“Imitation of Life” warms its griddle of drama with the flames of friendship between two women, their tender bond somewhat melting the hard lines of racial divide. At arms length, in the messy cupboards of motherhood, they both rummage for love and sacrifice; ingredients sure to emotionally appeal to those who're fond of this kind of repast. And while the film doesn't fully subvert the '30s social decorums/rules, it conscientiously reflects and exposes them, and what it lacks in, again, fully overturning the preconceptions or the stereotypes, it makes up for genuine sincerity. 

At the outset, we are introduced to Beatrice Pullman, a widowed maple syrup seller with her hands always full. From caring for her daughter Jessie to doing the cooking and the cleaning to earning some living, she struggles to maintain the household. One day, Delilah Johnson, a Black woman who mistakes her home for potential employment during a job search stumbles upon her door, convinces Beatrice to hire her, pitching for low pay (I know) in exchange for free board and lodging for her and her daughter Peola. Their relationship is immediately established as a complementary. Delilah, with a secret delicious pancake recipe under her belt, which is also an heirloom, is perfect for Beatrice's can of maple syrup. But a complement doesn't always mean an equal, more so in the eyes of American society nor in the frames of this film. Even Beatrice herself doesn't always rid of her adherence to the norms, like when she decides on a whim to start a pancake house without Delilah's explicit agreement. Or the indelible social standing both women occupy throughout. There's also a trace of exploitation in the treatment of Delilah in this implicit business partnership. While her recipe is the product, her face the brand, Beatrice is the brains behind this entrepreneurial venture. Once the business thrives, the restaurant is boxed into a mass-produced item, a pancake mix rivalling Pillsbury, to be enjoyed in the comforts of the home, and not just in the Aunt Delilah's pancake house. In this decision, Beatrice asks Delilah’s opinion, then her signature, who responds that she’s okay with anything as long as she gets to stay and cook for her. She insists on this imbalanced attachment further when Beatrice suggests Delilah can buy her own house and car. Delilah then only gets a measly 20% of the enterprise. Modern ears are bound to close up with distaste. The docility the film characterises Delilah is expected, for Old Hollywood (or simply Hollywood) doesn’t want to ruffle too many feathers, it is there to assure the white audience that she is not a threat, because while she somehow achieves the American Dream, she remains in her place. Although “Imitation of Life” can be faulted for these dated depictions, it can be regarded as a documentation of its era as well. Many Old Hollywood films include Black people as mere comic relief, as ornaments to emphasise the wealth of the white people they work for. But Delilah isn’t merely a domestic worker, she is humanised through her story, however secondary it’s perceived from Beatrice’s.

What’s commendable in “Imitation of Life” is perhaps its examination of racial ing. Its parallel portrayals of motherhood between women of different races allow ample amount of time to sow shame in Peola, Delilah’s lighter-skinned daughter, and the privilege the white women have compared to them. Colourism meddles in their maternal relation, and internalised racism soon proliferates there, making Peola nurse hatred not for her mother alone but also her entire race. The interior of the Pullman-Johnson home itself is a torment, a reminder of their inferiority. Beatrice and Jessie’s room is situated on the second floor, inferring whiteness as the so-called higher race, while theirs is down in the basement. There is also the culminating night of one of Beatrice’s parties, where Delilah soothes and comforts Peola’s woeful grievances. They are in the far recesses of the house as the party hubbub is faintly heard in the background; a party they cannot and cannot mix in. Simultaneously, Beatrice encounters the ichthyologist Stephen Archer, who ignorantly dubs her the ‘Pancake Queen.’ The possibility of falling in love is only available to her. Delilah serves as an encouragement, a sidekick in somehow ensuring this romance is realised. Of course, none of these women need to be with men, but it’s interesting how they’re viewed differently (or how the other is not viewed at all) under a romantic lens.

For the rest of its runtime, “Imitation of Life” tackles the bland (and off-putting) mother-daughter complication in Beatrice’s uninteresting newfound romance on one hand, and the more complex racial issue in the bittersweet mother-daughter dynamic in Delilah’s on the other. The lengths Peola goes to shed her racial identity at the cost of the only person she has is angering and depressing. Her running away is an attempt to escape from the torment (instead of confronting it). Her disowning her mother is disowning her Blackness. Where the film fails, I think, is its scant glances at a society that inculcated Peola of her unconscious acceptance of this racial hierarchy. 

The conclusion each woman gets is uneven, yet it doesn’t take away the impact of its heartbreaking turn. There’s the luxury bestowed to Delilah at an arguably late moment to seemingly put more weight on the resolution of her story. The shrill cry of “Mother!” carries a return there, where forgiveness is wedged in the frenzy of grief. Some may find this questionable, perhaps even a fulfilment of a trope, opposite Beatrice’s quiet deferment of happiness, but it clearly sates the sensibilities of its era, battered in pure melodrama. Mothers put themselves last for their daughters’ self-actualisation in the “Imitation of Life.” And imbued with a yearning for acceptance beyond the confines of skin and time, it pokes quite poignantly on how living with depth is not a life imitated, not a life merely imagined nor seen, but in embracing the self in its entirety, in its authenticity.

I’m ambivalent on this one, but had to repeatedly remind myself of the historical context. Dunno why this is such a long write-up as well so thanks if you read ‘til the end. Anyway, great performances from Beavers and Colbert. Really need to see the Sirk ver.

Largely an incisive critique of colonialism and its illogical nature as spates of its violence thrum within rooms of domesticity. Placed there is the titular Diouana, who courts a better life through overseas work only to be lured into a household of deracination. Cooking, cleaning, and washing—each is a process of uprooting. To be uprooted is to lose one's identity, and like a mask it is easily moulded, bought and given, then hung on the wall like an ornament. Another appalling display of what is colonially stolen. Separated from the facial skin, it is an external organ hollowed, implying the collective African identity defined in the colonisers' . Meanwhile, her bare African face becomes an exotic artefact, shamelessly gawked at by the houseguests, at one point kissed without consent. “Their independence has made them unnatural,” one further laments over the dining table, while she internally questions every domestic task put on her plate amidst her lack of independence. Betrayed by the promise of a French illusion, of doing pieces of work not in her job description, her master's house itself is a prison. Slavery in modern form is sanctioned there, first instigated in the streets of Dakar as African women are inspected like goods, worth as much as the labour they can provide. She is at the French’s bidding, given no time for herself nor for other activities but these chores, these menial errands that rob her of self-determination. Even her manner of dressing is scrutinised, perceived to raise her class, her race, considered offensive to the mistress she ought to obey, ought to make herself lesser. Gradually, she disobeys in the smallest of actions. She sleeps through the day clutching her dreams in flashbacks of the hopeful past only to wake up on the same bed of subjugation. Angered, she takes the mask back without fully knowing what to do with it, with this identity now disfigured by oppression, while she continuously masks her suffering. But this is not about identity alone, it is also about a homesickness never remedied. A longing for one's own country that once existed without colonial settlers, its lands that once belonged alone to its own people. The final act carried out may be seen as emphasis on colonial entrapment, where gaining independence does not ascertain absolute sovereignty. But it is also rebellion bleeding for freedom as it brings some of its pursuers to their seen-as-trivial demise. Meanwhile, the mask is left behind. Back in Dakar, a boy walks while he wears it on his face. It's an upholding of identity—to a degree, a restitution—yet it's also a striking imagery of history haunted unceasingly throughout, for, perhaps, only then are its transgressors made aware and recognise their inhumanity, their iniquities. Powerful film.

“A brother’s a brother.”

Bodies are like lawnmowers, once upon a time whirring with life and pulled by its cord of joys, always ready to cut through the weeds for tidier, (un)even ground, but ultimately rusts, breaks down, putters along the closeness of mortality. Across Midwestern plains, we keep Alvin Straight company on his lawnmower in this last leg of his existential pilgrimage, an ill-stricken ride to his estranged brother who suffered a stroke. Throughout rainy days and bonfire nights, amidst a bicycle race, on snaking unpaved roads and sharp slopes, dangerous inclines and seemingly unending thoroughfares, he persists towards a familial reconciliation, aided by the kindness, presence, and stories of strangers, and his daughter with a stutter, furnishing every encounter with beats of personal recollections, these glimpses of a rough past, the innumerable ways people learn to cope. There is a serene urgency in this journey. The stubborn will to reach the destination against the hues of recurring sunsets along the flat and waving landscapes, against a supper near a parish amongst the sepulchral dead. It’s as if everywhere there’s a muted reminder of the inevitable end of one’s existence. A bittersweet familiarity of the unknown and uncontrollable. It takes its time too as it relishes the sceneries and occasional pleasures (of a bottle of beer, the smoking of tobaccos, the roasting of meat) yet also fears the possible debacle in this undertaking, the possible refusal in the anticipated reunion. As Alvin nears the home of the only brother he has, childhood makes a knot of their loose but non-severable blood ties, wooden sticks they are, previously separated by distance and dispute, again bundled together in the few words exchanged. Fraternal affection treads upon the rickety porch, where memories shared reminds of the part of himself only fully ever known to a sibling. They are this house as well, worn yet still stands, old but has braved many weathers, still a home to each other. Silence of contentment befalls them as eyes well up with tears of gratitude, of happiness. The blanket of stars over their heads looks the same as when they were young. In the near future, they’ll their twinkling in the nebulae of their togetherness with the stardust they’re made of. It is short, this life, but it expands in moments when people allow themselves to love, to forgive; when they return to it with a softened look amongst the pile of unrecoverable, depleted years. 

Perhaps the most linear and reality-immersed of Lynch’s works. Doesn’t make it any less beautiful and moving.

Éric Rohmer’s Tales of Four Seasons #1

In the blossoming of flowers, in the bursting of leaves, spring brings forth an unexpected friendship in Rohmer's first seasonal piece, “A Tale of Springtime.” Not wanting to stay at her boyfriend’s flat while he is away for work, Philosophy teacher Jeanne packs some of her stuff to stay in hers only to find her cousin with her boyfriend there. Not wanting to stay with them either, she plans to spend the night away at a party, sitting by herself with a posture of unease. Not before long, teenage piano student Natacha sits beside her, and they strike up a conversation. A one-week visit in Natacha’s Paris flat eventually ensues, where Jeanne meets her travelling father, a Ministry of Culture employee, and later on his girlfriend, Éve, a woman almost as young as his daughter, and a woman his daughter dislikes. Needless to say, Jeanne unwillingly becomes involved in Natacha’s family issues, initially only listening to her new friend’s tirade about her mother, until she is amidst the conflict, reprimanding her each time she speaks ill of others, then breaking a quarrel between two people. 

