Movies I Watched March 2025 - Greenfield Writes

The Insider - dir. Michael Mann

Corporate conglomerates wield enough power to destroy lives without consequence, the ending makes you realize that this edge case was close to never happening. It literally took hundreds of tiny wins to get the truth out, and even with the truth out the tobacco corporations still just openly profit from getting people hooked on drugs. How can the government call local drug dealers criminals when they’ve legalized it for the ultra wealthy?

Movies like this make you realize that liberalism is a fucking joke, the free press is only as real as the corporate backers allow it to be, and you see it in full swing now with Bezos putting the clamps on the Post to be as censored as possible. When I was younger I wanted to be a journalist, and I still have respect for the craft, but now that we live in a post-truth world I see it as a laughable endeavor. We literally cannot trust the pundits to go against the money. We cannot trust a legal system that favors those who have millions to throw away on endless lawsuits. Capitalism is fundamentally broken and if you can’t see that, you’re either ignorant or well paid. 8/10.

The Color of Money - dir. Martin Scorsese

Professionalism at odds with artistry, what do you do when you helped build the form that now obstructs the embrace of mastery? The audience claps and cheers and oohs and ahs, what for? Masculinity is sharp, pointed, skillful, used to win games. Or is masculinity the profit, the hustle? Perhaps it’s falling in love with your younger self, the potential to go back to the basics and treat the art form with the sincerity it deserves.

Effortlessly cool movie with a lot more Scorsese touch than I think people give it credit for. It’s perfectly in line with the rest of his oeuvre. Every actor is on fire too. 8/10.

Bringing Out the Dead - dir. Martin Scorsese

Nic Cage ferries lost souls across the River Styx day in and day out, mornings through witching hours, time begins to implode. For me, this was a terrifically raw depiction of insomnia. I caught a case of it back in October and I haven’t been the same since.

You can’t hold on to the past, you can’t hold onto life when you’re in purgatory, you have to accept death in stride. This whole movie is a character arc about a tortured soul coming to terms with his death and moving into the afterlife.

Part of me feels Scorsese misunderstood Schrader’s script. I expected more of a quiet, mournful tone but Scorsese instead imbues it with the kind of energy you’d see in a painting of Hell, pure pandemonium. He’s on his After Hours shit here, which doesn’t fully work for me. 7/10.

Kes - dir. Ken Loach

In 4th Grade I had nothing much going for me. I didn’t get along with any of my classmates, didn’t like my teachers, didn’t really care about much except for collecting bugs, and my friends were mostly other kids in the neighborhood.

Once upon a time we found a crow with a broken wing. I wanted to take care of it more than anything in the world. I coaxed it out of a bush, gave it some food, and let it sleep in a box with the lid ajar on my back porch at night so it wouldn’t die of cold.

For about a week I’d spend every chance I could get with this crow, I’d perch it on my shoulder when hanging out with the neighborhood crew, I’d try to pet it while it pecked at me, it would nibble at my ears. I loved this fucking crow, man. I loved it so much I even wrote my first real story about it. It was a dogshit story because it was written by a 9 year old, but at the time I thought it was some real potent Because of Winn-Dixie level literature.

At some point–the memory is sort of a blur–some of the other people I was hanging out with wanted to give the crow a bath. Afterwards, when the crow was shivering from cold, they decided it had hypothermia. Their conclusion was that it had to be put out of its misery. So to my screaming protests the bird got tossed in a plastic bag and beaten to death in one of the parking lots.

Never hung out with those guys again.

Never considered how much this probably affected me, how much it alienated me further from other people. Never considered how much it made me hate group dynamics, the way one person’s voice could be drowned out by the savage groupthink of a bunch of stupid fucking boys.

It makes me think Billy will probably be okay in the end. But I know that he will never be the same. 7/10.

Elegy to the Visitor from the Revolution - dir. Lav Diaz

Uneasy formalism. Like something straight out the folders of a lost film student, trying to capture their environment. Impossibly simple.

Watched this to ease my way into the filmography of Lav Diaz. It seems that his longer films are actually way better, but I did find something melancholic and sweet about this.

This summer I plan on watching a ton of longer movies, so I’ll probably get to a lot of his more gargantuan projects while I have the free time. I am excited and also daunted. 6/10.

The River - dir. Tsai Ming-liang

I thought Tsai Ming-liang had nothing left that could blow me away, I couldn’t have been more wrong. This might be his master stroke, the absolute bleakest film he’s ever made, certainly the most depressing I’ve ever seen. I’ve never felt so anguished watching a film, no anodyne serenity, just this dull ache that becomes unbearable. There is no relief for poor Hsiao-kang, just agony that won’t leave. Our polluted world planting curses that stay in the body, the environmental filth of the planet becoming an internal hex, incurable; because the filth isn’t healed either.

In Days, Tsai offered the protagonist a cure by way of intimacy. Here, in his earlier, more pessimistic work, even that doesn’t work. All the souls are doomed so none of them can help, but pull each other down like crabs in a bucket. Doctors are equally helpless, chiropractors offer nothing, spiritual masters offer ideas but no respite, the agony is unchanged by acupuncture or massage, burnt sage or a neck brace. It is, with no exaggeration, perhaps the most horrifying movie I have seen because it gets at the inner corruption of the world we’ve created. Like all Tsai films it depicts the urban existence as antihuman, but unlike his other films it offers no alms. This is our world, look at it. 9/10.

The Innocents - dir. Eskil Vogt

Very dumb movie that wants to be taken VERY seriously–many such cases when it comes to European film. 2/10.

