to experience relationships as these nauseous rollercoasters of mending and breaking? Is it just me? I don’t know which is worse, the idea that we as a species are doomed to experience romantic love without the tools to healthily indulge in it or that everyone else has it figured out, and I’m the only one who got left behind. 9/10.

Spring Breakers - dir. Harmony Korine

Experimental/Crime

I finally get it.

Malickian in its presentation, hedonistic to the extreme. Repetitive images, colors, internal monologues and a camera that follows our characters’ bodies like something lecherous.

A film about how susceptible we are to false prophets when our worldview is centered around consumption.

Alien “saves” the girls in the same way a messiah would; the dramatic irony comes from the fact that we as outsiders to the bubble understand that he’s a false god. The girls, fully entrenched in their hedonistic ideology, see him as legitimate. 8/10.

The Beach Bum - dir. Harmony Korine

Stoner Comedy

Simply a good vibe.

Korine’s autobiographical ode to the fun side of nihilism and substance abuse. A man who “was” a genius whose only priority at any given time was to have fun–sounds familiar. I’m sure Korine has heard a billion times how he peaked in the 90’s and how his newer work is crude, garish, unpleasant, etc. This movie is his way of saying “I don’t care about any of that stuff, I make art for fun.” The message inspires me as an artist because I often needlessly put myself under pressure to create something “genius”. That stuff is out of your control. The only thing within your control is whether you let yourself have fun during the process.

A line that REALLY stuck with me is “the world is conspiring to make me happy.” Such an awesome philosophy to live by. I’m gonna take that and try to internalize it the best I can. 7/10.

Aloners - dir. Hong Sung-eun

Drama

A character study of the most annoying coworker you’ve ever had. Made me feel a little more sympathetic for the rule-adhering shills I’ve had the displeasure of toiling alongside with.

Pretty basic low-stakes drama. Tasteful, but not remotely interesting to me. 5/10.

Lost Highway - dir. David Lynch

Neo-Noir/Surrealist

The emotional experience of fumbling a bad bitch.

Something about the unknown. Something about horror lurking in the shadows of your home or in the shadows of your relationships.

A good time? 7/10.

Lost in America - dir. Albert Brooks

Road/Comedy

The first Albert Brooks movie in which his female counterpart is more insufferable than him?

Top review is literally a spot-on read of the movie. So perfect.

Only thing I really have to add is that Brooks is exceptionally good at depicting hell without trying. The slow zoom out on New York with blaring Frank Sinatra is terrifying stuff.

Horrendously stupid yuppies trying to capture the aesthetic of rebellion without understanding a lick of it. 7/10.

Aggro Dr1ft - dir. Harmony Korine

Experimental/Crime

A spiritual successor to Spring Breakers. Heavily expands on the quasi-religious ethos of nihilism and post-modern commodity worship of its predecessor. The cybernetic visual shitstorm combined with the heavy use of almost biblical, almost fantastical allusions to Satan make me think that, just like Spring Breakers, this is Harmony Korine pointing towards a new world order of meaninglessness. Humans finding strange, unorthodox religious paradigms in the power vacuum left behind by the death of universal truth.

I have no doubt that if Korine read this, he would laugh his ass off.

But I think the silliness of the dialogue, the pounding synth score, the way the infrared lighting reduces the humanity of its characters, it all comes together to create a vibe akin to a video game, which furthers my argument that this is Korine exploring the commodification of the human experience. It’s no coincidence that the main character is a hitman, a job that requires you to view lives in terms of monetary value.

And nonetheless there is a humanity to it that fascinates me. Though the tender moments our protagonist has with his family come across as goofy, they’re unapologetically sincere. I really do think Korine intends this to ground the experience in something tangible, maybe even hopeful. Where Spring Breakers tragically bemoans its protagonists, ending on their full moral corruption and transformation into agents of the nihilistic messiah, Aggro Dr1ft ends on something more hopeful; family and love, and their uniquely spiritual properties that ground us in the chaos. 7/10.

Mother - dir. Albert Brooks

Comedy

Sadly not as clever or funny as Albert Brooks’ other work. Feels very stiff. No charm, not in the slightest. 4/10.

