rewatched Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma, 2019): 5/5

do you ever just want to die after watching a film not because it made you sad but because you don't want to lose any of the emotions it made you feel and keep them with you forever exactly as they are and you don't know any other way to make that happen?

i've seen this film in theaters a record-breaking 11 times. I told Celine I wanted to give her/this movie all my money. Here are pictures of us along with Adele Haenel and Noemie Merlant at a screening at The Landmark: 

The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin, 2015): 3/5

Guy Maddin's Journey to the Center of the Cinema. Volcanoes and wolves and flames and clouds woven through a fossilized digital presentation of a celluloid dreamscape. Various scenarios lead to rituals, tangents, expressions, and grand displays of feeling. Watching this is like discovering a nesting doll in the middle of a rabbit hole which happens to all be occurring in a dream that you're having while you're passed out on the floor of a local Taco Bell. Exquisite yet exhausting.

A Million Little Pieces (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2018): 2/5

Do you want to see Aaron Taylor-Johnson's penis? Do you want to see Giovanni Ribisi's penis? How about both at the same time? Ho boy, do I have the movie for you.

Amounts to little more than a well-intentioned but unpersuasive echo of a deeply problematic memoir.

Honey Boy (Alma Ha'rel, 2019): 3/5

you inherit your parents' trauma but you will never fully understand it

Wrinkles the Clown (Michael Beach Nichols, 2019): 1/5

Or, How I Learned to Stop Parenting and Hire The Clown

What a waste of a great story. Bogged down by filler material, handholding, and not-so-big ideas. Children are the real monsters.

Peppermint Soda (Diane Kurys, 1977): 3.5/5

Charming and sweet, goes down smooth and easy.

My Life as a Zucchini (Claude Barras, 2016): 4/5

I was impressed with Barras's commitment to ugliness and sorrow, something that once characterized a great many stories for children but has mostly been sanitized out - especially since Walt Disney. Great little film (only 70 minutes), and written by my fave Celine Sciamma to boot.

rewatched Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009): 5/5

"I wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer days. Three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain."

rewatched American Movie (Chris Smith, 1999): 5/5

Not just the content but the rhythm here screams "mockumentary," so loudly that I checked to be sure Smith hadn't confessed at some point over the past 20 years, despite knowing there's no way I'd have missed that news. Still hilarious as all hell.

Chernobyl (Johan Renck, 2019): 4.5/5

Or, Tinker Tailor Nuclear Lies

The complete harmony of narrative, creative, and technical only serves to further accentuate the utter chaos of the momentous misconduct at the core of the greatest man-made disaster in history. CHERNOBYL belongs to a limited pantheon of media that masterfully engages both factuality and dramatization to deliver the truth within total catastrophe. What creator/writer Craig Mazin achieves is nothing short of astounding, balancing elements with a deft script that explores action and consequence with immense regard for every facet of the tragedy and its unfathomable fallout. Aided by the equally brilliant work from director Johan Renck and the stellar talent of the assembled cast and crew, Mazin's drama comes to life with haunting results. It effectively conveys just how close we approached sheer annihilation while emphasizing the appalling tendencies of those who willingly keep us teetering on that edge. A masterwork of perspective and relevance that's as much an elegy as it is a warning.

 rewatched Stevie (Steve James, 2002): 5/5

Still one of the most anguished and tragic docs I’ve ever seen. I went from shaking my head at Stevie’s family, to shaking my head at him, to finally feeling genuinely worried and saddened about what might happen to him in the end.

For Sama (Waad al-Kateab, Edward Watts, 2019): 3/5

People who take a hard stance against taking in refugees should be required to watch this.

An Elephant Sitting Still (Bo Hu, 2018): 3/5

This film is the color of ice.

Clocking in at four hours, this is about four individuals trying to escape their downward spiral in their futile lives, and whose director committed suicide soon after the film's completion. An elegy to the void spoken into an empty well, so empty you can hear your own thoughts echoing and reverberate back twice as hard. A treatise on the despair of living, of how the world remains a brutal industrial ruin.

This was great. I hope I never see it again.

What Happened, Miss Simone? (Liz Garbus, 2015): 3/5

A by-the-books, but totally competent documentary showcasing Simone's absurdly good repertoire, but it's not that fulfilling as a study of her as a human being. 

The Chambermaid (Lila Aviles, 2018): 3/5

Lila Aviles's debut feature is a portrait of a young chambermaid in one of Mexico’s elite hotels. From the unassuming opening she invites the viewer to almost voyeuristically observe the tasks which constitute her working day. A study in empathy, this film will test your patience if you aren’t willing to commit to its almost real time character study. There’s moments of quiet human brilliance, but if you’re hoping for some dramatic larger than life event, then this isn’t your movie.

Distant (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2002): 3/5

Wagons of hopelessness awash, ailing attempts at an escape stunted by the stillness of inadequate existences.

Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (Josephine Decker, 2014): 1.5/5

Too much provocation, not enough purpose. Lacks the clarity to make such disturbed material truly disturbing.

A Matter of Life and Death (Powell and Pressburger, 1946): 4/5

"Tell me, do you believe in the survival of human personality after death?"

"I don't know, I'd never thought about it, do you?"

"I don't know, I've thought about it too much."

Holiday (Isabella Eklof, 2018): 3/5

Has maybe the most graphic and terrible act of sexual violence I've seen in a film (more so than IRREVERSIBLE which is at least placed within a heightened cinematic space that allows a bit of distance. This is in your face objectivity, quiet and awful and normalized.) A slow burn, and I can't say one's patience is rewarded with anything other than resigned pain, but this is a powerful piece of work all the same. 

1917 (Sam Mendes, 2019): 2.5/5

this wants what dunkirk had.

and by that I mean harry styles.

Serviceable. Congrats on the whole one-take thing too, I guess.

Lords of Chaos (Jonas Akerlund, 2018): 1/5

This doesn't give a shit about black metal music, only in blandly sensationalizing a story about a couple of bad people who either did terrible things or encouraged them or both. Even if this tried to examine the music that they made or the reasons why they made it, which it doesn't, who cares?

Paradise Hills (Alice Waddington, 2019): 2/5

Or, Suspiria❣️ (dir. Katy Perry, 2019)

Shallow and forgettable. Feels like it missed its target audience a good decade too late; between the aesthetic and typical YA Movie dystopian plot this feels like it would have been hot shit for Tumblr teens in the late noughties.

The Death of Dick Long (Daniel Schienert, 2019): 2.5/5

Film about two idiots in a podunk town trying to cover up a murder. Has a Papa Roach reference, a character's ringtone is Down With the Sickness by Disturbed, and it ends with Nickelback. Ends up feeling like a white trash Southern Coens movie. I really like the movie poster though:

Knives Out (Rian Johnson, 2019): 3/5

The main attraction is, as expected, the incredible cast, which tears into the material with aplomb and hams it up like there’s no tomorrow. It’s fun, but also a really lovely production and a great excuse to get all these actors in the same room to be assholes to each other.

Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019): 2.5/5

They could have made way more money just straight up selling all the pills and K.