Blue Valentine - dir. Derek Cianfrance

I can get better. I promise I can get better. This is me at my worst. This is me when I’m off the brewskis with the boys, baby. This is me when I’m shitfaced off a wake and bake sesh with the squad. This is just how I was raised, baby, I’m better than this. Or I’m worse. But you can tell me how to be better. Tell me how to be better. Tell me how I can change for you. Tell me or I’ll kill myself. I’ll fucking kill myself, baby, just for you. I will climb to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge and plummet sixteen hundred thousand feet into the water. Just for you, my body will shatter into molecules on the concrete surface of the bay. All the blood cells in my body will explode and osmose into a congealed blob of morbidity just for you. Just for you, baby, I’ll scrunch my neck up into a paper ball and toss it in the garbage. Tell me how to be better. I was raised to fight. I will fight all my life. I see a red carpet and I chase it. I claw at the ground. I’m ready to fucking fight. I’ll punch him in the face for you, baby. I want you to make me angry so I can show you how much I love you. I want to kill somebody for you. I want to grab them by the tonsils and rip them to shreds. Grind their bones into the ground. I want to murder for you, baby. I love you so fucking much it makes me angry. I love you so much that I actually fucking hate you. You make me sick. You disgust me. I love you so much that I vomit every time I see you, I just swallow it before I kiss you so you don’t notice. I love you so much. 8/10.

Thirst Street - dir. Nathan Silver

Not terrible, I guess, just hits at a lot of my pet peeves. 4/10.

The Hole - dir. Tsai Ming-liang

Pretty standard Tsai fare, but even standard Tsai is a good filmmaker.

He’s in his musical bag and it works, I guess this just didn’t click with me like his other stuff does.

Regardless, if you like seeing people drown to death (metaphorically and kinda literally) in sadness and yearn for connection in the misery, give this one a spin. 6/10.

The Driller Killer - dir. Abel Ferrara

Kinda dope vibes, but ultimately pretty boring and overwrought. 5/10.

Viridiana - dir. Luis Buñuel

I am going to sound insane, but I fell asleep intermittently during the screening of this film and I still found it beautiful. My girlfriend will HATE this review and rating because she’s gonna say it didn’t count. I’ll take a page out of my favorite book–the book of Kiarostami–and defend my decision to log this. I did see this film even if I was half conscious, and I loved what I saw.

I will choose to give it 3.5 stars for now. I will certainly revisit it in the future, as my school is doing a Buñuel series.

Such an intriguing director. I expected the satire to be more biting but it felt so… passionate? Hot? Not hot in a sexual way, I mean hot as in temperature. There is an artistic warmth to the presentation of the subject that you don’t find in a lot of modern satire. Perhaps the description of Buñuel as a surrealist is more apt than that of a satirist…

Excited for next week’s screening of Exterminating Angel. Looking forward to getting more sleep in the future too lol. 7/10.

Bad Lieutenant - dir. Abel Ferrara

I no longer relate to the struggle of redemption, of which I am proud. There were times in my life when I would’ve felt uncomfortably close to the pernicious cruelty of Harvey Keitel’s character here, not in his deeds but in his attitude.

This is by far the most literal depiction of Ferrara’s classic themes. Religiosity, moral turpitude, the violence that mediates them. I loved it. Fucking animalistic. 8/10.

Possession - dir. Andrzej Żuławski

Straight up how my dreams feel like on melatonin.

Never seen anything like this in my life, lives completely up to the hype.

Can’t wait to watch Silver Globe. 9/10.

Certified Copy - dir. Abbas Kiarostami

Illusory dealings, we spent much time poring over the facts when the truth was ephemeral.

Time changes us, the world changes around us, we change around the world.

Nothing is truly original–this is a beautiful thing.

Belief is more powerful than the material.

Oh, also; Kiarostami the 🐐. 8/10.

L’Avventura - dir. Michelangelo Antonioni

Modernity as imposition, hollow folktales a beautiful parade elegantly draped over the deposed kingdoms of old. Globalism sweeps through Europe, the curtain of empires swished off stage, the princes become investors, the counts become shareholders, the kings become corporate executives. Love becomes sex, women become disposable idols of shallow beauty to be lusted over, men become pigs sniffing in the dirt, the world is stripped of its mystique, the affairs are revealed, the truth has lost its sacrosanctity.

Is it too ridiculous to say Michelangelo Antonioni is operating on a similar level to the cyberpunk movement? Not in the aesthetic sense, obviously, but in a thematic sense, the notion of money and modernity assimilating human consciousness and experience (as well as the untapped beauty of nature) into their grip. His films represent a death-of-humanity that I find is often represented literally in cyberpunk media (like Blade Runner, to name one obvious example). Antonioni displays this rotten husk of the soul less literally than replicants and androids, he instead visualizes it as a painter would, with a terrific final shot that quite perfectly illustrates the contrast between the natural world (the grandiose might of the distant mountain) and the encroachment of monetary dominion (architecture as the future, converting the Earth’s natural resources into profit, idolatry to the modernist gods).

Beyond the simple and readily apparent conflict between modernism and the natural world, Antonioni shows the decrepitude of the soul in the way he sets his actors up–foreground and background become one and the same, focus is not diluted across planes. You’d think this would make these humans feel more connected through clarity but the opposite happens; the uncanny effect of two people split across fields of focus lends to a sense of disconnection. Souls can no longer mingle earnestly, they are trapped in their own atomized realms. 8/10.

La Notte - dir. Michelangelo Antonioni

The feeling of going to a shindig with the girl you think you love knowing that something is amiss between you, an insurmountable glacier of questions and anxieties unanswered. You see her talking to other people and suspect the worst, she sees you closing yourself off and breathes a sigh of relief knowing that the facsimile of love you’ve constructed together isn’t long for the world. The two of you can’t reconcile the fact that what you have is coming to an end. It remains unacknowledged through words but addressed through the body and through the ineffable tangibility of the soul. Telepathy via image and sense, not through reason.

When faced with the facts, the eyes begin to wander. When faced with the morass of hollow hedonism, the loins begin to ache for what the heart cannot detect. 9/10.

L’Eclisse - dir. Michelangelo Antonioni

The bleakest of the trilogy, the most depressing for me at least. Unforgivingly sad and empty, even by Antonioni standards. There truly is nothing that can fill the void.

Yuppie fucks in the garden of Eden.

Or maybe… broken people in limbo.

Your culture has been killed by capital, your only reprieve is direct participation through the chaotic number-crunching of the stock market or to try and pilfer from a different culture through…. blackface. Such a bizarre scene but I think it’s the most blatant, thematically relevant card Antonioni plays the entire trilogy.

The final moments almost pushed me to give this a 9/10 but I’m comfortable with 8 for now.

What a trilogy, what a filmmaker. 8/10.