Romance - dir. Guel Arraes

RomCom

This started off as a really promising campy, theatrical, almost folksy spin on the romance genre, but by the midpoint it felt like it collapsed under the weight of all its dumb little “comedic” plot threads. I will watch anything with Wagner Moura in it, and maybe that’s a problem. 4/10.

Teenage Hooker Became Killing Machine - dir. Nam Gee-woong

Revenge/Sci-Fi

Rape revenge done okay. Seems to me like a foray into silliness more than a film I can really sink my teeth into, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect it for being pretty weird and ballsy. 5/10.

The Sixth Sense - dir. M. Night Shyamalan

Thriller/Horror

My dumbass thought I’d been spoiled on the big twist. My dumbass was wrong. I got got.

An impeccably solid movie.

I actually cried during the scene in the car. Toni Collette has always been one of the GOATs. Everybody talks about HJO giving one of the best child performances in American cinema but it must be said that Bruce Willis and Toni Collette are doing great work too. 7/10.

The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open - dir. Kathleen Hepburn

Drama

Scattered throughout the script were a few moments where I fully felt immersed in the characters’ emotions, those being Rosie listening to Joni Mitchell and Rosie singing to her baby. For the most part, though, this is a fairly average, run-of-the-mill naturalistic indie film that people call “important” and “essential.” It probably is, I guess. 6/10.

Unbreakable - dir. M. Night Shyamalan

Superhero/Thriller

The single best take on the superhero genre I’ve ever seen. Pays its love to the comic book art form without feeling like a senseless homage or nostalgia trip. Passionate but never self-important. Shyamalan takes his favorite themes–miracles and fate–and weaves them into an absolutely phenomenal story. 8/10.

The Ascent - dir. Larisa Shepitko

War

You may keep your life, but can you live with yourself? Martyrdom as an act to preserve the soul. Survival as an act of betrayal.

One of the most chilling war films ever made. Didn’t really hit me until the last twenty minutes. It puts forth a lot of philosophical conversations, and a score that will haunt my subconscious mind for years to come.

Pure desolation, desperation, desecration. War not as a bloody struggle but as a personal choice to live or die by any means necessary, moral code or otherwise. 8/10.

Signs - dir. M. Night Shyamalan

Sci-Fi

Mel Gibson is awesome. And I’m Jewish, so I can say that.

I wish all sci-fi movies were this good. I don’t think a boring Shyamalan film exists. His dialogue can be atrocious at times but I think his commitment to telling good stories is consistent.

Signs is like if Nope wasn’t the lamest, most soulless shit on the planet. A story about family and miracles that doesn’t desperately try to come across as smarter than the audience. This film made me realize what it was that I hated about Nope.

That’s something I like about Shyamalan. He has no pretension about him. He simply tells stories. 7/10.

In the Heat of the Sun - dir. Jiang Wen

Cliche after cliche. Lol. If I ever make a coming-of-age film and include a scene where the main character spies on his older crush you people have permission to drop a nuke on my house.

Watch A Brighter Summer Day instead. 4/10.

The Village - dir. M. Night Shyamalan

Not even master storyteller M Night Shyamalan can prevent a period piece from being the most boring thing you will ever see in your entire life.

Still the only genre that I am almost always guaranteed to hate. Barry Lyndon is the biggest fluke ever. 4/10.

Glass - dir. M. Night Shyamalan

Superhero

In making the best trilogy of superhero films ever, Shyamalan ironically demonstrates the initial appeal of the Marvel franchise. The idea of several different superheroes slowly coalescing into one movie sounds awful now because the MCU fucked cinema to death and left its rotting corpse in a ditch, but Shyamalan proves with Glass that there is some merit to the idea when it’s executed with soul and sincerity.

Glass is pure entertainment from start to finish. I saw it in the worst possible setting (during my downtime as a supporting actor on a set) on my cracked phone screen (I recognize the irony) and still, those two hours flew by. I stand by my belief that Shyamalan is incapable of creating a boring film when given full creative control. The man’s storytelling abilities are enviable. There is truly nobody doing it quite like him in the modern studio system.