As usual with Rohmer, “A Tale of Springtime” is dialogue-heavy at times at the expense of its people’s dimensions, and the philosophical undercurrent of the narrative infers love as a nearly unworkable negotiation between oneself and others. From Natacha and her fatherly boyfriend to Jeanne and her absent boyfriend to Natacha’s father and his daughterly girlfriend, there is a constant struggle in maintaining some kind of consistency/harmony in their relations. Friction unavoidably materialises, so too the fleeting facet of these encounters, tucked away they are inside the polite, welcomely gestures. These relations become more muddled once Natacha declares she’d prefer Jeanne as her father’s girlfriend, and proceeds to tweak the events of the day to play the matchmaker. While spring flourishes with new hopes and beginnings, it is cultivated as a transitory period in the film. Jeanne transitions to broaden her social horizons in spending the week with Natacha, who is transitioning to adulthood herself. Often accompanied by Schumann, their present situations take comfort in the impermanence. But most of all, this is a tale of coincidences as it cautions against assumptions when there is no blame to be found, and no one to bear fault, and there is only the capers of acceptance in the thick of it all, the acceptance of what is and what cannot be.

Watched on Friday January 31, 2025.

“I’m so annoyed of myself. I’m tired of myself. Who is this person in me who is so tired, always wanting to become someone else?”

An over-a-course-of-day peregrination in a foreign land in search for elusive articulations. Iris, a penniless French woman in South Korea, secures a job teaching French and stops by a house then another, armed with an unconventional teaching strategy. Situations repeat in different houses, where similar conversations unfold, and music is played on different instruments as a break from the talking, first the piano, then later on the guitar (Iris herself plays the recorder). Her students tumble upon notes and chords, not very skilful, implying language (because music is also a language) is an undertaking in reaching a performance of perfection. (It’s no surprise a score can only be heard for the first and last time before the credits roll. It’s an irony, because it’s the only instance where a piece is played perfectly.) Each time, Iris asks them over and over how they feel as they play. Happy, they answer at first. She insists. They reveal frustration. They wish they played better. She then translates their English responses to French poetic jottings on index cards. Afterwards, she records herself reading them on a tape, then instructs the students to listen to it repeatedly at night. There is a kind of comfort in the sameness of these scenes amidst the instability of Iris’ living conditions. And there are also glimpses of the students’ personal histories in her Occupation of Asking, while her past is never disclosed nor her reason for staying in this country. The final act brings her to the flat she shares with a young man named Inguk, where she’s not forced to pay rent. She is somewhat a mother figure to him, more present than his real mother, who turns up at the door unannounced, scolding and interrogating him, unable to completely grasp his living setting with Iris. Everybody meets halfway in English. Native tongues confront misunderstandings. Language then is not a barrier but a means to the closest form of emotional resonance. It is there to better know another in spite of changing definitions, inaccurate translations, incorrect pronunciations, and misconstrued intentions. Of course, it is not perfect, much like this film, where its subtleties sacrifice explicit sensibilities. Although people try to express themselves through careful arrangements of sentences, feelings aren’t always conveyed well; feelings aren’t always fathomed. Fluency in the matters of emotions is a lifelong education, and people are, at times, as green in it as Iris’ cardigan, as if they’re learning to speak for the first time. Yet, sometimes, words alone are what they have to get by, to get home, to get through, itinerant words are along the flux of thoughts; laid bare are these rare sweeps of comprehension and connection.

The rating is more of an appreciation for what it’s trying to do instead of what it did. 

Huppert Character Unhinged Level: 1.0* out of 10

*Took off her shoes and stood in a stream for a few seconds; repeatedly pushed Inguk’s foot hard with her own foot on some foot warmer mat; chugged maybe 2 bottles and 3 glasses of makgeolli; badly played a recorder in a park.

“I'm not one of you anaemic creatures who can get nourishment from a lettuce leaf! I’m a musician, I'm an artist! I have zest and appetite—and I like food!”

The great lie it purports is in the chemistry it keeps displaying in front of my eyes between country landowner Maggie (Davis) and the wooden (he might as well been carved from one of her paddock's fenceposts), selfish aviator Pete (Brent) as they jostle along a trifling plot crammed with ridiculous implausibilities. Enthusiastic from the get-go over its unconvincing love triangle, it opens with the invalid marriage of Pete and toxic, renowned pianist Sandra (Astor). Since he’s desperate to marry (because what’s a man without a wife?), he flies immediately to the blindly-in-love, second-option Maggie, and a day later asks her to marry him. After five days—while the Maggie-Sandra showdown bubbles in the background—he departs for a Brazilian mission and goes missing, allowing the two women to see more of each other in grief; dislike still intact amidst their reluctantly agreed contractual relations. Grazing along a queer subtext (its best moments), Maggie and a pregnant Sandra with unhealthy habits bolt to the Grand Canyon, where they stay together in some shack. Their shelter is at once swept with thunderstorms as they bicker and quarrel under some emotional surrogacy/sapphic goings-on. Frequent tro-wearer Maggie buys the groceries and prepares the food, while Sandra rests and complains in her preggo moodiness. Theirs is the undeniable chemistry here, yet it’s readily snatched away to continue its crowded throuple with a child in tow to goo-goo-ga-ga the terrible deceit. Resolution happens in a rush, hammering the piano for the nth time to Tschaikovsky’s Piano Concerto 1 to emphasise the change in tune. The versatility of the piece to evoke several emotions along Sandra’s fingertips throughout the film is irable. Sadly, it’s great in name alone, the rest is a able melodramatic romp.

Davis and Astor were marvellous. Reportedly, they also rewrote the screenplay, because they thought it’s bad… yeah, it kinda still showed.

Power as a dangerous fetish, pleasured long by hubris. Invincibility sought in each release, each time an insemination of vanity. Here wielded and stroked by a newly promoted police inspector in the seat of authority, conceitedly careless in the trail of evidence he leaves after killing this mistress of his. A crime scene sloppily set up as a robbery. A snag of thread from his light blue tie under her lifeless nail, his bloody shoe prints on the floor, his fingerprints on the knobs and glasses, an undeniable sighting of his face behind the gate. This blatant, apathetic self-exposure post-murder is a demonstration of his exception to the rule of law, his imprimatur of corruption as the benchmark of governance. He deflects suspicions with his position, evades investigation with indulgence of judicial prejudice and stereotype in an Italy marred with political unrest. Interspersed with snippets of the pair’s past sexual encounters, photographed reconstruction of crime scenes unnerves with the escalating role-play of violent authority. Enamoured she is by the emblem of dominance he wears she readily sprawls in poses of servility similar to the men in the police in their vulgar postures of sycophancy. Everyone is a cause of his arousal. Everyone is a cause of his advancement. The tyrant personality. The testing of impunity. The people behind him. A chilling look at institutional abuse, it is an utterance of democracy as an ambiguous catch-all to hide the atrocities. And once the shape of what looks like justice nears, there unfolds a trance of acquittal, the hysterical confession becomes an invalid truth, because truth in these frames should protect those in charge, should plead allegiance to its lawless master with his book of laws. There the head bows down in eternal reverence.

My iration and respect for Lynch wasn't tethered to any works of his. Having dabbled in his filmography during the first year of my burgeoning cinephilia, I backed off after three films (“Mulholland Drive,” “Eraserhead,” “The Elephant Man”). Compared to everyone else, I thought these films weren't doing to me what they're ought to do. Told myself I'd come around eventually, similar to my hate-then-love-now trope with Godard. See, I recognise the pillar and icon Lynch is, the sub-genre he conceived forever ineffaceable in our modern parlance, this cultural consciousness—the strange, the indescribable; Lynchian. But I never felt the nudge, never felt the shove, and it's rather shameful I'm returning to where I left off/returning to start over only when news of his ing, and tributes and eulogies of people mourning fill my screen. So when my partner, after telling me she's seen “Mulholland Drive” seven times, to which I confessed I only gave it a three, and in disbelief eagerly sat me down for a rewatch, I was unsure if I was ready at all. Placed was I on the backseat, anxiously intimidated, met with vague familiarity as I let the film drive me on its dim, winding road once more.

What are dreams if not our subconscious desires and our deep-seated fears, if not the latent exercise of control the mind latches onto against an unpleasant reality uncontrolled, bending it hither and thither within the cosmos of intoxicating slumber? “Mulholland Drive” conceives such a realm. Out of its car crash of a Hollywood promise slithers a concussion of reverie. Its dreamer reweaves threads of rejected actualities into illusionary manifestations, where mere fleeting figures in real life occupy major roles (waitress Betty, the nameless actress at the party) in the fanciful reinvention. In these strangers belong lives unknown, which are easier to make up and fill out through the dreamer’s subconscious imaginative will. They offer a clean slate amidst a sullied existence; the failed ambitions reworked, the toyed affection repaired. Thematic elements converge largely as an exhibit of profound yearning. Frequently, it thrives in the fantasy, seesaws in the mystery between the blur of sleeping and waking. And through integrating, adopting, and assembling other selves under the same appearances, the yearning is sated. Or so it seems. 

In the grand scheme of things, “Mulholland Drive” is a love story bedecked with frills of neo-noir. The dreamer helping her Rita find herself is a construction of an elaborate cerebral maze in making Rita (Camilla Rhodes) return to her as she knows her, wants her. That the director Camilla Rhodes (Rita) gets on with is subjected to many kinds of losses is a way for the dreamer to regain herself, her love, her career, her life. She triumphs over him (and Camilla Rhodes) by having the semblance of directing this dream, directing Rita, while he faces many obstacles before he can direct his film. “It'll be just like in the movies. We'll pretend to be someone else,” Betty excitedly suggests. And so, in part, this is also Rita and Betty’s imioned rehearsal before the perverted audition. Two of them alone in amnesiac desire before it is intruded by the tragedy of ing. Because subliminal dimensions are notorious for letting emotions materialise in riddles, jealousy and guilt soon propel paranoia to threaten the promising delusion.

Occasionally, the film also pokes fun at the genres it inhabits, the sequence of the hitman with his gunshots wreaking a series of noise amidst the silencer—ing through the wall then lodged in the flesh of a yelping woman to the loud vacuum to the blaring of the alarm—exposes a “devised reality” reverberating a fait accompli recrudescence. Maybe this is all a surreal flash of overhauled memories of a fading/dying woman. And like everything else, the dream ends. At its wake resurfaces a confrontation with the nightmare. The demise of everything thought out to be moves aside to entangle the ruins. Interpretation is a scant task in “Mulholland Drive,” for it is at its most sublime when we allow it to install us in its mesmerisingly chimerical visuals. The sense it imparts is not the narrative, not the metaphors, not the symbols, not the colours, I don’t believe so, although it’s a privilege to get lost in its infinite layers. It is the unresolvable conundrum in ourselves, wanting to bask in dreams forever if only we don’t belong entirely to the pursuance of the inevitable reality. If only we can always mask the misery with the makings of the mind.