The Wind Will Carry Us - dir. Abbas Kiarostami

The turn of the millennium, there are urgent tasks to be fulfilled and completed. There are papers to be filed and metals to be refined, shaped into the bridges of tomorrow. But Mr. Engineer is here, in this village, and he must walk its roads. He must fetch milk from the girl in the barn. He must help the young boy with his routine examinations.

To leave the tranquil daze of the village, Mr. Engineer must scale the hill for high ground so that the signal can reach his phone.

Become acquainted with the everyday rhythms of the land, meet somewhere in the middle between modernity and tradition, mediate the balance of the future and the past, look towards tomorrow while reminiscing on yesterday.

I notice many of my favorite films, if not all, are in some ways anachronistic. Or to use another ten dollar word, dichotomous. Perhaps this is because great artists are conflicted people, and their work reflects a form of inner conflict. The work is alive in its lack of resolution, and lives somewhere in the middle. I think, for Abbas Kiarostami, the inner conflict his films were never able to fully resolve was in how to not only capture, but live life. Filmmaking for him is a messy process of observation, and I think we are all the better for his lack of a clear answer. 8/10.

The Monkey - dir. Osgood Perkins

Mostly funny, mostly scary.

Maybe the most optimal comedy/horror I’ve ever seen? Every other take on the genre combo sees diminishing returns on both factors, but this didn’t.

Perkins intrigues me. Kinda seems like he doesn’t give much of a fuck. Which I respect.

Hard to know what to do with this movie.

3 stars, I suppose. 6/10.

I’m Still Here - dir. Walter Salles

History is not a distant past, history is now, it’s always happening.

“Really wish I wasn’t living through a historic moment rn!” mfs need to shut the fuck up. We are always living in a historic moment, billions around the globe including ourselves are caught in a struggle for power.

Not trying to preach, I just get sick of the childish attitude that pervades certain liberal spaces, this refusal to see conflict when it stares you in the face day in and day out.

I met a kid in boarding school once whose family had been killed in the Rwandan genocide.

Fascism is not fantastical, it is real, and if we are not wary of it, it comes for us all.

However–and this is the big however, the big caveat, the small relief–fascism has been outlived by all it tried to exterminate. Resistance prevails, always, eventually. 7/10.

Lady Vengeance - dir. Park Chan-wook

Animals in the mud, blood spilled for the soul to be cleansed, the toll of psychosis on the brain, the desire to be redeemed through ritualistic expressions of retributive brutality.

Upon rewatch, I gotta admit this is Park’s masterpiece. Yes, even better than Oldboy. I’ve been Ladypilled. 9/10.

Mickey 17 - dir. Bong Joon-ho

A generational fall-off.

Bong Joon-ho goes from creating a defining film of the generation to dropping possibly the worst non-franchise movie of the decade. It’s almost impressive how beyond terrible this is. The theater was DEAD silent during every joke. I shit you not, there was not a SINGLE joke that landed. When the movie ended nobody clapped, we all just sorta shuffled outta there; I was scratching my head wondering where I’d get my two and a half hours back. Perhaps they would’ve been better spent performing self-inflicted cock and ball torture.

Robert Pattinson; insufferable. This film certifies to me that he is a hack actor, not one convincing performance to date. Still can’t tell if he was supposed to be mentally disabled or not.

The political overtones? Give me a fucking break lmao. It’s such a profound misunderstanding of fascism that it struck me as genuinely insulting. I felt like I was watching children’s programming because there was such a dearth of observational wit or satire. In the current American political landscape this movie feels like a complete misfire. For starters, the “police” in this film took the side of our plucky underdogs. Not how it would ever play out in real life. Demonstrates a liberal faith in institutions that, again, strikes me as braindead. The cops would never turn on the Trump figure, they would bend the knee.

Why do modern audiences think it is enough merely to gesture towards theme? I have read so many reviews that are basically some variation on “man Bong Joon-ho sure hates capitalism!” and it’s like yeah but so fucking what, that’s like every movie. It’s not enough to gesticulate towards the skeleton of a theme, especially if the execution is this grating.

The sex scenes? Sauceless. The random pivot to and away from Challengers In Space? Stupid. The narration that goes on for the WHOLE FUCKING MOVIE? Murder-inducing.

Terrible, terrible, terrible. Bong Joon-ho needs to be banned from creating films in English because they are, without exception, garbage. 1/10.

Heavy Traffic - dir. Ralph Bakshi

Nothing but love for the outsiders, denizens, and weirdos of the world, it’s all so goddamn unsavory, I love it. The cartoon violence transcends the medium, Bakshi fires on all angles, putting the “graphic” in autobiographical. Completely “problematic” in every modern sense, sure, but I think if you actually think any of this is coming from a place of bigotry or animosity we must not have watched the same movie. This is Jewish through and through, the uncomfortably grim sense of humor, the cheekiness with a sly grin, the whole thing is just fucking laughing at itself and the world. Jubilation via profanity. Total use of cinema as an art form. 7/10.

24 Frames - dir. Abbas Kiarostami

I understand fully the desire to talk about this film through meta lens, cutting through the actual content of the frames to instead discuss the form and digital composition of each shot, how Kiarostami takes to extreme his self-reflexive analysis of cinema as an art form in his last years alive… but I think the content IS meaningful and, honestly, revelatory… maybe even apocalyptic?

To me this feels like a soul adrift. An artist in observation, a world without people. In the most complimentary way possible I feel this is a movie that was made not by people but by forces. There is a bizarre discomfort I experience watching these images move and evolve, and it is in this discomfort that Kiarostami finds comfort. Warmth in the cold. Life out of death. So much death. Oh so much death. Crows circling. Carcasses. Cats killing birds. The stench of death lingers under the serenity of the images. Deer getting shot by hunters, trees felled for lumber. The content of the image speaks volumes; this is a world of people in demise. The eyes are being shut. Life… snuffed out.

Requiem for a Dream - dir. Darren Aronofsky

Deeply insufferable, can 100% see the line between this and The Whale.

Unfortunately, I probably would’ve glazed this as a teenager.

“Drugs are bad” is not a compelling narrative, to be honest.

Bitches be like “WOW A SPLIT SCREEN” but did bitches ever think “hmm. why would anybody ever think this is a good idea?” Same logic as Nickel Boys thinking it’s a great idea to film POV shots. Just terrible, tbh.