This film represents a lot of things, but I think at its core it’s simply a calcification of the themes that Shyamalan holds so dear; fate, miracles, and owning your destiny. Self-actualization, addressing your trauma head on and recognizing its indelible role in shaping who you are and what your purpose is in the world. 7/10.

All About My Mother - dir. Pedro Almodóvar

Melodrama/Comedy

A love letter to mothers, and more broadly to women as a whole. You can really feel it with this script and its characterizations. There’s absolutely nothing cynical here, just pure love, pure appreciation, pure care. One of the most charming scripts I’ve seen. Wish it clicked with me a little bit more but I could 100% see this movie absolutely blowing me away in 10 years. 7/10.

Mister Lonely - dir. Harmony Korine

Surrealist/Comedy

Harmony Korine’s most criminally boring movie, which is unfortunate because I went into it with high hopes. The movie has none of the visual flair I’ve come to associate with Korine as a filmmaker. Comes off more “quirky” than provocative. 4/10.

High Life - dir. Claire Denis

Sci-Fi/Erotic Horror

Confoundingly beautiful film. One of the loneliest I’ve ever seen, too. As with Denis’ other work, I have a tough time elucidating my thoughts right off the jump. I expect to sit with this in my brain for a while.

Straight off the cuff, though;

Claire Denis examines scientific progress not as a means to save humanity from its extinction but as a moral punishment for its delinquents. In the process, she creates a bleak microcosm that feels at once deeply intimate but colder than a witch’s tit.
Transactional relationships… even down to parenthood. Do Monte and Willow love each other or do they just need each other to survive? This goes for all the other character relationships too. 7/10.

The Box - dir. Richard Kelly

Apocalyptic/Mystery

Richard Kelly has got to be one of the most underrated directors in recent history. Such a shame he got exiled from Hollywood. Such a shame he hasn’t gotten the chance to continue making sprawling, esoteric sci-fi bangers. Nobody knows how to write films that deal with the chaos, confusion, and humanity of the apocalypse like Kelly, and the fact that Southland Tales and The Box both got panned to shit and tanked his career is a sign that we’re fucked as a species.

If something like The Box can’t be immediately recognized as–at the very least–a good film, then I don’t even know what to say. A 2.7 average rating is ludicrous when stuff like Top Gun: Maverick and Guardians of the Galaxy hover well above the 3.5 range. What the fuck is wrong with people? Genuine question. How is it possible to watch something like this and recognize the unbelievably original creative spirit on display?

Only a filmmaker like Kelly could’ve taken such a simple premise and turned it into an apocalyptic opus. One of those movies you simply have to see for yourself.

“Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God.” 7/10.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! - dir. Pedro Almodóvar

Black Comedy/Romance

Crazy in the head, crazy in the bed. Antonio Banderas gets out of the Good Pussy Detainment Facility, a man on a mission, dabbling in the delicate dichotomy of psycho and babygirl. Impossible not to like him, and be charmed by him, just as it’s hard not to fall in love with Almodovar’s deliciously colorful sets.

Does this film condone Ricky?

I thought so until the final scene. I was initially gonna give this a 7/10 but the complexity of emotion Victoria Abril was able to convey in that last shot sold me on the brilliance of the film. It’s provocative and endearing, much like Almodovar’s other work, yet I would say also satirical. Almodovar is poking fun at heterosexual norms, and I say this because my interpretation of Marina crying in the end is that she’s contending with the fact that she just married a nutcase.

I’m sure this is something many women feel when they get married. Given Almodovar’s rich understanding of relationships and sexuality, I’m sure he knows exactly what he’s doing here. You really think the guy who’s been known as a women’s director would create a film that condones kidnapping and assault? Be serious.

Almodovar hit it square on the head, because the fact of the matter is that this is absolutely a fantasy for many people, male and female. Just look through the reviews to see my point. Heterosexuals are fucking insane, that’s the message of the movie.

