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Over relying on a Trent reznor Atticus Ross soundtrack and silly camera gimmicks to distract you from the fact that my movie is kinda nothing and falls apart at the seams in the back half

The intro to the restored copy of the film uses very strange, even derogatory language towards the conditions of the people in Oman before the people’s revolution... “archaic”, “primitive”, “the Stone Age.” It almost feels penned by a liberal. Luckily the film itself isn’t marred by this language, instead asserting a revolutionary ideal more in line with the reality that contextualizes the situation: underdevelopment, impoverishment, purposeful manipulation of tribalism, etc. If Srour wrote this intro, as I’m assuming she did given the fact that she takes primary credit for the restoration, I feel like someone needs to tell her to read some Walter Rodney or something to remind herself of what she was filming here.

Anyways, loved this

John Woo giving us so many versions of chow yun-fat experiencing homosexual angst… we have to say thank you

An effective propaganda film full of truly staggering imagery. The rubble of bombed-out Hanoi and walls riddled with bullet holes, of course, but the images not dealing with violence too. The camera flows in this beautiful way through trees and sunlight and shadows in a way that reminded me of films like Ivan’s Childhood or The Cranes are Flying. I too want to hold a baby in my arms and tell him how much I hate Richard Nixon.

It’s mostly straightforward but there’s some really interesting moments here, like the arrested American soldiers being yelled at as they’re walked down the street. Considering when this was made, I wonder where they found the actors for that.

It’s fun to watch John mills try to play this hard boiled, wife beating, serious giallo/poliziotteschi detective and not sell it very well, but overall the film commits the usual crime of being not very interesting or compelling.

Every relationship is so amorphous, liquid, hazily defined. It makes for an almost nothing-movie that would be good enough on its own in how easily watchable it is. Until finally the morning fog clears and the sun shines into the frame and, it’s all clarified into something real. I’m starting to really get what Guiraudie is putting down.

Coproduit par Albert SERRA 🩷

Catastrophic fatalism painted with such meticulous attention. Gertrud’s hopelessness and resignation are almost contagious.

The lighting and shadows, the camera positions and the inability for characters to look anywhere other than somewhere distant off screen, behind the camera. Shots are so striking I found myself going “whoa” at a shot of a mirror without really being able to explain why.

Yeah it’s actually pretty charming. Could do with less misogyny- you know it’s a Hollywood film from the 50s when your harmlessly macho male character’s “quirk” is ohh he’s just a bit of a sex pest, don’t leave him alone with an unconscious 18 year old girl hehe! Yet it’s still one of the better Christmas movies I’ve seen. Peter Ustinov is so cute in this

Love the emo boys and their new bestie Angeli so much. Fun to see how similar high school is across cultures alongside the specificities mixed in (circumcision as a specific coming into manhood marker that becomes a point of bullying, but teenage boys will find any reason to call another boy a fag regardless). The soundtrack is perfect

So much fun in the first half (minus the two completely unnecessary slurs) it’s like this fun sexy not actually that repressed threesome. Liza is so good and the two men just try to keep up. Then it gets really boring and you have to wonder why someone like Stanley donen signed on to direct a movie with this many water-based action sequences

Wenders’ western, othering, exoticizing gaze is used very interestingly here. (the “komorebi” definition at the very end after the credits, lol…) When this kind of orientalist gaze is used it’s usually being like “look how cool the simple things are in [insert East Asian country]!” but that is also the kind of point Wenders wants to make here, small joys in a small life and all that. So it’s an interesting play between those two ideas.

The problem is the film kind of falls apart towards the end. This tonal whiplash of “actually sometimes life isn’t okay because [undefined family trauma] and cancer”. And this shift reveals how shallow everything leading up to that has been. I put this off for so long because the obvious music choice in the trailer seemed so trite, and the needle drops here are pretty similarly used. The last song… I mean come on. Others have pointed out this kind of fantasized vision of a working class life, and like yeah… oh your coworker quit last minute? Don’t worry you only have to work one (1) double shift before the company magically finds a perfect replacement employee the day after. And all the people you interact with on the job are nice and friendly and treat you with respect. It feels like such a cynical way to look at what the film is trying to do but when the film is honestly so empty…. Maybe the more negative emotions that work their way into the back half is supposed to nod towards the fallacy of the romanticization but if that’s the case it’s all done so clumsily I’m not quite convinced anyway.