I guess I’m tethered now, for this is the film. 

Added to The Gospel of J.

For thousands of years, people past their 20s have mulled over the question of what words to impart their younger selves if they meet them. “My Old Ass” creates its coming-of-age premise out of this question, camping out with friends in an Ontarian forest, where 18-year old Elliott encounters her 39-year old self during a mushroom trip, warned to avoid a guy named Chad without any reason given. Wanting to leave a small town for the big city, chasing modern dreams in abandonment of traditional customs, it fleets its juvenile motorboat along a recognisably naïve longing to change one’s life alone, while everything back home should stay the same, until, eventually, it pleasantly floats near the wharf of realising the importance of family and friendship. Whereas the film sails in sincerity with its youthful aspirations and predicaments, it is rather nearly capsized by its clumsy paddle across the lake of teenage romance. Sure, sexuality is fluid for some, but “My Old Ass” dangerously steers near the opinion of needing to meet The Right Man when only scenes ago it ionately speaks of the dream girl, the future wife and children. It is unconvincing in its quick progression of this opposite attraction, seemingly attempting to ameliorate it through a wanting short talk on queerness, the lack of emotional anchor on its lesbian display, and the femininity it adorns its male interest. Its intentions become murkier too when sex with a woman is framed either at the café backdoor or down the dock, while sex with a man is at an elevated setting. Nonetheless, it is at its most assured whenever it prods through life’s complexities, wading on its cranberry bed, and deciding to go through it the same, despite knowing its tart tragic turns, its underwhelming flavours, for only in experiencing heartbreaks and failures do we hold what matters closer, only then we become who we are meant to be.

Right, not enough Aubrey Plaza. Comical/cringe Bieber needle drop. Charming Saoirse Ronan wall.

Kore-eda's familial quietude in "Still Walking" swells with polite, restrained tension, stretched from the present to the past, from the modern to the tradition over one summer day. Ageing parents receive their son and daughter with their families for a yearly gathering to commemorate their eldest son's death. Disappointments and discontents surface in careless utterances of unfulfilled ambitions and unheeded expectations. Surrounded with occasional warmth amongst the prickly silence of unaddressed conflicts, most of them considerably wears an appearance in this household in avoidance of arguments, in avoidance of shame; in an act of love. Truths are omitted, and lies are incorporated to dress the reality with an acceptable look amongst meals shared, streets walked, and moments recalled. Mostly pivots around the son, an unemployed painter who married a widow with a child, he fibs, telling them he works at a museum, restoring Chagalls and not van Goghs, as he meets parental glances enveloped with shattered hopes. Their wish of him becoming a doctor a bygone dream. Exhalations of regret and guilt hang in the air in this house, every room an extent of grief unresolved and only lived with. Grieving not only the loss of the eldest son but also the potential he carried. And when the heavy weight of that potential is unwelcomely transferred to the living—here the second son who chose the arts instead of science—they keep away a part of themself partially unapproved. Parents then make do with the expanding distance. Children make do with the fleeting reconciliation. A softness is glimpsed behind the stoic exterior of the father over the soundtrack of a marriage, an old Japanese pop song sang in secret as his wife listened behind the door years and years ago, now placed on the turntable as the rest listens in gruntled surprise. A touching irony also visits the story as the son, to some degree, steps into the shoes of the dead (mostly his brother’s but also his wife’s first husband) and attains his parent’s desires in ways unanticipated. “Still Walking” forges ahead amidst fragile familial bonds and existential finitude, and wends across their fractured beauty, their headstrong resilience, gathering in the abode for the ending and the enduring, for lives lived and lives left to live.

Life doesn’t always turn out as one wanted, but someway, somehow it does turn into what one makes it out to be.

The soil of the earth unpeopled vanishes in the deluge of near extinction. Along the engulfing apocalyptic waves of this now aqueous realm pulses the instinct for survival. Creatures solitary, creatures in packs and in pairs swim, wade, and search laboriously for some shore, some island, some patch of land away from the ripples of irreversible catastrophe, away from their homes and habitats entirely inundated. As the water level continues to rise, refuge is a sail on a boat, adrift across miles and miles of blue into the darkest turbulent blues, where different animals embark and alight, some wary, while others are friendly, one is frightened, another is occupied with their salvaged glinting possessions. Primal drives deflect the wordless anthropomorphisation of their sound and look, where each purr, bark, squawk, whine, tilt of the head, turn of the neck, and roll of the body translate into recognisable human expressions. Yet they’re more human than us in their hesitant teaming up in this modern fable of climate disaster, past their differences and past the hate and past the predation; for others this is temporary, for others this is permanent, out of necessity, out of sheer goodwill. The leviathan plunges deep far from its symbol, also affected by the human-wrecked tempers of the earth, breathing its seeming last amongst the emergence of new lands, the receding waters making way for craggy terrains. A meditative voyage across ethereal visuals on the ceaseless flow of life itself, up the swirling clouds of finality and into the terraces of continuance, its kiss of mortality a touch of solidarity, all the relics and the monuments, this Romantic edifice, everything will eventually be swallowed, taken by time accelerated by our reckless mangling of this one world of ours, and we will be underpinned alone by our reflections of coexistence and community.

“You with your fat little soul and your smug face—picking your way so cautiously through a pastel existence.”

Went into this expecting something dangerous only to experience something worse: dullness. 

If that's not disappointing enough, the synopsis insinuates a portrait of alcoholism under the dimming spotlight of artistic esteem. However, the more it unfolds, the more it becomes clear the film's focal theme is not necessarily its heroine's personal problems but in reversing the theatrical curse attached to her name through a male irer turned lover. This love affair is not without its heavy complications. Don Bellows, a budding architect already betrothed to another woman from a wealthy family, has his successful future cut out for him until he stumbles upon Joyce Heath, a has-been Broadway actress drinking herself to death at some speakeasy. When she es out from inebriation, he takes her to his countryside house, rousing dormant attraction as they spend many days together. From thereon, Don busies himself away from overseeing the construction of buildings to helping Joyce in planning and rebuilding her life and career. While she anticipates tragedy in every corner, she cautiously allows herself some love and a Broadway role of a lifetime, both provided and produced by Don no less. But there’s no happy ending in sight. A secret causes her relationship with him to crash, terminal with the injuries and wounds sustained. Her questionable choices speed it up with fear, without recourse. Every shadow on her face a tremble of danger as she grasps the steering wheel of catastrophe. Debts of the past soon arrive to demand payments. A middling drama, the final minutes of “Dangerous” is a shoddy Shakespearean mimicry, where fate and fortune clash. It is not about external threats, no, but internal destructions sufficient to ruin whatever’s left to piece together in a life only at the inception of its emotional sobriety. 

Franchot Tone as Don Bellows, a man I never minded at all in his films with Joan Crawford, has never been this mind-numbing. He is dry as dust. Bette Davis, on the other hand, gives an overarching performance, and she gives some dimension to an otherwise nondescript character only tugged and thrusted along the film’s unexciting plot progressions. What I also don’t fail to notice as I dip more into Davis’ filmography are these characters she often plays. They’re women subverting gender norms, somewhat victims yet products of the era they’re in, without Hollywood Happiness at the end of their stories as they meet either lifelong punishment or mortal recompense. Hoping to get around “Dark Victory” and “Of Human Bondage” soon.

“You’re not anybody in America unless you’re on TV.”

The elevation of artificiality in a manufactured society, made for TV. A special broadcast of American narcissism: The Suzanne Stone Story.

True to her maiden name, Suzanne is inflexible and hard. A stop-at-nothing woman trying to ascend her no-steps journalism career ladder, her choice to use Stone instead of her husband's surname, Maretto, in the professional setting is self-centredness masked as (hypocritical) individualism as she exaggerates the importance of her position at a local network, working day in and out over a self-created project without care nor time for her over-doting husband (or anyone, really). This act of exaggeration fools us right from the start, giving the impression that Suzanne Stone is a well-established TV personality with her well-styled hair, well-made clothing, and well-trained smile. She dresses as if she's already made it. But she is merely a weather presenter in a small town. Immediately, we also learn she is suspected of her husband's murder, tuning us to the station of sumptuous satire and detestable deception.

Instead of fucking her way to the top, Suzanne Stone fucks her way to manipulation. The notion of American success and identity she touts is as narrow and flat as the television screen she so wants to see herself on, constructed, taped, and transmitted to influence the viewers akin to the influence she wields on the teenagers she exploits. It is an imposition of power distinct in any display of suburban moral decay. Because Suzanne is the lowest in hierarchy at her drab workplace, with no other professionals to speak or hang out with, she finds/forces an audience in the aimless youth of the local high school, preying on their fantasies as much as she is preyed upon by her own fantasy of fame. She longs for popularity only to have infamy to her reputation. Her vision of goodness is also put-on: everyone will only do good if they are watched, mirroring her worldview of a televised morality. TV is also framed truth and reality. Suzanne embodies this as a mouthpiece of society’s obsession with appearances and celebrities. “She just looks clean," says Phoenix's teenage Jimmy, who she renames to James as a way to make him believe his worth, his appeal. Later on, she turns his fantasy into reality. Yet however real it is, the intentions around it are also framed, forged. Like Jimmy, his classmate Lydia also falls for the same trick, though circumstances somewhat amusingly turns around for her. In a certain degree, she attains what Suzanne cannot.

Misleading narratives spooled with devious determination, “To Die For” is a farcical assemblage of TV programmes. From candid interviews to self-absorbed narrations with a white background insisting on integrity to late-night show with the parents to standard thriller, it hops from one channel to the next, then back again, making us piece together Suzanne Stone as Gus Van Sant intended: a relayed aggregation of her own words and words of people she knows, because, perhaps that is the closest we could get to the truth and see the lie. Today, we are overloaded with information presented at various angles, and images rendered by editing software (or worse, artificial intelligence). It is up to us to discern between fabrication and fact. The film provokes the same discussion. Media tools may be more advanced, more deceiving, but the purpose and agenda of those in power (i.e. those who have these tools) hardly change. 

“To Die For” is diabolically hilarious but struggles in maintaining the balance of its tone throughout. By the time it teases itself as a murder inquiry, it fortunately regains its footing, wickedly encasing the artificiality, the narcissism underneath a harsh winter. Partly, it is an ironic comeuppance of Suzanne Stone. It complements her skater sister-in-law’s one-word description of her. But there is somewhat a chilling air of doubt in this resolution. Subconsciously, we know the winter season will end. Snow will thaw. Ice will melt. In this land will appear some new age artificiality and narcissism. And as usual, everyone will watch. 