Sidenote: I also think that Marina’s character is very well-written to where I can 100% understand why she would allow the situation to transpire in the way that it did, beyond the shallow reason that most filmmakers would give (“he’s hot!”). She’s established as emotionally fragile and a recovering drug addict. People don’t end up that way without some kind of childhood trauma, generally related to their parents. None of this is explicit in the script (I believe) but it can be reasonably inferred that she is a prime candidate for Stockholm syndrome. 8/10.

Slow Moves - dir. Jon Jost

Road/Romance

I’d like to take a crack at writing some more elaborate thoughts on this film if I can, but I won’t be able to do it without getting personal. I view letterboxd as a film diary that also functions as a tool for me to expand my writing skills. Slow Moves came at me serendipitously, as it’s a film that deals with the minutiae of relationships.

What we see is an average couple fall for one another, both of a melancholic predisposition. He meets her as she contemplates hurling herself off of the Golden Gate Bridge, she falls for him but discovers that he’s dysfunctional.

Jon Jost doesn’t do anything I haven’t seen before. These kinds of contemplative romances are my favorite movies, bar none, but it’s his unwaveringly patient, tender, lofi approach that makes this a special film. The improvisational dialogue and the bluesy musical, poetic interlays create such a strong impressionistic energy. I can’t even understand most of the dialogue and that’s okay. I don’t feel I need to. I’m sitting with this couple as they attempt to work around each other’s pet peeves and the everyday monotonies of San Francisco life.

“I never did understand women. God knows I don’t think I ever will either. ‘Cause I sure don’t seem to be making any progress.”

Each time I get into a relationship, I discover more about myself. And it’s tough because the more you discover about yourself the more you realize how fucked up you are, and how much work it takes to undo it. Sometimes it gets so overwhelming that I feel I don’t deserve the love I get, because maybe I’m destined to fail. My inadequacies and flaws that I inherited from my childhood may wind up following me until the day I die. When you start thinking like that, life can start to feel so claustrophobic you just want to die. I know I’ve gotten to that place before. Relationships, of all kinds, are probably the most important thing to being human, at least for me, and if I can’t figure out a way to be somebody to someone, I feel that I may as well not exist.

Slow Moves is about those intricacies. It’s about understanding each other. Love isn’t magic. It’s excruciatingly difficult sometimes, but it’s probably the closest thing we’ve got. 8/10.

The Straight Story - dir. David Lynch

Road

Nothing can prepare you for “WALT DISNEY PRESENTS… a film by David Lynch.” Truly nothing.

An unusually tender affair from Lynch, and given its G rating, it makes sense. I don’t think this film needed any edge, but there wasn’t much about it that truly moved me. It’s a crowd-pleaser and it does have a cozy vibe that pulls you in. Felt like a warm blanket, but not enough for me to truly fall in love with it. Which is weird, because it features three things that I go crazy for–strained brotherly relationships, old people with regrets, and long, contemplative journeys on the road.

Still a sweet movie, but Terrence Malick could’ve turned this into the best movie of all time. Under Lynch it’s just good. 7/10.

Trash Humpers - dir. Harmony Korine

Experimental/Absurdist Comedy

The film equivalent to stepping into a puddle of rainwater and car exhaust after purchasing a bulk pack of Slim Jims from Walmart. Reminds me a bit of Borat in that sense.

Korine makes rebellious cinema on his own terms. He doesn’t pretend to be a genius, he lets his work speak for itself and does whatever the fuck he wants. I respect that greatly, and it’s resulted in some incredible films.

Trash Humpers isn’t incredible but it certainly isn’t bad. It’s not as layered as Spring Breakers or Gummo but its existence and its language comes a place of authenticity. Korine took a video camera, his wife, and a few friends, got them dressed in old people costumes, and said ACTION. It’s impossible for me not to admire, especially when the end result is so… soulful? Yeah. Soulful. 6/10.

