The Odyssey (Christopher Nolan, 2026): 3/5

Saw it in 70MM IMAX down in Irvine, and I don’t think the film would have lost much if shot by a great cinematographer on "non" IMAX camera. Some amazing casting and performances. (Samantha Fucking Morton!!). Nolan’s shortcomings are still here (notably his women characters, Calypso strikes me as a missed opportunity), and the soullessness at the heart of his work will always keep him from realizing the outsized ambition he’s clearly driven by. And yet, the film has an undeniable appeal. It’s an interesting mix of modernist storytelling and old fashioned Hollywood epic making at a time when laziness and contempt for the audience has all but destroyed studio filmmaking.

Nolan’s obsession with smart men (but I have to say, his vision of Odysseus is pretty dumb-- this guy is the clever one, not a killing machine- and it underlines my old take once again that for a guy who clearly worships at the altar of intelligence, Nolan’s films aren’t all that smart) who unleash hell without meaning to is a worthy subject, but I’m curious if the current mess of the world will begin to change how he approaches that theme. Nolan likes us to think he’s questioning this patriarchal and brutal world he’s depicting but he always stops short of tarnishing his hero too much. He will show us Menelaus as a brute, but he avoids dealing with Odysseus obviously having a sexual relationship with Calypso while his wife has to remain chaste for decades. He's definitely improving as a filmmaker over time, maybe someday he'll get there.

Ever Vanishing Present (Toshihiro Matsumoto, 2017, 48mins): 3.5/5

"Why do I write? To leave proof that I lived?"

"I think, in a sense, I am really fortunate... to have memories that I want to keep."

"There were so many memories I wanted to keep. They are your life, after all."

I am not OK.

Monterey Pop (D.A. Pennebaker, 1968): 4/5

The performances may not be photographed under optimal conditions, but what a lovely portrait of a moment. I especially appreciate how much Pennebaker spends time on the faces of the kids who showed up. It made me think of the beautiful impermanence of it all. It also showed me how fictional filmmaking can never come close to the power of actually capturing a moment before it disappears forever.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (Baz Luhrmann, 2025): 3.5/5

A genuine ode to pure showmanship in its grandest tradition; Luhrmann's 2022 feature cleverly subverted its own spectacle by making Elvis the man transition into a cog in a wheel - a tool and creation of management, making the film as much about the birth of the modern entertainment industry as it was about Elvis as subject. This is far more straightforward when it comes to its subject though far more than a concert film, because Luhrmann intelligently intercuts interview footage and sound bites of Presley himself discussing his own life and history, so many of these songs take on a greater emotional resonance being juxtaposed with this material than they really would have by themselves. For this same reason it adds considerable substance to what a concert film can normally provide, and while it remains to be seen whether or not this becomes a benchmark for how concert films should be made, it absolutely should. Touching in other ways as well, because Luhrmann (is it reactionary to say this?) genuinely believes in celebrity and popular culture as something sincere, that people need icons to celebrate, that theater is as much carnival trick as it art, and that those things give people meaning.

BOOK NOOK

Compass (Mathias Enard, 2015)

This is the story of an academic’s sleepless night thinking about all the mistakes he’s made and…wait, where are you going? But seriously, it turns into a brilliant meditation on what western civilization even is without eastern civilization.