Hard to believe the dialogue was written by an adult man and not 15 year old me. 2/10.

Brewster McCloud - dir. Robert Altman

A simple case of a comedy movie not making me laugh at all.

Robert Altman is so bizarre. The most hit or miss director I know, I’ll either love love love his movies or find them unwatchable. 4/10.

In the Lost Lands - dir. Paul W.S. Anderson

How do people hate this LOL? Terrific setpieces, vibes, feels like the dopest video game of all time turned into a film. Fantasy with guns and dystopian landscapes.

Elite peak PWSA vulgar auteurism W sauce. 7/10.

Raise the Red Lantern - dir. Zhang Yimou

Labyrinthine construction to keep souls running like rats in a maze, ornately shaped around women’s bodies as set dressing. Another outfit for the ball. “I am just one of the master’s robes.” The constriction by tradition. The tight symmetrical framing as a beautiful, oppressive burden. A dollhouse full of playthings.

Worth of a woman determined by her flesh and her use. Can she bring me a boy? Can her blood irrigate my soil? Tending the fields with her fingers as a rake.

Perhaps the most literalized depiction of patriarchy. Men as symbols of power and status. Women as assets, toys to be brought out and used when necessary, honored when impregnated, treated like domesticated horses. Completely dehumanizing, bringing a girl into the world instead of a boy is almost as shameful as giving your body to another. What good is a girl?

Voices and flutes reverberate through the maze. Screams do too. 9/10.

The Wrestler - dir. Darren Aronofsky

The kind of movie where a washed up old man past his prime drinks beer and looks at a cork board of all his moments in the sun while sad music plays in the background.

Aronofsky makes the most hacky fucking artistic decisions constantly. The two stars is for Mickey Rourke, who infuses humanity into a film that I find creatively repulsive.

The most influential filmmaker on Gen Z by far–and the results speak for themselves. 4/10.

Ten - dir. Abbas Kiarostami, Mania Akbari

Conceptually this is totally my bag but I found this implacably dull.

I understand Kiarostami’s fixation on filming conversations in cars. They’re intimate environments that force people to talk to fill the void, and nobody can leave until they reach their destination (or at least, the threat of becoming a pedestrian prevents the exit as a remedy to awkwardness). Plus, you don’t have to make eye contact, so it’s easier to spill your guts and get vulnerable. Reminds me of the concept behind the album Hugo by Loyle Carner. Sitting with his estranged dad in a car, the rapper was forced to come to an understanding with him, and to make his father hear his pain.

There is power to the car conversation; it just didn’t click here. 5/10.

The Face of Another - dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara

A shame that Teshigahara’s work outside of Women in the Dunes has really spoken to me. I find it tough to connect to Japanese New Wave in general for some reason, there is a textural sameness across the films of its ilk that rubs me the wrong way. Here, for example, I just don’t find the plethora of themes compelling. People like to buzz about the symbolism and imagery, and sure it’s all pretty cool, but at the end of the day the vibe has to be tangible, the atmosphere has to be thick, and the atmosphere here is just cold. For some, this will work, for me this did not.

You do not need to necessarily understand what is being “said” by the art to connect to it; take Heroic Purgatory for example, by one of Teshigahara’s contemporaries, Yoshida. No fucking clue what was going on there, it leans far more into the avant-garde than Teshigahara ever did (not a criticism just a statement) and yet I found it entrancing.

Alllllll that preamble to say the simple, sad truth of it; I simply did not fuck with this one THAT much. 6/10.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence - dir. Nagisa Ōshima

Systems of violence slot people into roles. I don’t think it’s unintentional that the conflict/romance at the center of it all is two soldiers played by androgynous musicians. Driven to war by nationalistic whims, who’s to say they couldn’t have been friends in another life? Or lovers? It’s the systems of violence that get in the way, that tear at the fabric of humanity.

The older I get, the more calcified my view of society becomes; an evil that exists to control individuals for the benefit of the rulers. It goes beyond the dynamic between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, it is rooted in the very tradition of structure and order. Humans were not meant to be shepherded into tightly closed squares, they were meant to adventure, to love, and to create. Civilization is not our natural state. It only gets in the way. 9/10.

The Man Without a Map - dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara

Hiroshi Teshigahara edges me for the entire movie. There are certain sequences here that make my pretentious malaise-lovin self swoon, but they are few and far between, and the journeys there are laden with endless, directionless yammering.

Kind of a coincidence that I watched this so soon after Antonioni’s alienation trilogy, as it would be a fitting neo-noir flavored addendum. 6/10.

Da 5 Bloods - dir. Spike Lee

Sincere imperfection defines Spike Lee’s oeuvre, restlessness through form. A film is not necessarily just a story to Lee but a collage of ideas. When watching his work I feel there is a mosaic quality to it, a mural of people, ideas, historical documents, and memories. There is a narrative but it can and will be thrown to the wind at the behest of the form, like when Lee peppers dialogue with photos of figures past, Aretha Franklin and MLK.

This is the most experimental work from Lee to date, far beyond even Bamboozled, which played with form within the bounds of its own template. It established a digital pattern from the beginning and ran with it, where Da 5 Bloods introduces new rules as the film demands it. If Paul is thinking about a Marvin Gaye song, it’ll come on non-diegetically but be sung in Paul’s voice.

I find all of this equal parts disorienting and exciting, there is a real freedom to the work that exists in few other filmmakers, and it is the reason I have come to fall in love with Spike Lee’s work. Simply, there is nobody doing it like him. 7/10.

Cam - dir. Daniel Goldhaber

I feel like the ending sorta blew, I wish more modern horror had ambition because there are a lot of cool places to go with the premise that the movie does not capitalize on. I get it, it’s all very metaphorical and shit but sometimes it seems filmmakers forget that part of the fun of watching genre fare is to see cool fucking shit happening. At least something like The Substance has absolutely insane body horror setpieces; Cam tries to do something similar but obviously doesn’t have the budget to go as far, which is fair, which is why I think the ending should’ve been more conceptual and sci-fi than gory. I absolutely adore the premise for this film, and it was a pretty fun time all things considered (even if the dialogue was cringe, but I can forgive that), just nothing too spectacular. 5/10.