Great lead performance, interesting textures in the dreams, not much else. Kind of the antithesis of Jeanne dielman in a way. I have no problems with a film where nothing happens, but there has to be some kind of driver behind the nothing. some reason, no matter how simple, for the film to be made and worth watching

Free Mahmoud Khalil, free Rumesya Öztürk, free Mohsen Mahdawi, free Palestine. Never forget how ugly the American police force is, no matter the party of the sitting president

Sorry I kinda loved this a lot. It wouldn’t know subtlety from a bag of bricks and it borders on repetitive in hammering in what it has to say (and what it has to say probably isn’t deep enough to warrant a feature length film), but it’s actually so silly and unserious that it works for me. Susannah York and Rod Steiger look like they’re having a lot of fun. William Hickey’s performance is really hit or miss but when it hits he’s a blast. It’s very crude and obnoxious but it kind of adds to the charm, especially when watching such a shitty copy since this seems to have been lost to time in obscurity. It almost feels like im just watching rod Steiger and Susannah York read lines for a special feature on a film that hasn’t actually been made yet. It makes so much sense that this was directed by the guy who directed Valley of the dolls

Hollywood could learn a thing or three from this. The people don’t want marvel movie 3846261619 with celebrity cameos and one-liners. We want sweeping historical fantasy epics with fox demons and intricate costuming and men in strangely erotic rope bondage I mean prisoner restraints

In a crazy twist this ended up being way more racist towards Filipino people than Japanese. Franco Nero sluts it up deliciously

I don’t get how someone can go from making something like this to drivel like the wind rises

Save me minor gay movies. Minor gay movies save me

“Once the anger goes, it seems like the only thing that’s left is the sadness… and just being tired. So I think I would like to just get away and not , not think about it for a while. Just rest… and heal. I’m with good people.”

Never underestimate the depths of depravity, idiocy, desperation, violence, ugliness, … that the white man will sink to when an expansion to his golf course is being threatened. It sounds like a cartoonish exaggeration to say it, that it was all over a fucking golf course, and yet it was. An expansion of an existing one at that. 

So much respect to the Mohawk people and their Warriors.

I tried writing long form for the first time in a while after feeling the need to express my thoughts about this film at greater length. Not sure if I'll use substack long term or if this was a one-time thing I had to get off my chest

Layers of trauma collapsing onto each other in a despairing isolation. Surrounded by unaddressed wounds but their inexpressible nature can only be depicted through twisted dreamlike images, or a cheerful song about all problems being easily solvable through god. Really interesting use of extreme artifice and detachment

Mostly cool but the tonal shifts between outright horror and exaggeration/drawn out scenes leaning into goofy territory don’t quite work for me. Also knowing about the tree rape scene somehow still did not prepare me for the tree rape scene. Just way more male-centric than I usually like in my horror movies.

The camera, lighting, and fog machine work overtime in this one. I’m shocked more of this visual style hasn’t been ripped off in modern horror, but maybe it’s just something about the way that the backlit fog interacts with the film grain (and stock) that just can’t be replicated on modern equipment, let alone digital. The POV camera whenever it’s circling the house and looking into windows is another highlight. Also the claymation at the end is crazy.

“It was a beautiful idea. Too beautiful to happen.”

The cinematic universe of Jean Gabin in movies depicting fatalistic, tragic love between men continues to expand. The dangers of being a man in love with another man in a 1930s movie; doomed to fall victim to having that desire misplaced onto another woman and creating competition where there should be romance. One must leave, or else one must kill the other. Failing that, some other plot device must intervene: deported for unspecified political activism in Spain, or falling off a second-story roof to your death. All you can do is savor the moments while they last.

So many gorgeous images in this one-Julien Duvivier with cinematographers Marc Fossard and Jules Kruger exploit the picturesque river setting beautifully. But the shadows too, enhancing the (albeit overwrought and frequently misogynistic) downbeat moments in an almost impressionistic way at times.

Watched on Saturday March 22, 2025.

Movies like this don’t come around very often

Watched on Sunday March 16, 2025.

