Editor, Outskirts Film Magazine
--
Will try to keep notes on what I'm seeing. (Dec 2022)
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
Enemy of the State 1998
Today it's basically obligatory to note how prescient this film's hysterical paranoia about the deep state turned out to be. And holy shit, yes—even manifesting in echoes like Jon Voigt's fascist NSA man being born on 9/11. But Tony Scott treats surveillance as a visual flourish first and foremost; this seems like the key transitional work for him, the point at which the various surveillance technologies that dominate his later films become, rather than mere textural appendages, an essential part…
-
Asteroid City 2023
A Wes Anderson movie without any serious laffs? Pass.
As a friend pointed out after the screening, it's really a lifeless pastiche of his other films. Rather than amuse or move us with a characterisation, gag, idea, he's content to evoke another, better version of the same characterisation, gag, idea from another, better Wes Anderson movie.
Popular reviews
More-
Music 2023
Oedipus and his discontents. Among other things, Schanelec is one of the few genuine heirs to Bresson's bone-dry sense of humour, in evidence throughout Music. Nobody at the world premiere was laughing (and most of them were seemingly too petrified by the official-ness of the event to walk out), but I was sitting directly behind Schanelec. I watched her nod her head almost imperceptibly in amusement at some of the "jokes" here.
I still think I prefer earlier Schanelec movies,…
-
Eureka 2023
Like a baptism. Or visiting a cathedral of cinema.
The middle section of Eureka, following police officer Alaina's (Alaina Clifford) daily work on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, is so singular and dense with detail that it is perhaps inevitable that once Alonso dramatically shifts gears in the final act—switching eras, characters, and even stylistic forms—that it would feel like a letdown. Thus in the past couple of days of thinking about the film, I tried as much as possible to resist…