Liquid Sky - dir. Slava Tsukerman

Imagine a Gregg Araki movie.

Now imagine it’s really annoying.

Still, gotta respect the costumes and sets. Impressive stuff on a low budget. 5/10.

Pitfall - dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara

Sadly, very very boring, despite the promise it shows early on.

Teshigahara overcomplicates a good, simple premise. Too much plot, not enough vibes.

Also since it’s an art house film you gotta make sure to get your animal cruelty scenes in there somewhere right??? 5/10.

The Traveler - dir. Abbas Kiarostami

I called Where Is The Friend’s House “400 Blows Iran Edition” but I think The Traveler is more befitting of this title.

A VERY simple story in the hands of a master. It doesn’t have the richness of his later works, though.

Mostly, what I got from it was a lot of filmmaking inspiration. 7/10.

Take Out - dir. Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou

Criterion Challenge

Respectable filmmaking, certainly. You have to applaud the simplicity of the story, and really it’s impossible to go wrong with the “marginalized person has the worst day of all time” formula.

It’s also just not particularly interesting to me. I empathize, but I wanted more, pretty simply. Maybe a resolution, maybe some escalation. Sean Baker tries to do a bit of that with the mugging scene, just came off as hackneyed. Not to be too ‘woke’ or anything but it sorta pisses me off that nobody was nice to this guy except one old white dude who gave him a fat tip. I understand that there is a lot of racial tension in NYC, yet it struck me as sorta odd.

I am sadly cooling off on Baker as a director. I respect his work ethic more than I actually like him. His social issue of the minute subject matter smells fraudulent to me. He seems like a genuinely good dude, but none of my favorite directors are “issues” directors, they are artists first. 6/10.

Prince of Broadway - dir. Sean Baker

Mid as balls but if you are a hipster who loves handheld shots of poor people because it feels “raw” and “authentic” you’ll love it. 4/10.

Simple Men - dir. Hal Hartley

Anguished, pat expressions, they’re insufficient. I fumble with my mouth full of honey and thumbtacks to explain myself and to receive the words of others; it’s insufficient. The sentences drip down my chin like when I was a baby and my mother had to wipe the oatmeal off my flowering cleft. Fool. That’s probably what I look like when I fall in love.

The tough guy act. It’s all too familiar. We all go through that phase. Insufficiency will bring it outta you. The desire to be perceived as opaque. The desire to be imperceptible as a human, the desire to be seen as a mystery. I accepted recently I could never be “cool.” Not in the way we were raised to understand “cool.” I can’t be mysterious, my heart’s always bare for all to see, and is there anything less fucking cool than that?

The basic message I can take from this film is that people are mysterious. Enigmatic beings who bleed clues as they toddle towards their parents. Innocent, dangerous, sad. 8/10.

All the Vermeers in New York - dir. Jon Jost

Too often I describe a film as a “whisper”. I have my tropes, this I will not deny. Instead of describing another Jon Jost film as a “whisper” I will dub it “fleeting.”

Watching this made me realize what my artistic principles are. What I stand for. I wrote some of them down while watching the movie so I would not forget, because I think that despite Jost’s humbler aspirations he and I would probably agree on what we find profound in the cinema. Or maybe I am projecting. I don’t think he will ever read this review, so I don’t care.

The single most important thing a movie can do, in my mind, is bring you into a world. I would be willing to stake my life on this claim. I think it is beyond imperative that a movie invokes something in you that cannot be gleaned simply from reading the screenplay or watching actors perform. For me to fall in love with a film it MUST be environmental and yet specific. Specific in its focus. Specific temporally. Specific in its setting.

Jon Jost is the kind of filmmaker who is all about keeping things narrowed down to pinpointed places in time. Vermeers is not a story of people in New York so much as it is a story of New York as a place, time, and culture. A window into a different decade. The economic boom. The yuppie influx. The bohemian bullshit.

I am indebted to Jon Jost. Someday when my voice is bigger I will make certain everybody knows just how brilliant this understated, underviewed filmmaker is. 8/10.

Black Bag - dir. Steven Soderbergh

Nobody does a 3 star movie better than Steven Soderbergh. The king of middlebrow.

I never hate his movies, but I never remember them either.

Cute! 6/10.

A Touch of Zen - dir. King Hu

Paradoxical negotiation betwixt light and dark. That may be what film is, in essence, a combative flurry of shadow and sunbeam, wresting for control of the lens as the prisms refract the photons back into our eyes. So then, zen, as it seems, is the mediation of the two, to hold both light and shadow in one’s palms–to be the darkened silhouette against the setting sun.

I’ve often said cinema is dream construction, and dreams are heavily tied to myths, so I think by extent film can be a vehicle for mythmaking as well. Wuxia is myth, and like all myths it contains myriad contradictions. But in the space of the contradiction there is beauty, in admission of the myth lies the truth, which cannot be found in either light or dark, only in the battle they wage, eternally.

Snuffing out the light, illuminating the dark, creating the myth to keep the war everlasting. 8/10.

The Last Boy Scout - dir. Tony Scott

Sometimes a movie just lives and dies by its quips. And I can’t lie, I enjoy a good quip and a good setpiece. The chopper death was nuts.

Sadly, did not have enough of the deep fried Tony Scott vibe. Obviously, more of a Shane Black movie than a Scott movie. That’s the way it goes. 6/10.

Everybody Wants Some!! - dir. Richard Linklater

I would never wanna hang out with these guys, but at a distance it’s fun enough. I get to vicariously live out a better version of college than what I’m currently experiencing, and you gotta appreciate Linklater for that.

I’m kinda surprised people love this one as much as they do because the vibes are 100% fratbro.

More than anything, like all of Linklater’s work, this makes me wish I was there. Gen X nostalgia porn. It works! 6/10.

Pickpocket - dir. Robert Bresson

I find this film VERY fascinating on a rewatch because after having watched two of Bresson’s later works I feel like there is a different philosophy operating in the background of the film–maybe more of a submission to the whims of fate? Maybe admittance that God exists in coincidences?