The children yearn for technicolor. Cynthia SINGS but the movie and mixing kind of beat her into this muffled middle ground so she doesn’t turn it into a one woman show, resulting in her performance being left hollow and unimpactful. Ariana is funny. Michelle yeoh stuns in every outfit change. The rest is just forgettable

Great movie to watch while jet lagged, sick, coming down from an emotionally taxing episode, and altogether slightly—maybe more than slightly, but I’m feeling generous with myself today—delirious. Though I didn’t fully fall in love with the film (and maybe my state contributed to that), I understand her. I also finished reading Sharp Objects today, and I’m reminded of Amma:

“Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you’re really doing it to them. Know what I mean? If someone wants to do fucked-up things to you, and you let them, you’re making them more fucked up. Then you have the control. As long as you don’t go crazy.”

Lise had already gone crazy, but she still had control.

Watched on Thursday February 27, 2025.

Watched on Saturday February 22, 2025.

Watched on Saturday February 22, 2025.

Watched on Saturday February 22, 2025.

Watched on Saturday February 22, 2025.

Watched on Saturday February 22, 2025.

Really unexpectedly intense, almost violent, even before the dead man. Where typically one can speak of film in of the “the camera follows” “the camera lingers”, etc, here it feels like the physical film and sound tape are the providing the thrust of the film and the camera is almost as ive as the handful of people that appear on screen. Toes the line between narrative film and “pure” experiment, the former being an impossible label given, well, everything about it, where the latter label might balk at the concept of characters, dialogue, and the most necessarily fictional/narrative of them all: death.

Such an exceedingly silly movie, love it

- Jacqueline wells being carried around for half of her screentime, I don’t know if she ever moves any amount of physical distance on screen without being manhandled

- Bela Lugosi killing a cat with a thrown knife before anything weird even starts going down and everyone acting like he’s just a little quirky for it

- David manners (what an appropriately boring name) just kind of playing a silly little old Hollywood romantic lead who never quite grasps that he’s in a universal horror movie 

- the dressing gown budget. I was being fed well

- bela lugosi’s henchman (who I think he calls Domo at one point??) just randomly being in yellowface for genuinely no reason. But like the kind of yellowface that’s so badly done you spend the whole movie second guessing if you’re not just seeing things

- 2 cops bickering about whose hometown is cooler in what seems like a blatant filler scene? For a 60 minute movie? Literally anything else could have been done to pad the runtime a little more. There’s a basement with embalmed women framed in glass that could get a little bit more substance.

- lugosi and Karloff seem to be making up the films rules as they go along and the other just accepts it. Oh we have to play chess now? Oh your servant is working for me now? There’s dynamite rigged to blow this whole place up? What the hell, sure

- the set is so cool that I still don’t get why the film is so short when I want to spend more time wandering its halls and staircases and revolving chambers

- something about war crimes and trauma and betrayal just being thrown around. And daughters and wives and daughters becoming wives or something. But mostly they’re just some extra words in the script to give lugosi motivation to chain up Karloff and strip his shirt off

“..like their finest and most legitimate victim!”

Obsessed from start to finish. Love Mati Diop so much. The haunting ghostliness of the King Ghézo voiceover pairs so well with the more grounded discussion scenes.

A really cool document. Directly grappling with French colonialism and racism and the ugliness of capitalism at a relatively early time for the white European metropole. But it unfortunately falls into the trap of white people (quite literally) speaking for black people, treating Africa as a monolith, and being maybe a little too comfortable with talking about Africans as such simple, even primal beings who are inherently closer to god/nature due to their simplicity. And makes so much of white people ripping African art and creation away from their place of origin and context while participating in the same by not bothering to name or contextualize any of its images (of statues or present day Africans).

Really smart preface screening for Dahomey though

It’s funny how many beats this borrows from 2. Almost as funny as me still crying multiple times and laughing a lot despite the obvious drop in quality, not as well written of a villain, and sally hawkins being sorely missed. whatever!!!!!

It’s fun! The music just kinda sucks honestly and prevents it from being a full on blast. I don’t really mind the shaky acting from the ing actors but the characterization and writing need some polishing too. Kind of like a trans Shaun of the dead with super explicit politics, and though from a clearly white lens she at least tries to not be blind to others in her messaging. Alice Maio Mackay is 7 years younger than me and way more aware than I was (of both myself and the world around me) so it’s cool to see regardless of if the final product is a little rough. I think Adeline Last has a lot of real potential too.

The first half of the film is perhaps a lot more interesting to me than the second. Yes, Scotty’s male fantasy is at the center of the film, but what of Madeleine? To give into the past, let a ghost take the steering wheel for a while and allow yourself to be taken over by something that feels bigger than you are. Of course this line of thought doesn’t really make sense given the the reveal and second half of the film, but it’s still there (if only as the woman that Scotty falls in love with, and the woman that Judy embodies so well). Or I just love Kim Novak.