Red Rocket - dir. Sean Baker

Exploitation is cyclical in nature. You get exploited until, hopefully, you live to see the day where you’re able to do the exploiting yourself. The same goes for abuse, of any kind. Unless you do the work, there’s a good probability that the abuse you suffered will transcend generations. And it’s not necessarily a one-to-one, either, right. Because often in our desire to undo or fix the abuse we perpetrate a different kind. I see it with my parents. My grandparents had dysfunctional relationships. They got married young and divorced after screaming, shouting, and sometimes physical altercations. My parents said–alright, let’s do it differently. Let’s never get divorced, no matter how much we scream at each other. For the kids. Let’s stay together for the kids.

Needless to say, my perception of what a healthy relationship looks like involves a lot of bickering and screaming.

All this is to say that my speculation led me to the conclusion that Mikey Saber is, in all likelihood, a victim of sexual abuse. I’d like to affirm, before I continue writing, that I don’t think Mikey is morally defensible, or that his actions are at all excusable, but I’ve always resented the reflexive moral high ground and I try to avoid it when engaging with art. It’s easy to say “Mikey Saber is a bad guy” but it requires a lot more from the viewer to attempt to dig through the text to find the WHY of it all. WHY is Mikey a bad guy?

It’s no secret that the porn industry is exploitative. And the dynamic, as I’ve understood it, is different with men than it is with women. For one, men need to take drugs to stay hard on long set days. I imagine that taking viagra day in and day out probably doesn’t do you very good in the long run. It’s also reasonable to assume that Mikey, being the man he is, came from a sexually abusive background. You’re a kid in the deep South and you decide to go into the porn industry? Obviously it’s not a given that you were molested by an authority figure but I think it’s pretty likely.

I think Mikey’s expression at the very end of the film, when he sees Strawberry coming out of her pink house in a skimpy red bikini, is telling. To me, it doesn’t communicate attraction or lust. It communicates a brief lapse of ego, a sudden–if momentary–guilt-ridden introspection. The house is picturesque, dreamlike, we wonder if Mikey even made the walk to her house or if it was all in his head. The ending is open, but it’s not. We know that Mikey pimped out his wife until she probably got sick of his narcissistic puppy dog sex god routine and left him. He came crawling back and he found his next squeeze. The implication is clear–she will join him in Los Angeles, she will become disillusioned with the porn lifestyle and Mikey’s bullshit, and she’ll return home. Mikey’s problem, at its core, is that he’ll never return home. He’ll keep bouncing back and forth between stardom and poverty, euphoria and failure.

After all, exploitation and abuse ARE cyclical by nature. 9/10.

Life, and Nothing More… - dir. Abbas Kiarostami

I understand Kiarostami more now than I did when I watched Taste of Cherry, which frustrated me a little bit. I didn’t understand his need to pull back at the end and reveal the artifice of the camera. I often profess a desire to be invested in the world of a film, to forget that I’m watching a movie, but if I’m being realistic that’s never possible. Emotional investment? Sure. But to literally forget that you’re just engaging with a piece of art and not actually involved with it? That’s a stretch. I don’t buy into the whole “movie magic” thing. I think it’s a corny idea that only exists to inspire people to desperately want to be part of the Hollywood machine and slobber all over penis of the establishment. The term “movie magic” strips away what makes art interesting to me in the first place. It’s NOT magical. It has human intent and creativity, and that comes with methods and mistakes that can be studied and interpreted. Fuck magic. Give me LIFE.

I used to bash musicals for being immersion-breaking. It’s “unrealistic” for characters to break into song. But obviously that’s a stupid argument. I know that now. Now I just say that musicals are fucking annoying. Which is much more accurate.

Every artist wants to capture life. Some set out to do it through a documentarian lens. Some exaggerate it and paint impressionistic pictures that depict life through the subconscious experience. Some ground their stories in the menial conversations, dialogue intentionally improvised to best replicate the idiosyncrasies of LIFE. Art is the human response to life, so it only makes sense that our response would be our best attempt to engage with life.

Point is, when I saw Taste of Cherry I was actually kind of angry at Abbas Kiarostami for robbing me of a potentially satisfying storybook ending. I couldn’t believe that he’d opted for some metacinematic bullshit. Fuck peeling back the fourth wall, let me see how the story goes! But what if that IS how the story goes? What if the point of the ending is to make you question the voyeuristic relationship with the fourth wall and the subjects residing within it? What if the point of a film is simply to exist? Not to tell a story or to provide a satisfying arc, but to exist and to be observed and to be thought about.