Michel hones his reflexes playing pinball, which is a game almost entirely determined by luck, or at least a cascading series of unforeseeable consequences. A robot could predict the direction of the ball but a human could not, and so from our perspective it all seems a bit random. The Godless world seems spiritual in these minutiae.

Rewatching this made me realize that I sorta had Bresson wrong. I pegged him for a nihilist who believed in systemic cause-and-effect as opposed to free will, but I believe the ending of this puts that idea to rest–at least from a miserablist sense. Fate draws Jeanne and Michel together, yes, but the romance of flatly drawn actions and glances suggests to me a universe revolving around willpower and love.

It was also this time that I found an appreciation for the pickpocketing sequences as well. Watching it on a big screen with a fairly packed audience was a joy because everybody was delighted to see Michel rob people in creative ways. Bresson gives us highly deliberate setpieces in miniature scale. It’s actually so fucking compelling in his restrained presentation. 7/10.

The Exterminating Angel - dir. Luis Buñuel

Conceptually strong but that’s all… just a concept. A script. Some cool ideas that work for a pitch.

Not one moment where I was like “damn. This is a movie.”

Felt more like a play. Not a compliment.

Again, the concept is REALLY tight. A lot to be gleaned and discussed (mostly obvious so I don’t see the point in being the ten trillionth guy to be like “Buñuel is satirizing upper class social codes”), hence the 3 stars.

This movie has influenced a bunch of stuff and none of it has been good. Kinda reminds me of contemporary “political” cinema. Not a compliment.

Viridiana was a relief because I feared Buñuel was in the same lane as a guy like Yorgos Lanthimos. Exterminating Angel assures me that my relief was misplaced. But let’s hope his other stuff is better. 6/10.

Brokeback Mountain - dir. Ang Lee

Any film with over 100k views has the worst review section of all time but this one really takes the cake. Some of the most aggressively unfunny shit with upwards of 10k likes. I don’t usually care too much but WOW! it is not surprising art is being replaced by AI!

As for this film–it was very good. A bit too oscar-vibes for me, but good. I have nothing to say about it that hasn’t been said, but I do like the extremity of masculine repression on display. You get a sense of the burden that is the performance of malehood in this film like few others. 7/10.

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In - dir. Soi Cheang

I thought about it for a good minute. I know scores are arbitrary bullshit ultimately but they mean something to me, as silly as it may be. Usually when I give out a 5 star rating something in me is so utterly compelled by the art that I feel like a new person in some way. Or a piece so thoroughly defines my personhood that I cannot help but lavish upon it the most extravagant of praises.

I do not believe that the score reflects any sense of “perfection”, whatever that may entail. I have “criticisms” of this film (not that they would ever matter or affect my experience), but the sheer love I feel for the craft here overwhelms any possibility of nitpickery. I truly felt rebirthed by this film, so much fucking love and culture and time and history. The fighting, the brotherhood, the LORE. Dare to see the beauty in the struggle. Dare to find comfort in your companions in a world defined by violence. Dare to see the joy in the commiseration between battle.

I’m just flabbergasted by the craft. The action is so fucking compelling. I actually said, out loud, a few times during the movie: “holy shit that’s crazy.” But it’s really not the fight choreography that makes me love this movie so, although it certainly helps. No, it’s the richness of the setting and the earnest of the friendships. Like always, my artistic philosophy aligns with the denseness of the environment, the lived-in quality of the city and how elaborately it is designed. So it’s not just some of the best staged combat I’ve ever seen but a miracle of production design as well.

At its core this is a film about a Hong Kong man returning to a home he never knew, and learning to love it in all its grime and glory. And part of me relates to that. I moved around so much growing up that I have several hometowns, and returning to any one of them feels a bit like seeing a friend you haven’t talked to in a good minute; strange, but rewarding.

My girlfriend was telling me a year ago how much she wanted to see a film about Kowloon. I still cannot believe it was a real place that existed. Kowloon Walled City may have been taken down but films like this keep a distant past alive through the raw power of the medium. 10/10.

Street Without End - dir. Mikio Naruse

Bleak but empowering subversion of the Cinderella tale; shows how the upper class are stringently opposed to opening their gates to the poor and if they do (IF!) the poor will only be ostracized. Could be viewed as a finger wag to the notion that the rich would ever allow social equality–any threat to the bourgeoisie’s status must come externally, it won’t be permitted from within.

I said bleak… but empowering and I say empowering because at the end Sugiko stands up for herself. This is not Last Chrysanthemum where the woman is destroyed by the social structure but rather the story of a working class woman who rejects the temptation of ascension within the social hierarchy. She learns to value herself.

I read a few reviews here and I think I would’ve enjoyed this movie more having seen some of Naruse’s previous work. This was my introduction to silent era Japanese cinema and I got a lot out of it. Definitely would like to see more.

The Red Shoes - dir. Powell & Pressburger

Need to gobble up every Technicolor film ever. Every shot here is breathtaking. It really feels like a cinematic spectacle. Unbelievable that it came out THREE YEARS after the end of World War 2. It just seems unfathomably early to me.

What this film captures (and what I think Whiplash attempted to, but failed at) was the material conflict between love of art and societal demands, the decision to devote yourself to the craft which you love so dearly versus the decision to play placid housewife.

I think Craster is a gigantic scumbag btw, despised him. Selfish prick. 7/10.

Red Desert - dir. Michelangelo Antonioni

Squalid plains with gas leaking out of the grass. Why, the child asks–and his mother has no answer. Toxins fill the air, the color that Antonioni brings to the canvas can’t be appreciated for the smog that chokes up the picture, the scum that fills the ponds and rivers. Is it any wonder she is driven insane? The machines that used to be greased for war now incur new genres of violence on their surroundings, ceaseless noise that drives into the eardrums of all present and turning their brains into mush.

The land is being transmutated into human creation but it is recognizably inhuman. The machines we build dwarf us and turn us into meat, we keep them chugging along, learning to live with the poison. The rocks that used to comfort us now sing discordant melodies of pain–they are not rocks, they are living organisms with flesh and blood and we are cursed by their wails.

The insanity Antonioni depicts is not scientific or psychological, it is a neuroticism that originates from a choked atmosphere of emptiness and density in one–hollow ethics, smoke-filled molecules. I think there is a lack of translucence to the relationships as well–you cannot view the faces through the fog, you cannot read the intentions of your son as he insists his legs no longer work. The delectable mystery that comes inherent to life has been swapped with a dreadful unknowing, where nothing about the world order makes any sense to you.