Filled with this stark, desperate loneliness in its stripped back performances, mostly empty frames, sparse use of music. It’s unbearable and serves as a grounds for the audience to understand Paul’s attachment, even reliance, on Philippe. Navigating into dangerous territory—not just because he’s well aware of its impact on his social standing (gay, dating someone much older, relying on him for money), but he also seems to have a sense of the tangible emotional and psychological risk of being with a much older man—because it’s the only avenue he sees other than stagnation, which is even more unthinkable. I think it’s a nice touch that the film makes no qualms about repeatedly pointing to the strange, confusing nature of this quasi-paternal-but-also-romantic(?)/sexual-and-also-transactional pedophilic relationship instead of like… a doomed romance.

On Philippe’s side, the film spends much less time justifying his pursuit of an underage boy, and it’s for the better. Where it gets complicated is how little judgement the film places on the relationship, on the long term damage that the grooming of a teenager, let alone one of a lower socioeconomic class, has. I think I’m willing to give some grace here knowing that the film was apparently semi autobiographical regarding relationships that Gerard Blain had and abuse that he suffered when he was young, and the film is so effective in its quiet despair that I think, at least for me, the message comes across regardless. Plus, not every predator is some evil manipulative caricature. And that’s part of the danger and the complicated form that trauma from a relationship like this can take.

Kinda mind blowing. Intelligent and inventive and has a surprising sense of humor at times. There’s a little bit of like… everything I like about movies thrown in here and all of it works so well. Making visible that which was made invisible, panning the camera of history to the left and right to see what was obscured, erased, implied out of frame. Holding the various tensions of being a Lebanese or Palestinian woman in the 20th century (and beyond).

“History is ours, and it is made by the people. Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!”

Indescribably good. Not only on the level of what is documented and the footage obtained and preserved, but also from a filmmaking standpoint. 

“nothing will make you sound crazier in your day to day life than knowing about like 4 things the CIA has done and fully itted to”
—ancient proverb

My second Rod Steiger movie in theaters! Yay! Now someone needs to screen The Sergeant next.

Feels too rare to see movies deal in emotions so openly. No tiptoeing around disgust, horror, (survivors) guilt, isolation. A breath of fresh air to see this in a theater, especially with something as cowardly as The Brutalist playing one screen over (tackling the same subject matter to boot—to say nothing about the differing politics of the two). My first watch I was busy being stunned by Steiger’s performance and Quincy Jones’s score to pay attention to much else, but this time I really appreciated the cinematography and all the ing performances, especially Brock Peters and Geraldine Fitzgerald. So wonderfully realized.

Even today it’s hard to think of a movie that so deftly deals in the stories and humanity of those on the outskirts of capitalist American society, left behind by the world and just trying to find things to hold onto. And to do all that on a general level with vignette-esque scenes while also being a poignant film specifically about a concentration camp survivor at the same time? I feel like Sidney Lumet sometimes gets unfairly forgotten in discussions about great directors of his era, at least when looking at his peak.

Daniel Craig is better than I’ve ever seen him, and some of the moments of physical touch/tenderness are so poignant and moving, but overall there’s honestly not much here. Could’ve been great, perhaps even a classic, if someone else made it.

Guadagnino yet again showcases his ability to make a well composed image while forgetting that images need something other than surface level beauty to not feel hollow. The needle drops feel so useless. Explicitly calling out Cocteau as a shortcut to instill your images with… something… just doesn’t work if the actors are doing the heavy lifting and you’re just there with a camera trying to make sure everything looks perfect. It all feels so slight and insipid.

The whole narrative feels obvious but that’s probably more a fault of the source material. Yet even a basic narrative can be moving if the film built around it was strong.

Conventionally made but that didn’t bother me much in this case. The worst part was forcing myself to keep paying attention when selton mello was so distractingly sexy. Fernanda Torres really deserves everything, and solid child performances too. The hole he leaves that never fills, the prolonged mourning and confused suffering. Just very human filmmaking. No surprise from Walter Salles, even if I think it could’ve benefitted from a bit more risk taking or explicit politics. Cried more than I have in a long time (at a movie or otherwise).

e FERNANDA MONTENEGRO

Funny and depressing and triggering and full of impeccable performances and natural chemistry. I like movies again 🩷