May be one of the funniest ending lines in a film ever. Gasped and guffawed.

“It’s nice to live in a country where life, liberty… and all the rest of it still stand on something.”

Told myself I’ll write shorter reviews this year but can’t help but blather on this one. Nicole Kidman, I need to see more of your films.

There is something so deeply moving in facing the imminence of death without any radical changes or critical junctures or grand gestures but living life as is, and letting it carry you through its habitual ordinariness interspersed with serendipitous moments where one profoundly feels alive. Of knowing between stifled cries and pensive glimpses there is no old age, no marriage, no other possibilities in a future so decidedly inexistent. And in these bittersweet almosts—especially of an unspoken love at its summer, melting with affection like popsicles, pouring with sweetness like rain, breezy like the wind during a motorcycle ride—all that remains are these photographs. Whatever was had is enough just as they are, because most don’t even ever come quite close. And then all that will remain of you are these photographs. Frozen in time, yet susceptible to time’s degradation, its fades and smudges and tears, like these bodies inhabited for a while. You bear the lens of a fragile present, and with it you capture the beauty, the blessing of your impermanence. 

“How’s your life?”
“You know, nothing special.”

Technocratic dreams throughout a propagandistic slumber, elusive as these particles of physics studied, pursued. Ambitions to attain the nuclear, create this energy that will spread the light across the Soviet entirety, this step to total autarky, this supposed chain reaction of progress. Lives harmfully devoted to science pulse to its rhythm, yearning to discover their potential, govern their interaction. In protons, in electrons, to merge, to split, a fusion, a fission. Exposed to the radiation of their goals, their work, another kind of yearning emerges out of empirical methods: to be loved, to be connected, to be seen. Fascinating they may be, they are as cold and as unknowable as their field of study. Intellectual triumphs and failures splinter the existence with moments of fragility, as though these gifted minds, endlessly pushing the boundaries of understanding, cannot contain the inexplicable depths of these inner lives. Repetitive experiments in parallel of unheard soliloquies. The promise of progress clashes with the ache of human desires like a childhood home to be demolished for the mining of iron, like a body dedicated to a scientific calling slowly decaying with every mar of roentgen, every nudge of palpable absence. Entangled in the mysteries of the cosmos. Entombed in the unraveling of themselves.

“You're a gal with a lot of variations.”

Everyone bothers to knock. Each rap upon the door of Room 809 brings the plot initially enfolded with an air of mystery on the verge of a psychotic episode. In the lobby, along hallways, in rooms and elevators, a group of people cross paths with each other. There is heartless Jed (Widmark), and his ex-darling hotel crooner Lyn (Bancroft). There is Eddie (Cook Jr.) the elevator operator, and his niece Nell (Monroe), hired to babysit the Jones' daughter Bunny. There are nosy neighbours (“Rear Window” Lite™), concerned telephone operators, an in-house detective, an amiable bartender. On this night of eventual breakdown, the main guest in this accommodation is Nell, an outsider who immediately suggests she can make stories up besides reading Bunny her book of bedtime stories. Once the opportunity arises, making up a story turns into a symptom of insanity, dressed into the self lost, wearing the robe, this bracelet, those earrings belonging to another person. Further triggered by a dead lover ed at the sight of a man across the window, their succeeding telephone come-on, then their meet-up in other people’s bedroom, the escalating oddity of verbal inventions alarms. Genuinely believing the delirium spools the disturbed into it. It’s difficult to untangle them. In its attack unfolds the sad past with its scarred wrists. Yet there is a trace of painful innocence in this madness as it shatters the heartlessness, perceives a goodness otherwise inconspicuous with stubborn persistence. Two glasses of Coca-Cola and a hit on the head, tied wrists and ankles later, the unstoppable spiral keeps dispensing surprises aimed to shock only to show a formulaic and stereotypical schizophrenically-aligned violence. Once it is out of knocks to give, it attempts to settle for another shock, razor-in-hand before a crowd. But as is mostly the case with these Old Hollywood films, the spiral ceases, the mist of delusion lifts up for reality. There is the unsure departure to recovery. There is a hasty return to love. A three-star film. A three-star hotel.

The mother telling her daughter, “I guess we never seen anybody like her.” after what happened is so tonally off it’s funny. Kid will certainly need therapy too. Good luck with the bill. Other observations: when Nell said she doesn’t eat candies but ate two pieces once she’s alone… girl. Bancroft also mostly sings, but she sang a song with ‘potato chips’ in the lyrics so who am I to complain. Monroe does defy the typecast here, I’ll give her that.

I'm opening the year with Catherine Breillat whose "Fat Girl" disconcerted me younger, then later on the Huppert-led "Abuse of Weakness," which didn't do much for me I suspect partly due to ignorance, my taint of Catholic prudery. "Last Summer," meanwhile, struck me in a different way.

An incisive anatomy of the taboo as frameworks of abuse, "Last Summer" is lodged in a household ladened with troubles perfectly swept under the rug or so it seems. The summer season warms familial bonds between lawyer Anne, her husband Pierre, and their two adopted daughters. But when 17-year old Théo, her stepson, returns, order is inflamed into irreversible burns of trauma and manipulation. Having a strained relationship with his father, Théo is distanced from the rest of the family. He prefers to play with his little stepsisters without genuine affection for them. It is no wonder he ransacks the house one day with only Anne suspecting/knowing it's him, eats a Big Mac messily with its ketchup all over his mouth, and sees self-tattooing as an addictive venture. These behaviours of impulse and aggression, this penchant for obsessive pain foreshadow their succeeding scenes, their succeeding "relationship." Bit by bit, Théo gets more comfortable around Anne, which ultimately reaches the point of no return once she invites him to a swim with his stepsisters. A series of activities ensues: horse-riding, driving, talking, and watching a video on his phone. Breillat's camera observes them with mild malice that later developments become inevitable.

Breillat further singes "Last Summer" with appalling irony. Anne is not merely a lawyer but a lawyer of young girls who experienced different forms of abuse. The mental gymnastics she performs to justify her sexual involvement with Théo within the legal domain is no doubt disgusting, simultaneously exposing her hypocrisy. Yet it also doubles as a fulfilment of her fantasy when she was a young girl infatuated with an older man, here reversed as she is now the older woman. In some way, she projects her teenage fantasy onto her stepson, contradicting the rather one scene of mechanical sex she had with her husband earlier in the film. Dwelling in her sick fantasy, she doesn't only become disconnected from people her age, more or less, she is also without genuine affection for Pierre as she hovers around him with a practised smile of indifference as he complains again and again about work. An immoral discovery of newfound youth behind the appearance of stability. Power imbalances soon continue to tilt downward. Distortions of truth; reinventions of lies. "Last Summer" in its seemingly tranquil exterior examines the definition of the predator-and-prey dynamics as it horrifically claims ambiguity when genders are switched. Its extremity is not outward violence nor graphic imagery but emotional ruination in its scenes of illicit pleasure. It lies down on the bed of the ordinary, where the whisper of "Pierre," is, perhaps, an implication of an open secret grimly embraced, then buried, put to sleep in these rooms of pretence; a pretence of a family. When it is denied, hidden, avoided, it never happened. It is the pretence of many families. Complicity to preserve the unblemished, sunny veneer.

“Please let my soul come to maturity before it is reaped.”

In Sjöström's “The Phantom Carriage,” the Ghost of the New Year is Death's coachman, who is relieved every first day of the year by the last person to die. The clock ticks with fearful anticipation, nearing the midnight hour, and once its hands coincide at the drop of another day, scythe in hand, cloak donned, he does his usual rounds in this last day. He fetches the dead along their big final wave in the existential sea, with the mortal gunpowder ignited for the deadly bullet, in the clearing of eternal sleep. But his visit is not an end in this melancholic silent film of sepias and cool blues and pale reds, it is a haunting journey along the story of one David Holm, his supposed successor. An alcoholic trapped in a cycle of self-destruction, David is vengeful and bitter after his wife left him during his prison stint. His circumstance of poverty and isolation enriches him with hatred. Without regard for others, he influences other men with a life of inebriation and infects people with consumption. Yet there is one Salvation Army sister who refuses to give up on him after she took him one dreadful winter, believing she can mend him as she has mended his coat. In spite of getting sick because of him, she strives to mend even his marriage (it’s one of those “I can fix him” the movie). Holm, led into a dreamlike afterlife, is forced to confront the consequences of his actions.

“The Phantom Carriage” is impeded by its moralising timbre, which is expected of its period. What elevates it beyond a mere ghost story is its wagon of time, which, like memory, does not travel on a straight road but on entwining lanes, constant with its presence amongst the double exposures of regrets and visuals of frailties. (One sequence undeniably inspired “The Shining” axe scene.) A benevolent dying wish for the weep of redemption. An exploration of peeling away the rust of the soul to begin anew, to turn into a new leaf in this new year. It begs the question: must we find ourselves in the company of Death’s disciple to learn the brevity of life can only be as meaningful and fulfilling as our connections and comion for others? 

Happy New Year to all! The past year wasn’t very kind personally, but I’m thankful for the LB interactions, conversations, and friendships. I don’t often take advantage of the comment feature so just wanna put it out there. I also gained quite a number of followers this year, and I’m not sure I deserve it. (I’ve insecurities to get over with...), but know that I appreciate all of you. May 2025 be kind to us all, and may we never lose the fight, the hope, our humanity amidst the cruelty of our times.

“And the great victory?”
“My martyrdom!”
“And your release?”
“Death!”

Visage of piety. Voice of light. Outpouring tears of courage before earthly judgment. Every question designed to elicit a conviction is against every answer guided by a holy calling. Ceaseless accusations of heresy expose these judges’ sacrilege, believing their lips of hubris is an instrument for the words of God. Jeanne d’Arc, this peasant, this illiterate, this 19-year old girl, responds with sanctified intelligence, her defence is a declaration of devotion. This ion is a demonstration of both her suffering and her religious ardour. At one point, they maliciously interrogate her, “Are you in a state of grace?” To which she replies with utmost tranquility with eyes somewhat piercing through the agony of the present for the rapture of the future, “If I am not, may God put me there! And if I am, may God so keep me!” But something else is striking in Dreyer’s exemplary “La ion de Jeanne d’Arc.” How the jailers’ mockery of her as they place a crown on her head is very reminiscent of Jesus Christ’s crowning of thorns. They also repeatedly question her, “Are you the daughter of God?” Again, it recalls the Catholic doctrine of Jesus Christ’s divinity, him being the Son of God, and the charge of blasphemy. While both are prophets in their own right, Jeanne d’Arc is mere mortal amidst her messianic presence during the Hundred Years' War. Although her corporeal existence is suffused with fortitude, we witness her momentary struggle between faith and survival. Throughout her trial, the cross accompanies her, providing comfort as window bars in her cell, as a shadow beneath her feet, and later on, as her last embrace, her last vision. No amount of pain frightfully wounds and crucifies when it only afflicts the perishable physical.  

