A wide chemistry gap runs down the center of Continental Divide.
The film's set-up is an extended meet cute- a cigarette huffing Mike Royko type journalist hikes the Rockies to interview an eagle researcher while skirting the corrupt Chicago politicians he's exposed in his column. He's a hard nose city guy, she's an idealistic loner, he's out of shape and scared of forest critters, she's self sufficient and in touch with nature, what could they possibly have in common, etc.…
A.I. is a crushing experience.
It's been days since my rewatch and I can't shake it. This weird, messy, inexplicable film leaves me flabbergasted and devastated, where upon initial release it barely made an impression.
I wasn't ready for it.
It's an unbearably sad film which gets at the bittersweet, irreconcilable ache of human life in a way I've never quite experienced before- not only in film, but the visual arts in general.
Like many folks, this didn't quite land…
I'm a lover of modern ruins. I've watched endless videos on the ghostly wreckage of Detroit and collect books on abandoned Soviet Brutalist architecture. There's a bittersweet quality to massive structures, recently or semi-recently vibrant, that sit neglected and forgotten; they shift my brain to a strangely addicting, haunted liminal space.
I love dead malls most of all. I will lurk any weird, empty, half-dark mall I come across.
However, a dead mall isn't merely an avenue for oneiric bullshit…
“I look right in your eyes and all I see are a bunch of trashy daydreams”.
Smooth Talk has great mall scenes.
Stores like Tinder Box and Things Remembered, packs of soda-guzzling teens roaming the thoroughfares or perching like leering crows over mezzanine guardrails, incidental passing phrases like “nice buns” or “pop his bone”, the neon Penney’s logo hovering over a dark parking lot; the malls of my youth were exactly like this, and for extended moments I travelled back…