It is, without a doubt to me at least, the most salient, merciless film I have seen by Antonioni. Unspeakable disquietude. 9/10.

The Seventh Seal - dir. Ingmar Bergman

Feels more like an adaption of a tarot card reading than the precise psychological tale Bergman is known for–which is not altogether a negative thing, just a high literalization of its concept I found interesting. Archetypes versus characters.

The most I gleaned from this movie is the artists’ ability to view beyond the pale. The actor guy was a clear stand-in for Bergman, the only one able to see the game of chess being played.

I liked it. I can’t really say I loved it or see Ingmar Bergman’s genius, but it was a solid art house picture. 7/10.

Come and See - dir. Elem Klimov

I had a hard time not comparing this to Larisa Shepitko’s “The Ascent” as I was watching, because Klimov and Shepitko were a couple and both of their most seminal works dealt with World War 2 from distinctly Soviet perspectives. I think, for me, the morally thorny depiction of Shepitko works more.

Come and See is perhaps the most brutal of any war film where the central theme is “war is brutal” so for that I must give it flowers. 8/10.

Tony Takitani - dir. Jun Ichikawa

So she did. The things that made me tear up with joy about her were the very things that infuriated me. And the things remain, they remain in the wardrobe. They remain in the bones. They remain etched into the mind, until they don’t. I wonder when I will truly, completely, and finally forget her face.

On the ephemerality of life. On the love, so gentle, so fragile, kept scaffolded by a hair. A coat, even. A dress, a pair of shoes. When it all evaporates, who is left holding the bag? Who can deny the crispness of the wind on a perfect body? Natural, senselessly wonderful.

A sip of bitter tea on a cold day. This film is a cinematic miracle, and it found me when I needed it. 10/10.

The Real Blonde - dir. Tom DiCillo

A deeply unpleasant movie with not nearly enough laughs per hour to justify me finishing it. ugh. One of those movies that makes life just a bit more miserable and doesn’t even have the decency to be stylish or cinematic doing it. 3/10.

Conan the Barbarian - dir. John Milius

Witness a world guided by blood and steel, gods and magic. Warriors fighting for their birthright. Witches with demonic powers. A world where the far west is an unexplored horizon of adventure, where a slave can become a king.

Mythopoetic cinema.

If you don’t see this and feel SOMETHING, you probably don’t really love movies.

Repo Man - dir. Alex Cox

I feel like PTA has been chasing this movie his entire career, and he came close with Inherent Vice by the grace of Thomas Pynchon (I read the book, btw, even better). Just an uncanny picture of the 80’s in surrealist form, full of conspiracy and chaos. I’m really a sucker for these kinds of movies, it just lacked a bit of the romantic sauce I yearn for when it comes to the whole grand dadaist conspiracy narrative. The ending was perfect, the road there is laced with some confusion and bullshit though.

This is the epitome of a fun movie. Great visuals, funny script, dope ideas. Literally what more do you want. 7/10.

The Graduate - dir. Mike Nichols

Breaking free of the old guard, taking life into your own hands, expressed alienation without articulation. A deeply youthful movie, sympathetic of the aimless kids frantically fumbling their way through early adulthood. A perfect film. 9/10.

Blissfully Yours - dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Doesn’t have the same level of skill as Weerasethakul’s other work. It is still a sweet little slow film, though. 6/10

Carol - dir. Todd Haynes

When I watch a more deliberate romance–usually the case with queer love stories, because of the inherent repression that comes with existing in hostile spaces–I find that I have difficulty connecting to the minute expressions of tenderness until they are stripped away. Such was the case up until the last few minutes, when the FIRST few minutes are recontextualized with the weight of Carol/Therese’s history. All of a sudden I felt this punch in my gut, this overwhelming feeling of regret and missed connection.

Todd Haynes’ staging in the last scene is so strong. Rooney Mara has to navigate through physical tables and spaces to reach eyeshot of Cate Blanchett, she has to waltz past through numerous social norms to catch a GLIMPSE of her love.

So much of the film features highly intentional physicality–Abby trying to close the door while Harge keeps it open by force, Therese first going for the second twin bed until Carol assures her she can sleep in the same bed as her. Every motion is placed in a space and through this you can feel Haynes’ classical filmmaker brain working, this is 100% without a doubt the same guy who created Far From Heaven, because his movies have that craftsman’s intentionality when it comes to placing actors in a room.

To some it seems theatrical more than cinematic to frame actors as parts of a larger moving piece, but it used to be the standard to block your actors well. Now it’s a rare treat to even see mise-en-scene. 7/10.

Another Round - dir. Thomas Vinterberg

The common threads I picked up on between Another Round and The Hunt are, more tangibly, the intoxication of the herd (or; how the tribe is still alive in well in a sharply modern context), and less tangibly the psychological experience of maleness.

Here we have alienation in middle age, just like in The Hunt, and the reliance on tribal activities to expunge the inner void of the male psyche. In The Hunt it was literally going out for a hunt (you don’t get much more tribal than that), here it’s partying.

I think Another Round is the other side of the coin. The Hunt shows us the perils of the shoe being on the other foot; what it’s like to be ostracized from the tribe. This movie shows the tantalization of being part of the tribe. The pull is so strong that even in the end, when Martin has the chance to repair his marriage he chooses instead to follow the herd. 7/10.

The Friends - dir. Shinji Sōmai

Found this pretty boring. Might try rewatching another time, perhaps when I go back and visit the rest of Somai’s work. 5/10.

The Assassin - dir. Hou Hsiao-hsen

On the unbearable weight of history, buckling ‘til broken. Ancestors shaping the mud that dried into the clay that became you, breathing your first breath and honing your fists into knives to slice.

Dynasties on dynasties, only spaces. Wind rustling the leaves, probably escaped the lungs of the dead to reach your teary-eyed gaze.

So this is what Hou did. This is the big thesis. I see the unification of all of his varied subject matter refracted into this film–a core idea of weight, space, and time converging on the people that are so lucky (or unlucky) as to experience them. Which is all of us. That’s why his camera has always lingered. That’s why there’s never just one face or one person. That’s why the aspect ratio closes in on our characters from both sides.

