They showed Cassavetes exploding THIRTEEN times! We counted. What an experience.
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Whisper of the Heart 1995
You haven't lived til you've watched a hundred people doing the Leo pointing thing in a theater as they recognize the inspiration for LoFi Beats Girl
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Encanto 2021
Enough has stuck with me about this to compel me to write about it. Mainly the fact that the movie enters unreal, metaphorical, even quasi-abstract spaces during its musical numbers -- which shouldn't be noteworthy, except I realized this so rarely happens with CG animated films. One reason I find movies in this style increasingly prosaic is how much they devote their technical advancements to realism -- matching physics, lighting, and the like to that of the real world --…
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The Beatles: Get Back 2021
Honestly a trip that, after crafting a generation-defining film trilogy and then slumming it for 15 years, Peter Jackson has pivoted to being basically the only filmmaker doing honest-to-god experimental stuff in mass-market-facing documentary. And not every experiment necessarily works -- it almost certainly could have been cut down, the lads are frequently just too smooth -- but I'd rather have the wonky series as it is than the safer version.
That said, not looking forward to the endless refrain of "Don't let me down! Don't let me dooooown" being an intrusive thought for the rest of my life.
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The Night 2021
Wandering the city after the party's over but you don't feel like going home. Tsai locates hypnotic natural mosaics in urban wall detritus -- graffiti, wear and tear, and especially the little shavings of posters and stickers that cleaners haven't been able to tear off. The last series of shots then makes turns this mosaic into a sort of kaleidoscope through the movement of lights and colors from the outside world as seen through this junk from inside an overpass. The kind of stop-you-in-your-tracks beauty you only encounter when zoned out half stoned and/or drunk and/or full of heartache at 3 a.m.
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Chameleon Street 1989
Hot damn someone not only did Catch Me If You Can over a decade before it came out but also folded canny racial dynamics into its analysis! Yet another casualty of executive racism and lack of imagination, though this time with a rather blunt case study -- the film won Sundance back when that actually sort of meant something, and then absolutely no one picked it up because they couldn't muster any vision for it. Better 30+ years late than…
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Party Girl 1958
Odd duck film in mostly interesting ways. A noir with extended musical interludes! (Which Ray was barred from directing, which kinda actually works for them, highlighting them as increasingly out of joint with reality.) Some dynamite stuff with color here; the dissolve from the dead roommate in a blood-filled tub to Charisse's deep red dress is jaw-dropping stuff. (As my theater-mate pointed out, the movie as a whole is hog-wild on dissolves.) Doesn't fully live up to its premise; Charisse's…
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Terra Femme 2021
Will likely end up as my favorite essay film of the year. Absurdly canny in its use of its archival materials and how it connects them to its thoughts. Travel as freedom. Travel as an imposition. Travel as privilege. Travel as colonialism. Travel as connection. Travel as fragmentation. Travel as educational. Travel as obfuscational. Postcards from the 20th century to us.
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Ferny & Luca 2021
Basically spins the comedy of remarriage as the comedy of "relationship status: complicated." It took something this warm and lived-in to make me realize that I usually can't connect emotionally with lo-fi indie film because it's too often weirdly aloof. None of that here, and it's absolutely delightful. First movie I've seen since moving out of NYC to make me miss NYC. And top-notch tunes as well, one of the too-few real stabs at a digital musical. Don't sleep on this one!
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Dune 2021
Okay so, it's not that the reputation the general Dune franchise has for being psychedelic or overtly weird is wrong. A ton of SFF of the 60s obviously hits more if, well, you take a hit. But I do feel like the Lynch film and Jodo concepts have led people (cinephiles) who haven't read the books to think of Dune as more "wacky" than it is. Sure, this interprets it with straightforward seriousness 100% in line with contemporary gunmetal sci-fi,…