These men of the law cannot convict the Maid of Orleans of heresy, thus, they torment her about her wearing of men’s clothes, her masculine appearance, which further emphasises their void reasoning, their empty case. Their fixation on her “crossdressing” shows that men believing they’ve the right to dictate what women ought to wear is a tale as old as time. They then coerce Jeanne to sign an abjuration, helping her weak hand to write her name as she stands in front of the stake after they cut her head nearly bald, after the increasing vertigo of punishment in fainting images of torture devices sustains her steadfast faith. The resulting riot as her body breaks down into ashes is an unforgettable sight that will sear the mind: the child sucking their mother’s breast before it turns away to look, the circus people before the sentence is revealed, people throwing stones against knights’ spears and arrows; commentaries on corrupted authority, on beliefs as the milk of protests, purity, on judgment against judgment, the outcry in the burning of the revered. As the flames lick and engulf the temporary vessel of materiality, smoke rises to the skies as if the soul has left the cruel land of the living, ascending to the immaculate heaven. Again, it is agony. Again, it is rapture. All-in-one. 

With every frame impeccable, with every score glorious, “La ion de Jeanne d’Arc” unearths its titular saint, both myth and human, as a figure perpetually fastened to the French consciousness as much as a banner of salvation and freedom. The film meanwhile is fastened to the medium’s history as a cinematic triumph, an inarguable cinematic masterpiece. And seeing it is a process of canonisation. It dislodges every film seen before as it performs its extraordinary technical miracles with the arrestingly evocative Falconetti sculpting under your skin. A divine revelation unparalleled. 

Never in my life have I felt the hair on my arms stand up while watching a film in the theatre until watching this. Felt like I was slapped and shoved sideways. (Also: Antonin Artaud.) Everyone’s prolonged silence when the screen faded to black with our seeming inability to stand up for 3 minutes as if we’ve suddenly become embedded to our seats… experiencing this is seeing, touching God!

“There are few people who know the secret of making a heaven here on earth. You are one of those rare people.”

Sweet specks of kindness amidst the thinning threads of principles blanket “The Bishop’s Wife.” When an Episcopalian bishop is newly assigned to an affluent parish, his determination to build a towering cathedral signs away his religious convictions and familial commitments. Trying to build a slab of concrete for the house of God remodels his house with marital distance and paternal emptiness. He becomes devoted to convincing and pleasing rich benefactors in the hopes that it will cement his reputation, while he loses devotion to what really matters. This routine of kowtowing is soon disturbed when suave angel Dudley appears in town, charming the bishop’s professor friend, charming his wife and child. In his household involvement commences a reminder on the life-affirming stints of spontaneity, within it the youthful gale that sweeps along coats and dresses against discontentment brought on by chasing material possessions. Dudley’s visit to the nonbeliever professor’s home eternally fills the sherry glass with believing amidst pleasant conversations on history; choir boys he gather fill the air with the much-needed holiday spirit with their heavenly hymn; the pretty hat in a shop display the bishop’s wife have been fancying for a bit is placed daintily on her head as his gift of attention; and his impulsive stop at a skating rink warms their feet in ice skating shoes with friendship whirls and glides. “The Bishop’s Wife” entertains the idea of a mortal-and-angel romance but keeps its morality in check. Yet it is still difficult not to root for them instead of the uptight bishop-and-neglected wife pairing. (The Grant-Young chemistry is difficult to resist!) As Christmas Eve nears and the bishop’s jealousy mounts, the film is sadly in a holiday rush to celebrate the festivity with good tidings (i.e. resolutions to the conflict). Agnes Hamilton, the wealthiest benefactor in town, who insists for a monument for a husband she didn’t love is softened with the melodious nostalgia of a past intense love affair, while the bishop, with his fear of losing everything he thought he’ll always have, reclaims his devotion, rebuilds his home with affection. Sermon is preached. Church bells echo across town. “The Bishop’s Wife” is a Christmas Standard through and through, fortunately unrestrained by its religious tone. Despite its ordinary plot trinkets every time Dudley is not in the scene, it touches with its conviction that there is still goodness in humanity if only we learn to really listen and talk to each other, and lovely indestructible cathedrals of a close-knit community shall be forged therein.

Loretta Young’s Julia describing the borderline infatuation she felt with Dudley the Angel as “the greatest spiritual experience of my life” is a mood.

Watched on Thursday December 26, 2024.

Watched on Wednesday December 25, 2024.

Watched on Wednesday December 25, 2024.

Watched on Monday December 23, 2024.

When I learned the theatre more than an hour away from me is screening "When Harry Met Sally…" for its 35th anniversary, I knew I had to go. No buts, no ifs. I visited a bookshop beforehand, ate at a kebab and dondurma street stall while families laugh, watching their children get pranked before receiving their ice cream, then I wandered the city, carols blaring along the streets in duet with the squawking of crows as I heave in a sea of Christmas shoppers. There were less than 15 people in the theatre, but the laughs were infectious, more so the roars of the women during the fake orgasm scene, their claps when it ended, their smiles on the way out. While sitting in the bus on the way home, I knew I'll never write a better review for this film for the third time (first, second). But I thought about the heartwarming communal experience in that theatre. I thought about this love story of mine. You see, it also took nearly a decade. It was a good friendship until it got frayed in many places due to restless infatuation's swell into love, desire spilt itself there as we were split apart, not knowing how to be together, not knowing how to navigate these feelings without resorting to an easy way out. Like Harry and Sally, it took not talking to taking a phone call before returning to each other, and the rest is (hopefully) an unceasing declaration of an everlasting ion along time’s wear and tear; us as an old couple with our own interview segment on a love ever whole with the pieces of what we’ve been through and who we’ve become. In my first review, I said I didn’t believe in soulmates. Not sure I can still say the same without hesitation these days, if only because I think destiny kind of tinkered and appealed, influenced and spurred my story. Like Harry and Sally’s. Maybe there is an inexplicable, overpowering force that binds some people together. Maybe it is nothing but chance. Either way, sometimes it is years of pushing and pulling until one night you realise you cannot bear the thought of losing them, cannot imagine another day without them. So you turn around, run back as the clock ticks to a possible new start—imperfections, uncertainties, and all. Love is a series of surrendering and surmounting without losing ourselves while integrating another. Love is unbridled belonging.

“I came here tonight because when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

“Life can be wonderful.”
“You’re wonderful.”

Cozily snowed in with holiday sentiments, “I’ll Be Seeing You” also movingly melts with its week-long headway of falling-in-love. Two strangers in their supposed furlough from the prisons of violence celebrate the festive season in the push of familial circumstances only for them to wrestle unaddressed trauma amongst the wreathes and the presents. She’s a prisoner. He’s a soldier. And in this time of war, internal wars are also fought. Lies are uttered to omit shameful truths and create desired personas as they slowly find quiet alleviation in each other’s company opposite the crippling worries of an overcast future, the entrapping present of feverish panic attacks. Simultaneously, the portrait of Honest Abe is an accusing sight, because behind the cheery carols, the abundant food, and the yuletide gestures lie their inevitable return to the decrees they serve; her the sentence, him the military. As the new year starts, there is a melancholic air flurrying across feelings suppressed near departure. But hearts fated together eventually beat in unison like stones thrown to hit the lamppost with a clinking echo of unconditional acceptance after the fear of honesty’s ramifications. And so “I’ll Be Seeing You” isn’t goodbye, it is until-the-next-time within the vow of waiting, for this winter may end with a parting, but there are many winters yet, and one day it will be a season of togetherness, a day of release, a resumption of tenderness. For now, let love descend on their heads. Let them kiss to last until later. Let them kiss to last a lifetime. Let it snow. 

Of course I would’ve liked this less if it wasn’t the holidays.

To simply call Brocka's "Bona" a tale of feminist revenge is reductive. Its spectacle of female martyrdom is tightly sewn with the sharp, swaying filaments of fanaticism hypnotising Philippine society. Opening with The Feast of the Black Nazarene, where millions of Filipinos flock for the procession, their cloths and towels at the ready to wipe the cross-carrying Son of God's stony skin for a sought-after miracle, we see Bona looking from afar before she visits a film set to get a glimpse of Gardo, a philanderer good-for-nothing bit player she's a fan of. Between breaks, she offers him snacks and bottles of soda akin to a devotee placing offerings at the foot of an altar for their prayers to be answered. Prayers for his attention. Shortly, their relationship transitions to a nearness propelled by an unwavering blind faith after Gardo is beaten black and blue by thugs he wronged. Bona's wiping of his bruises, her scrubbing and soaping him during every bath is Filipinos wiping the graven image of Jesus Christ; the worship of figures made of stone. She waits/hopes for a miraculous reciprocation, while he is an unfeeling man, unkind and cruel to her as she decides to live with him, throwing away her middle-class upbringing for the poverty of adoration.

Their domestic arrangement is a Freudian habitat. Bona becomes the caretaker and the helper and the breadwinner, the replacement of Gardo’s dead mother. It is a continuation of an unhealthy maternal dependency. He does not want her. He only uses her. Sex is an unpaid service as much as her labour. Meanwhile, other men in her life are nearly as brutal, physically, laying a hand on her because of what they deem to be her loss of chastity. She projects what she wanted men to be on Gardo, only to be subjected to mental and emotional brutality. Brocka critiques female subservience albeit without the compelling jolt of “Insiang.” Bona’s choice is largely encouraged by the nation’s patriarchal structure. If she married, she will nearly do the same: cook, clean, attend to the theoretical husband and children. Yet, this choice also encomes the mechanism of idolatry that has presided over Philippine society. Politicians are made into celebrities. Celebrities are made into politicians. Like the grossly pampered Gardo, the paraded Black Nazarine statue, they’re, again, also made of stone, insensitive to Filipinos’ suffering, while Filipinos continue to dab these faux carvings of hope for a transformative phenomenon in their hard lives. There’s a scene where women pray in a dingy chapel, while men sing The Beatles’ When I'm Sixty-Four a few metres outside. It’s a comical juxtaposition of religions made out of different icons. God is pop vaudeville is man is god. In this day and age where influencers and frenetic adherents pack every reel, every app, every site, “Bona,” though feeble in some of its melodramatic plot thrusts and turns, transfixes with its abiding relevancy.

“Bona” concludes with seething silence as its breathing draws closer to the shock of violence. It is impossible not to think of Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,” and, to an extent, Kaurismäki’s “The Match Factory Girl” with its use of exhausting routine as the propellant of female wrath. Bona is roused out of the foolishness and the fandom with the boiling bathwater poured, which excoriates the appearance, the attraction. One can only hope Filipinos will follow suit; for defiance is sometimes a decocting act. It should scar and burn, defacing the idol, defacing the worshipped.