The space offers freedom, but there is also a closed loop that is the result of trillions of microdecisions. Which themselves are products of the past. History is so unbelievably heavy, you can’t even comprehend it, let alone atone for it.

Except, miraculously, Yinniang escapes. The river is diverged. The waters flow elsewhere. Her soul is liberated from the old path. 9/10.

Sada - dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi

Very playful and cutesy but feels a little too… I don’t know… quirky? Which I recognize is an asinine criticism to make of a Nobuhiko Obayashi film, but I just didn’t dig this one like I do his other stuff. 6/10.

The Cranes Are Flying - dir. Mikhail Kalatozov

Related deeply to this movie because if I went to war knowing my Russian baddie girlfriend didn’t understand the full meaning of my birthday gift to her, I would also simply fucking die in a recon mission.

A lot of camerawork that illuminates the ingenious of early filmmakers that we just don’t really acknowledge. I could easily see this being produced today. The way the camera moves through the crowds is just fucking crazy tbh. 7/10.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul - dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Fassbinder is such a unique filmmaker because his films (at least the two that I have seen) plunge the depths of human melodrama but remain cold and distant from the characters. He is like Bresson if Bresson allowed his subjects to scream and cry more.

This is a film about how the spirit of Adolf Hitler never left Germany, his particles just got disintegrated among the population. Nazism was only diluted, never defeated, it only became less concentrated but still present in principle.

But it is also a film about the triumph of love between two people, and I think the ending is fucking beautiful. Mistakes were made, obstacles were encountered, the world is cold, but when we are together, let’s try to be kind to one another. 7/10.

Fort Apache - dir. John Ford

How the west was won; imposition and death. Displacement. Spatial arrest. We just imported European values onto the Great Plains when the goal was, in theory, to separate. But the project was never noble, perhaps. In theory, it was. In theory, it was all for the advancement of freedom. In reality, the project was not going to come away with bloodless palms or a trigger-happy tremble in its step.

Wagon Master was oh so romantic. Indians and pioneering mormons together, allied against the greedy bandits. It’s a pretty picture, but it’s bullshit.

Fort Apache is the mythmaking. The irony of a decorated war hero as nothing more than a sniveling European chauvinist with a medal for a heart and a disregard for the immigrants and the natives alike. The Irish accents make his lip twitch, I’m sure.

What did they die for? What did they kill for?

New land for the imperials?

Not very noble. 8/10.

Honkytonk Man - dir. Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood is my filmmaking idol. An actor who seized the reins of his own career to become a prolific director with an easygoing charisma and artistic process. He is exactly who I wish to be when I am older.

Suffice to say, this is a difficult film not to love. Depression era America, the dream disintegrating into dust across the plains. The old dreams were good dreams. They didn’t work out but I’m glad we had them. 7/10.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai - dir. Jim Jarmusch

Old world honor codes heaving their last breath.

A terrific vibe of a movie. Optimal Jarmusch–weirdly his most “realistic” film.

I like that it subverts genre without forgoing its thrills. 8/10.

Come Here - dir. Anocha Suwichakornpong

I mean, it COULD be about aging. It could be about the passage of time more generally. It could be about a lot of things.

Gentle observation and pacing will always be my kryptonite. I think this is my platonic ideal of a film. Barely just an hour and full of contemplative artistry and rich sound design. Definitely wanna come back to this when I film this one script I’m working on… Lots of inspiration for how to capture the essence of a river.

It just hit me that the river is a bit like a train.

Certainly not a coincidence, but I don’t think Suwichakornpong is the type of filmmaker who requires hard answers. Sometimes it’s better not to have it right. 7/10.

A Summer at Grandpa’s - dir. Hou Hsiao-hsen

Truth be told, I don’t know how much patience I have in me left for the coming-of-age tale. I feel like I’ve seen every possible variant and at a certain point they all start to blend together. I will never hate watching these kinds of movies, but I will almost always leave them sorta shrugging my shoulders.

You’ve gotta be doing something really unique to get me interested. Gummo, for example. 6/10.

Manila in the Claws of Light - dir. Lino Brocka

The most valuable commodity we have is our bodies. When those get chewed up in the meat machine of capitalism you know you’ve reached your nadir. Sell your time, sell your body, sell your soul.

This film is beyond bleak.

Sacrifice everything for the slimmest bit of hope. Leave it all behind for the chance to escape poverty. We are sold the future and the price is our present. A carrot forever on a stick. 9/10.

Je, Tu, Il, Elle - dir. Chantal Akerman

I genuinely have a hard time seeing how this is boring. I watched this with one of my best friends who is totally uninitiated with slow cinema and they were engaged, possibly even more than me.

Once you settle into the wavelength Akerman is creating, it is quite easy to get absorbed in the cinematic portraiture of emptiness.

I think even the final passionate sex scene is comparable to a heavy helping of sugar. It is a temporary high that is quickly lost. 7/10.

Jerry Maguire - dir. Cameron Crowe

Beyond bizarre. Feels like it was written by an alien lmao. Some of these scenes feel like they come straight out of a Dhar Mann video. Really this whole premise is Dhar Mann-esque. 5/10.

On the Silver Globe - dir. Andrzej Żuławski

Philosophy getting screamed at you for 3 hours. Cute at first but at a certain point I was praying the characters would shut the fuck up. 4/10.

Claire’s Camera - dir. Hong Sang-soo

Language barriers for truly honest communication. The scenes where the Korean characters talk to each other are cynical in tone; the scenes where the Korean characters speak to Huppert are light and sincere. It felt almost childlike in a sense, because everybody is speaking a language they are unfamiliar with, so they are forced to be upfront. Awkward, but kind. That’s how I would describe this movie as a whole. Awkward, but kind. 7/10.

A Man Escaped - dir. Robert Bresson

Cinema of necessity, rations cut to exactitudes, grimly diced into prisoners’ portions. Scenes of execution, no vibes, fuck vibes, the vibe is survival and escape. Honing the mind on one goal and one goal alone, the precarity of the human spirit in balance. Here’s the process, here’s the solution, here’s the execution. 8/10.