I know I sound like a pretentious moron. Give me a break. I don’t plan my writeups. I just bullshit them off the top.

This film is what made me finally understand what Kiarostami was going for with Taste of Cherry. The artifice IS the story! Why does it lessen the impact of the story if we know it was fictional? We live and breathe by fiction, we KNOW it’s not real! We KNOW life goes on after the camera fades to black.

The idea of addressing Where Is The Friend’s House as a film and not as an actual event presents so much for the audience to think about. The most obvious thing that comes out to me is that the existence of this sequel, a revisitation to the village of Koker after an earthquake pulverizes it, demonstrates a sort of “guilt” on Kiarostami’s part. He stepped into the lives of these villagers, used them as props to his art, and essentially abandoned them afterwards. It’s not a crime or a huge ethical quandary, but if you found out that the actor who played the leading kid in your film was potentially dead to an earthquake, would you NOT feel some sense of responsibility? The kid was unknown before you turned them into art, and now they exist, to the audience.

If a kid dies in an earthquake but he wasn’t the leading character in an acclaimed Persian film, did he really die?

Of course he did. But it’s not like you’d CARE. He’d just be a statistic. And it’s not like you’d be able to do anything about it. Life goes on, you’ll discover something new to latch your attention to, and the kid will fade from memory, like everything else. All the guilt in the world can’t change the fact that between you and the subject of a film lies an impenetrable barrier called the fourth wall. 8/10.

Through the Olive Trees - dir. Abbas Kiarostami

I imagine that what first inspired Abbas Kiarostami to create the Koker trilogy was the experience of passing through the town and its surrounding olive forests, feeling the setting speak to him in ways that he could only convey through art. Such is the artistic experience. It certainly is for me. The sensory feeling of a location turns into setting and the people you meet turn into characters that populate the story. The artist is nothing more than an interpreter of LIFE, a conduit through which reality is converted into story. Kiarostami is aware of this fact, and doesn’t shy from it. His films reject mysticism and prophecy. They’re guilty and they’re aware of that guilt. It’s tempting to call him a genius–I really want to–but I’ll hold my tongue, so as not to be a giant fucking hypocrite.

What is the Koker trilogy, at its core? To me, it’s the ultimate sanctum of artistic guilt. A triptych of reflection.

Kiarostami makes a film about a kid. He follows the kid through his town, dramatizing his life and turning him into a local celebrity. He leaves the kid and comes back some time later after an earthquake out of guilt. He feels obligated to check on this kid, to make sure his his biggest star is still alive. But he can’t help himself, he dramatizes this experience too, once again turning the world of Koker into a setting for his directorial self-insert to explore. FINALLY, as if to rid himself of this artistic guilt, he makes a film about a bumbling film crew trying but failing to take real people and push them through the artistic conduit into characterdom.

We spend a looooong time seeing them try to get all these tiny details right, to make Koker feel “real” (even though it ALREADY is real). We see a local kid being treated like a mule by the crew for the entire movie while he deals with his own girl problems.

Finally, in what is possibly the most beautiful ending shot I have ever seen, the camera gives up on following Hossain and Tahereh completely, letting them become ambiguous specks in the distance, allll the way through the olive trees. They have what seems to be a brief interaction, backed by a jubilant score, and then Hossain runs back where he came until we cut to black.

What happened?

Well, I don’t know. The artist finally gave up trying to squeeze narrative out of reality and we’re left scratching our heads trying to make heads or tails of it. As much as the camera may try to capture life, the conversion between reality and narrative are never one to one. A little bit of both are lost in the process.

Yeah, fuck it.

Kiarostami’s a genius. Lol. 8/10.

Videodrome - dir. David Cronenberg

Prophetic, and thus terrifying. Distinguishing between reality and illusion has never been more difficult. In that sense, the film not only predicted the degree to which humans would begin to merge with their technological avatars but also the death of truth. AI with the ability to warp reality and generate content. 8/10.