Caught the new 4K restoration. Compression’s great, but the muffled audio needs work. People were checking their phones repetitively again. They won’t survive Jeanne Dielman. A woman also asked her bf or whatever after smooching and embracing him throughout the runtime, “Did you understand the movie?” Maybe if you paid attention on the screen and not on his face??? + ½ star.

Watched on Saturday December 21, 2024.

Tremors of impermanence reverberate across Neo Sora's wistful coming-of-age film "Happyend." A group of friends in their last year of high school held together by their love of techno music undergoes a slight dissonance, a strain of disconnection as each braces for the next phase of their lives. Central to the group are childhood best friends Korean immigrant Kou and Japanese native Yuta as they slowly drift apart from each other at the former's gradual political awakening. While politics mostly comes second in the film—thus, uneven amidst its sincerity—it exposes Japan's polite xenophobia and forewarns of technological dangers as their high school becomes a societal microcosm of a surveillance state after the vandalisation of the principal's mustard sports car. Cameras are installed along hallways, atop stairwells, and in classrooms, monitoring students and giving them demerits upon detection of mistakes and acts of rule-breaking. These are broadcast on a very large screen mounted on the school building, almost akin to a public execution as students are shamed for everyone to see, and they respond in different ways. Others rebel, while some believe its necessity. But technological verdicts are greatly flawed. Their black-and-white algorithm never considers the complexities of intentions and situations. (In one scene, a PE teacher gets demerits for confiscating cigarettes from students the camera can't detect.) It is textbook negative authority, where power is utilised for self-interest to restrict freedom in the guise of safety. No privacy is allowed, because to be private is to harbour opposition. And later on, unnaturalised students are further othered, viewed as risks opposite the safety the establishment touts. Somehow, one can't help but notice an allusion to the right's concoction of crises as they devise panic over fabricated threats of progress against dearly upheld conservatism. Without nullifying the terrors of mass surveillance, Sora scatters slapstick humour in mockery of humanity's complete trust on their own defective creations, their programmed counterparts.

Earthquake looms with its threatening rumbles in "Happyend." Its people are aware of the impending calamity, but they are not exactly prepared and choose to duck under tables or hold on to pillars thought to be sturdy. There is fear of the unseen after. There is certainty lives won't be the same after. In some manner, it occupies the same plane as the students conditioned to be accustomed to the new normal, its impact on current and also future batches not gauged. How this is only the first step in a series of steps to take more control and bend autonomy. Aftershocks of oppression, if you will. Imminent changes also ripple around the end of the school year, much similar to the earthquake as a matter of when and not if. However, what leaves a gaping void in this bildungsroman of sorts is this receding youth, the necessary awakening of one's political consciousness against the tyrannous workings of the world, this teetering sense of belonging in a place unable to fully accept this "racial impurity," and the inevitable distances and fades brought by time, its hands sculpting the changes. Like in real life, some friendships never fully recover in "Happyend" although they are buoyed with gratitude and a nostalgic pinch of playful affection in ed affinity amidst the separation, this farewell brought on by differing pulls of maturity. Some bonds are significant transitory periods towards unforgettable memories, their glue weakens to form the full breadth of who we are. 

Fortunate to attend a screening with a Q&A with the director. That's a first for me. Will definitely watch Sora's next feature film as "Happyend" made a good impression. Fire soundtrack too. And I only recently discovered he's Sakamoto's son and directed "Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus."

Bare, unowned third spaces as the transient dwelling of repressed desires and desired deaths, lodged in urban isolation, where an unfaltering lassitude sweeps from the streets to the unlocked door, the laid upon floor, the surrounding walls. Three people come and go, at first in separate rooms, then meeting in twos, hiding alone, easing the pang of loneliness with bedside and bathtub possibilities, an emptiness filled with anything in reach, in proximity. Each of them sells each other's wants and lacks, their uninhabited lives intersect in occupying pleasure without total gratification. A real estate agent, an ossuary salesman, and a street seller of dresses. Houses are showcased to strangers when one's own flat doesn't have a working heater, when there is no home, when there's nowhere to stay. Lines of urn boxes for the dead are pitched when the wrist only bled without drying the veins. Several dresses are spread on a cloth to be bought when sexuality can only be worn and not kept and displayed, its height the stilettos, its sway the dress. Under the bed, on the unsheeted mattress, in front of porno magazines, this three-way intimacy is never quite grasped but only grappled amidst carnal appetite. Dried seeds are pried open like the parting of the legs, while a watermelon is kissed, rolled on the wooden floor until it hits the corner of the wall, breaking open to reveal not the flesh of red but this green, this new hunger, chomped with relish together with its moist seeds. It is the urgency of unexplored queer yearning, here stowed away under the straight sex, the silent hitch of the breath below as above the loud bounce of bedsprings, of bodies entering, inserting. An earroticism. The endless dragging of cigarettes in public opposite the tugging inside the underwear beneath the bed, the unnoticed glances. Queer yearning as a third party, lost amongst the norms and pared traditions, climbing the peak of torment when the desired is sleeping and stared at, while the one desiring is restrained, tightly clasping the hem of the coat, before turning around, hesitant yet eventually giving in. The light brush of lips on lips carries the heaviness of all they could never be, a touch that can’t completely touch, a want that could never be sated, only grazed. Long live love in this city of discontentment, its fleeting visit a perpetual forage for a lasting connection, an uncontrollable cry, a continuous moan; seconds of pleasure, days of pain. Long live love for sometimes it’s an unfinished park of zigzag desires, waiting to be completed, waiting for city dwellers to sow and scatter themselves in its tuck of soil of engulfing modernity. 

Happy 30th anniversary to this film. Lucky enough to catch it on the big screen. The audience laughing at the dress scene was eh. People checking their phones time and time again probably prevented full appreciation. Anyway, grateful for mutuals who pushed me to see this. Yes, will see more Tsai.

The cultural melting pot is stirred to a boil as racial tensions flare on the broilers of exploitation in "La Cocina." In the middle of New York City, cooks, waitresses, and dishwashers are sautéed to an unsavoury atmosphere in the tourist trap restaurant The Grill. While its dining area is lavish, every corner well-lit and neat, the back kitchen is cramped, the hallways leading to it dim as if an underground, almost serpentine, narrow, and hermetic. It’s the plight of illegal immigrants in architectural form. These people are uprooted from their motherland over allegiance to the promise of the American Dream, and in such a crowded space they work in rapidity, fulfilling one order after another without seeming end, the soda deluge from a broken dispenser—sweet on their feet as their day is sour—doesn’t slow the turnaround. Hygiene regulations be damned.

As undocumented immigrants from Latin America mingle with working-class Americans, (non-)citizenship dictates the dynamics as much as the ethnicity. Some 800 bucks lost from the cash anyone could’ve stolen is an instrument to pit some of them against each other as the notion of one’s “Americanness” is challenged not only as a birthright but as a continental connotation. These dynamics extend to the romance between a Mexican illegal immigrant and a white woman. There is an examination of gender relations within stereotypes and conventions, culminating in the walk-in freezer scene of the pair, where the sexual talk accompanying the sex as one speaks in Spanish without the other completely understanding the language communicates the inability to fully commiserate with each other’s experiences. The white woman is also raised as the standard, while the Mexican clings to his machismo. Together they see themselves as lovers. Together they are seen as a relationship of convenience, a pathway to legal immigration.

“La Cocina” is a place of rage in low heat until it inflates into a sweltering fury. Comic provocations escalate to horrific aggressions. But it’s a film that takes on a lot of ingredients it thinks to be good, organic quality—its inclination to be experimental—only to serve a dish too tangy and spicy it burns the throat (and at times, the eyes). Its pivotal sequence during the kitchen staff’s break is a prerequisite for a supposedly gleaming revelatory conclusion, only to glimmer with bathetic predictability. Despite that, there is something cathartic in the film’s spectacle of wrath, the large garbage bin with its rubbish dirtying “La Cocina,” the exhaustion against everything appearing upstanding when it’s absolute corruption. When all are lobsters tied and dropped down a pretty aquarium, the beauty that is the USA, crawling at the bottom to be fetched later, peeled and cooked for the rich, when all are meat knifed and fried in the cook-room of American capitalism, smashed then is the thermal printer. The order receipts cease, light blinking green. Green of money. Green of deceit. Perhaps, even the green card. Yet it also laves the figure of madness from head to toe. Such an alien light. How easy it is to be foreign in a country resolute to only acknowledge and accept the influential, greedy, powerful few.

Mainly here for Rooney Mara. Don’t ask why it’s so long. I can’t sleep.

“By the Stream” flows along a certain kind of narrative vagueness and into the bend by the oblique. Yarns of its water are braided together for the fabric of relations cannot be held entirely while three people wade there. Frequently submerged in their boozy mealtime conversations on art and life and food with a student theatrical skit directed on the side, feasts of the three fail to make an impression (on me) as Hong seems to situate us on the adjacent table, as if we’re only overhearing them without total certainty on the context and intent. In spite of that, this tale on getting back in touch with the art-making slipping into the love-making has its stirring moments within its emotional spillages beyond its autumnal shades, its sketches of autobiographical parodies. There’s a scene where the has-been actor (the uncle of the lecturer tasked to direct the skit) urges the students during dinner, amongst empty soju bottles, for an impromptu poetry on who they want to be after the disappointing theatrical performance. It is handled with much percipience by Hong. This would otherwise feel out-of-place, awkward in the hands of other directors. This poetic desire of becoming the most human version of ourselves courses through “By the Stream,” so is creating the most out of the places we eventually find ourselves in as we clutch deformed aspirations, unrealised dreams, and past glories. Life’s all textiles and canvases, and it is up to us how to weave and paint the rest.

Existence is an endless battlefield for survival. Wars fought for the deteriorating body against the terminal illness, this unrelenting foe, at times land Phyrric victories, other times an unrecoverable loss, a withdrawal from the age of time. But this campaign towards the end is inundated with profound agony as the flesh eats itself away, tearing off every piece of the self into pathetic unrecognisability. To surrender early before it mercilessly strikes you into a desolate rind, malignant to the organs, tissues, and bones, is not cowardice. To surrender early is to preserve your dignity. Defeat by chosen death doesn’t negate the triumph of life. Eager to lounge on its deck chair, bathed in its winter warmth somehow makes the thickets and flowers thrive, it deepens the colours enfolding the fading presence, the deflating breath. Mortality’s nearness somehow bequeaths solace as if everything you have lived for finally culminates into something that cannot be changed, cannot be taken away, because from here on out, living proliferates with a pause, it sprawls with a stall. So too the world prepares to die out in your hands, its civilisation always at the throes of self-destruction. And no one beats death in the long run. You only make a home of it, then inhabit it with someone venturous enough to bid farewell to a closed door, perhaps someone to read the final chapter through, anticipate the final act, put on the final film, and lounge on the other deck chair, be beside you, and be with you below. Then snow will fall, so too the body, and everything will be covered in its thick of white, thereafter resemblance is the afterlife, in its white the continuation of lives. I can only finish this with a line I most from the pages of Lispector’s unfinished yet greatest work (Almodóvar wrote a short introduction in its Penguin edition), A Breath of Life, written in the final stage of ovarian cancer: “Long live the dead because we live in them.” A moving contemplation on the lease of a happy death.

All the reds. All the greens. Every literary and cinematic and painterly influence. The delightful dark humour. The sublime soundtrack. Not for everyone unless you’re mostly an Almodóvar head. (I get the complaints!)

Death ceases the quietude of loving in routines of the every day. The morning coffee brewed together now only holds the taste of life in one cup. Breakfast currently sits on a single plate across a pair of chairs. The street market visited arm-in-arm, as heads slightly brush in the walk, becomes a trip alone without the other to hold. These are Angie’s days after the sudden ing of her long-time partner Pat. Stricken with grief in contrasting scenes of the then and now, she curls herself up in the small of the couch to never see the empty space on the mattress. She stares out the window with tears. She cries in a defunct phone booth. There’s nowhere to see and reach the beloved again. 

Death sours the relationships of the living too. Legal proceedings of Pat’s estate come into the fore, pushing Angie away from inheriting the flat they bought together due to the lack of will, the lack of marriage. But so do traditions and superstitions push Angie aside, degraded as mere friend in front of strangers as Pat’s brother is assigned as the executor of the will. Never mind that Angie and Pat had been partners for decades. Never mind that Angie knew Pat like the back of her hand. She’s continuously disregarded in insisting her partner’s burial wishes. She’s continuously put down in trying to fight for her share. There is artificial respectfulness from each of Pat’s relative in their attempt to manage Angie, their talk of legalities without consideration for a relationship they don’t see as valid, as legal. Each of them changes their tune once their need for money, for possession is displayed. 

The effort to further humanise these people by showing their tough, complicated lives doesn’t always work. Instead, it’s tonally jarring amidst realising they’ll act the same if this was a heterosexual relationship without a piece of paper. Only, a taint of prejudice is more persevering with its intentions. Then there are Angie’s parents too with their refusal to recognise the relationship, only thinking fondly of Pat for what she did for them, and not what she was for their daughter. Mourning for the dead is sometimes mourning the reality others shouldn’t be able to take away from you. 

Quiet anguish pervades throughout “All Shall Be Well.” Like the slant of light partially cast amongst the enclosure of towering buildings, hope is only glimpsed from below. It never grazes the ground. What heartens amidst the challenges is the sight of queer friends surrounding and standing up for Angie. With them she still has the Pat the family declines to know. With them love is unfeigned, draws its breath along the ripples of defiance. With them she still has a family. Unfolding with Ozuesque sensibility, the film’s reality is subdued but sharp, closing with recalling the depth of pleasant silence as the rain softly patters upon the trees, the grass. Nature nestles Pat and Angie in its deepest nook. A penny for enduring thoughts. A deep kiss for unfaltering devotion.

Maybe time evicts people to a different place for another kind of possibility, for them to keep what they’ve always had. 

Happy to see older lesbians. Angie’s butch friends ftw. The hets (derogatory) made me livid as fuck. One of them is racist too. We’re finally kicking off the film festival with this one.

“No politics on Thanksgiving!”

Familial dysfunction is carved and sliced in various ways on the dining table of “Home for the Holidays.” With its stuffing having a messy, pungent flavour, the Larson family gobbles it up they’re too full to move around, instead resting on disagreements and disappointments, creating a slightly awkward and mildly bitter atmosphere between parents, an aunt, a brother-in-law, and their three adult children in this torturous (yet unavoidable) one-day reunion. (“Clown family.” the head of the family says. No description of the Larsons is more apt than that!) Preserving appearances is also not included in the menu. Secrets are served without consideration. Eccentricities are in complete view. As everyone clashes and assents, they leave the ties of blood be without truly severing relations or making amends. “Home for the Holidays” is amusing in its whims and fancies. Dances happen out of the blue. Outrageous antics leap upon amusingly horrifying deeds. While the wedge between these people is learning of the son’s marriage to his male partner (it’s a consolation people respond better to that these days unless you live where I am), it gets very close to the essence of the holidays as it mulls over the years gone by. It recalls flights taken to depart and arrive where we are, these changing and unchanging parts of ourselves, the inevitability of getting old, our lives getting shorter. Nostalgia is hard at work here, so is gratitude amidst the chaos, the collision, the conflict. And then the film leaves, soaring through tapes of memories reeling along the drifting present of an imperfect existence. It’s not all about saying the right words or doing the right things. Sometimes, it’s all about showing up.

The great Anne Bancroft was so beautiful, so was straight-fringed Holly Hunter. Jodie Foster really did us lesbians a service here.

My love affair with film noir started after a break-up. I waded through unexplored regions of interest, wanting to be somewhere without any shadows, any traces of that failed relationship. Stumbling upon its best offerings, I was effortlessly seduced by its untamed women, dragged out like cigarettes between their manicured fingers, swirled like glasses of liquor near their lips. With a broody and moody disposition, and a bad penchant for isolation, I’ve also developed some kind of kinship with these noir men. The dark film for the dark period of my life. 

And like most love affairs, we have our ups and downs. Sometimes there are arguments. Sometimes there are periods of awe and periods of monotony. Now and then, I distance myself, because it feels like I’ve seen it all, and there’s nothing new to discover, nothing new to see. But there won’t be a separation, no. This is more of a testament to our stability, film noir and I. For this ain’t just for the dark period/s of my life now, it’s for the other ones, and those that will come after too. 

Thus, this list, this Neverending Noir. Made with great fondness for the genre / the style / the mood, some are not distilled but infused, a cocktail, an impression. Maybe the list will be ranked in the future if I get the courage to trust my own judgment. But for now, I’m content with the alphabetical (see: titles that usually have “big,” “kill,” et cetera). I’m content with adding titles until I perish (or this site goes down, whichever comes first).

Recommendations are always welcome!

• 711 Ocean Drive

  “Time wounds all heels.”

• Alphaville

  “I refuse to become what you call normal.”

• Angel Face

  “You know something? You're a pretty nice guy—for a girl.”

• The Asphalt Jungle

  “Why don't you quit cryin' and get me some bourbon?”

• The Bigamist

  “I can't figure out my feelings towards you, I despise you, and I pity you. I don't even want to shake your hand, and yet I almost wish you luck.”

• The Big Clock

  “White clocks, yellow clocks, brown clocks, blue clocks. Oh, Miss York, where are the green clocks of yesteryear?”

• The Big Combo

  “Well, if I'm not dead, you'll find me where I always am. In jail.”

• The Big Heat

  “Oh, well, you're about as romantic as a pair of handcuffs.”

• The Big Risk

  “The best thing about me is my left hook.”

• The Big Sleep

  “She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up.”

...plus 126 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

For J so love Cinema she maketh this one and only list… or so it goes.

Not necessarily the perfect 5s but those brushing, sculpting upon personal complexities and struggles and anxieties, exposing my own imperfections, this society moulding me, and me trying to prevent it from doing so. Those that caressed my brain and my emotions, or simply those that remind me of life’s delights, or help me forget life’s stresses, while lots affirm it as well. Some need reappraisals, many are known classics. A few are causes for intrigue. Some are immersed in despair, others give hope. In part, the list is a travelogue too, a road trip or a voyage or a sail to places I haven’t been and cultures I’m not familiar with, and to places I have been, a return to the past, a peek of the future, an experience of another present. 

Like biblical gospels, the list is full of contradictions and absurdities. Of course, it’s also prone to several edits, and there’ll be removals and additions throughout this minuscule existence of mine.

• 35 Shots of Rum
• 45 Years
• Ad Astra
• Aftersun
• Alcarràs
• All About My Mother
• All of Us Strangers
• All or Nothing
• Alphaville
• Amour

...plus 146 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I’ve yet to log the remaining two films for 2023, but I’m creating this list in the hopes that it will pull me out of my movie slump.

Here are my priority films for this year. As always, reasons for the film’s inclusion are in the Notes.

Previous Lists: come undone, 2021 | film fondue, 2022 | set me free, 2023

Ave. Rating: —

• Breaking the Waves

  Everyone says I will love this film. But will I really?

• Butterfly

  A film from Spain.

• Chess of the Wind

  Post-death female power?

• Death of a Bureaucrat

  Cuba and Crime.

• Family Diary

  i dig me a portrait of familial ambivalence.

• A Free Woman

  It sounds depressing.

• July Rain

  Monsoon season flavour.

• Kes

  Introduction to Ken Loach.

• La Belle Noiseuse

  Something long. Something challenging. Also: Emmanuelle Béart.

• The Last Laugh

  Will I have the last laugh?

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Church bell rings in the middle of the night. religious vows were what they did with their lives. Oh Jesus dear you know you're still number one, but nuns they want to have fun. Oh nuns just want to have fun♫

I hereby profess my love for nuns by making this list (it’s such a regretful thing Joan Crawford didn't get a chance to play a nun role—a blasphemy!)

I'll only add films with an average of 3 stars and up. thanks for all the recommendations!

• Angels of Sin
• Apparition
• April in Love
• The Bells of St. Mary's
• Benedetta
• Beyond the Hills
• Black Narcissus
• Come to the Stable
• Damned If You Don't
• Dark Habits

...plus 27 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Ranked by Performance (Notes Included Post-Top 10)

To Watch (as of 03-Jun-24):
Mini Series:
- Bleak House
- The Spoils of Babylon

Feature Films:
- A Christmas Carol
- Maestro
- Saltburn
- Wildwood

Updates
09-Feb-2021: I have liked a lot of actresses. But so far I haven't finished anyone's filmography although I've nearly been there with Rooney Mara and Joan Crawford. Now, I'm challenging myself to finish Carey Mulligan's. to be fair, her filmography isn't very big and it seems very doable. 31 films overall? Might be a piece o' cake? Watch me choke on it. anyway, I'm devoting my Mondays to her until I've seen everything. Letterboxd indicates I have 26 films left so that gives me approximately 7 months to complete them. I'll finish them around Sep / Oct. and I’ll rank them by then.

09-Nov-2021: Finished Carey’s feature films so I’m ranking them. Hoo-ha.

Q&A
1. Why will this be during Mondays only?
I get tired easily if I watch an actor's films in succession. then I tend to look for a different actor. spacing them out will give a higher probability of completing them.

2. Why Carey Mulligan?
Why not?

3. What is the truth?
I've never seen a bad performance from her so far. welll, I also like her voice; she has a dimple. :’-)

4. Do you still like Rooney Mara?
Yes, stop asking dumb questions.

5. She kinda resembles Rooney Mara, look at these: image a, image b
No?? Someone’s visually challenged… or maybe I just have a type...

1. Wildlife
2. Promising Young Woman
3. Shame
4. The Great Gatsby
5. Far from the Madding Crowd
6. National Theatre Live: Skylight
7. An Education
8. Inside Llewyn Davis
9. The Dig
10. Suffragette

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

just Joan things. iconic.

for reference: 
1. Sudden Fear
2. Possessed
3. Strait-Jacket
4. Autumn Leaves
5. Humoresque
6. Letty Lynton

• Sudden Fear
• Possessed
• Strait-Jacket
• Autumn Leaves
• Humoresque
• Letty Lynton

On year three of my priority list, I will be more strategic and disciplined and punctual (yeah no one here believes that). Presented without further ado: 30 films for 2023. Notes indicate reasons for their inclusion.

(Overall goal is to watch at least 3 films per week, because life is [un]happening.)

Previous Lists: come undone, 2021 | film fondue, 2022

Ave. Rating: —

• An Autumn Afternoon

  Reorientation with Ozu at a different point in my life.

• Balkan Spy

  Title alone gives me intrigue.

• The Banishment

  That poster. That synopsis.

• Benilde or the Virgin Mother

  Immaculate Concepcion of a bourgeois? Count me in.

• Beyond Oblivion

  Romancing the doppelgänger?

• Boyfriends and Girlfriends

  First Rohmer was a disappointment. Second Rohmer was a sad delight. Third film should help form a concrete opinion: is he a hit-and-miss, or a one-time miss?

• Camera Buff

  Looks like cinephilia at work.

• Claudine

  Selected film for more diversity.

• The Color of Paradise

  Watch another Majid Majidi film challenge.

• Crossing Delancey

  Recommended film. Directed by a woman.

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Created this list to compile all the films I have pertaining to/made during the now-defunct Eastern Bloc.

Countries
Poland, Hungary, East , Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Ukraine today), Bulgaria, Albania, and Romania

• Adoption
• Axiliad
• Birth Certificate
• Carriage to Vienna
• Confidence
• The Cremator
• Current
• Diamonds of the Night
• The Ear
• The Fabulous Baron Munchausen

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

After my struggle to finish last year’s list, what with my work and all that, where I jammed all the remaining films during the month of December to catch-up, I would be less ambitious this year. And I also want to focus on other areas of my life. So here are my 30 priority films for 2022, in no particular order. Notes indicate their reasons for inclusion. 

Ave Rating: 4.0
Unrated: “La maman et la putain” (not included in the ave. rating)

Friends’ Similar Lists (for tracking purposes):
Brian | laila

Review Links
01/09 - A Patch of Blue
01/17 - Written On The Wind
01/30 - Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
02/08 - Chameleon Street
03/22 - Kisapmata
04/18 - Rome, Open City
05/02 - The Circle
06/02 - Céline
08/07 - Nueve cartas a Berta
08/26 - Mon oncle Antoine
10/07 - Poem of the Sea
10/15 - The Day I Became A Woman
11/05 - Killer of Sheep
11/06 - Life, and Nothing More...
11/14 - Cameraperson
11/20 - Dead Man’s Letters
12/04 - Rust and Bone
12/08 - Boat People
12/09 - 3:10 To Yuma
12/15 - Daughter of the Nile
12/16 - The Round-Up
12/18 - Casa de Lava
12/22 - The Big City
12/23 - Landscape in the Mist
12/24 - Center Stage
12/26 - Leviathan
12/28 - Raise the Red Lantern
12/29 - The White Ribbon
12/30 - La maman et la putain
12/31 - Morvern Callar

• Landscape in the Mist

  Time to see my first Theo Angelopoulos film.

• Rome, Open City

  I’ve been eyeing this trilogy for so long now.

• Life, and Nothing More…

  Time to finish The Koker Trilogy methinks.

• Killer of Sheep

  Recommended film for more diversity.

• Leviathan

  Synopsis looks good.

• Céline

  Looks like lesbianism to me.

• The Big City

  Indian cinema is a blindspot, so here we are.

• A Patch of Blue

  Recommended film for more diversity.

• Raise the Red Lantern

  A year without Gong Li is a year without sunshine.

• Center Stage

  Maggie Cheung Hive Rise.

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

35 priority films for 2021 with notes for the reasons of their inclusion (in no particular order). Only 35 films because I’m a moody person. 

Ave. Rating: 3.83
Unrated: “Man With a Movie Camera” and “Julien Donkey-Boy” (not included in the ave. rating)

Review Links
01/17 - Il Posto
01/20 - The Return
01/30 - House of Hummingbird
02/06 - Eve’s Bayou
02/13 - Cría cuervos...
02/23 - 35 Shots of Rum
03/10 - The Past
03/23 - Songs from the Second Floor
03/31 - Oda sa Wala
04/13 - Adoption
05/07 - La Promesse
06/05 - Julien Donkey-Boy
06/27 - Tristana
08/05 - Make Way for Tomorrow
08/15 - Summer Interlude
09/06 - Central Station
09/30 - Ballad of a Soldier
10/18 - The Match Factory Girl
11/07 - Babylon
12/10 - Fresh
12/11 - The Spirit of the Beehive
12/12 - Golden Eighties
12/13 - The Cremator
12/14 - Man with a Movie Camera
12/15 - One Sings, the Other Doesn’t
12/16 - Do The Right Thing
12/17 - 3 Women
12/18 - Song to Song
12/19 - The Master
12/20 - A Man Vanishes
12/21 - Metropolitan
12/26 - Soy Cuba
12/27 - Personal Problems
12/28 - A Brighter Summer Day
12/29 - La Chinoise

• A Man Vanishes

  compared to Kiarostami's Close-Up

• 3 Women

  Robert Altman introduction

• One Sings, the Other Doesn't

  finish Agnès Varda's filmography challenge

• Ode to Nothing

  watch a film from my native country challenge

• La Promesse

  intriguing synopsis

• Summer Interlude

  what is a year without Bergman?

• House of Hummingbird

  may be a good coming-of-age film that deals with sexuality. hopefully I'm right

• The Return

  smells like daddy issues

• Songs from the Second Floor

  apparently part of a so-called Living Trilogy where the third instalment may have something to do with pigeons (?)

• Golden Eighties

  time to see another Akerman film

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

it’s been a long time coming, but here’s my top 10 - 2019 releases. I forgot to log Hidden Life more than a year ago, a rewatch is necessary. dunno why I didn’t create this list last year either.

1. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

   “not everything is fleeting. some feelings are deep.”

2. Ad Astra

   “ I am looking forward to the day my solitude ends. and I'm home.”

3. Parasite

   “they are rich but still nice.”
   “they are nice because they are rich.”

4. Marriage Story

   “I fell in love with him two seconds after I saw him. and I'll never stop loving him, even though it doesn't make sense anymore.”

5. The Irishman

   “it is what it is.”

6. Beanpole

   “where would he have seen a dog? they’ve all been eaten.”

7. A Hidden Life

   “there’s a difference between the kind of suffering we can't avoid and a suffering we choose.”

8. Pain and Glory

   “love is not enough to save the person you love.”

9. Varda by Agnès
10. Bacurau

    “what are the people of Bacurau called?”
    “people!”

I tell most people 2018 has been an underwhelming year for films but it’s really not. the jokes on me.

I also should be more generous in giving 5 stars but I’m measuring each film based on how Carol made me feel. it’s like the best lover you had and you compare to them every lover after so nope, that doesn't help.

1. The Favourite

   "you smell like a 96-year old French whore's vajuju"

2. Shoplifters

   "sometimes it's better to choose your own family."

3. Suspiria

   "I am mother."

4. Roma

   "I didn't want her."

5. The Miseducation of Cameron Post

   "I’m tired of feeling disgusted with myself."

6. Cold War

   “we can’t be together.”

7. Madeline's Madeline

   “it’s a metaphor.”

8. Wildlife

   "I wish I was dead. if you’ve got a better plan for me tell me. maybe it will be better than this."

9. Non-Fiction
10. 1985

    “you may need to be in another place to be happy and you know what, that's okay."

here are my top 10 films of 2017. they look sort of weird and two years after Carol, none got a 5-star still.

1. Phantom Thread

   "To keep my sour heart from choking. To break a curse. A house that doesn't change is a dead house."

2. A Ghost Story

   "I'm waiting for someone." / "Who?" / "I don't ."

3. The Shape of Water

   "Unable to perceive the shape of you, I find you all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with Your love, it humbles my heart for you are everywhere."

4. Faces Places

   it's Varda. enough said.

5. The Florida Project

   "You know why this is my favorite tree?" / "Why?" / "'Cause it's tipped over, and it's still growing."

6. Columbus

   "I don't know if I believe that, you know? That architecture has the power to heal."

7. Lady Bird

   "Some people aren't built happy, you know."

8. Coco

   "I am not like the rest of my family. There’s something that makes me different."

9. Get Out

   "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

10. Call Me by Your Name

    "In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!"

was it too late to create this list? I believe so but I did it anyway since it's better late than never. I have always been an outlier with my odd preferences so I guess this ranked list sort of reflects that. no 5-star film for 2016 'cause I'm a ridiculously fastidious bitch (would probably take another Carol for that).

1. Arrival

   "If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?" / "Maybe I'd say what I felt more often. I don't know."

2. Moonlight

   "What's a faggot?" / "A faggot is... a word used to make gay people feel bad." / "Am I a faggot?" / "No. You're not a faggot. You can be gay, but you don't have to let nobody call you a faggot."

3. La La Land

   "People love what other people are ionate about."

4. Swiss Army Man

   "If my best friend hides his farts from me then what else is he hiding from me, and why does that make me feel so alone?"

5. Elle

   "Shame isn't a strong enough emotion to stop us from doing anything at all. Believe me."

6. The Handmaiden

   "Women love to play with fate."

7. Toni Erdmann

   "You have to do this or that, but meanwhile life is just ing by."

8. Things to Come
9. Manchester by the Sea

   "I can't beat it. I can't beat it. I'm sorry."

10. Jackie

    "There comes a time in man's search for meaning when he realises that there are no answers. And when you come to the horrible and unavoidable realization, you accept it or you kill yourself. Or you simply stop searching"