• Easy Rider

    Easy Rider

    ★★★★½

    Dennis Hopper invented a whole new way to edit scene transitions, a staccato echo across space and time, and then no one used that technique ever again. Because it was a dumb, acid-induced idea. But it still kinda works.

    There's a profound ambivalence here that makes Easy Rider a thornier and more interesting text than it might appear. It's more than iconography and a thundering soundtrack and a crazy jack nicholson performance. But not that much more, because it doesn't need to be. Favorite cut: the violence with which "If 6 was 9" ruptures out of "Don't Bogart That Joint."

  • Valse Triste

    Valse Triste

    ★★★½

    A bit puzzling tbh. Gunning 16mm.

  • Mothlight

    Mothlight

    ★★★★★

    Materiality incarnate. Moths gather at the light and fry themselves alive, and then they get projected and immortalized through light. Gunning 16 mm.

  • Mommie Dearest

    Mommie Dearest

    ★★★½

    Is trauma funny? Certain people who actually had narcissistic abusive parents say that this plays more like a documentary for them than a fun, campy cult curio. I was a little wary going in, but it turns out that yes, trauma is funny.

  • All My Life

    All My Life

    ★★★½

    Growing on me. Played twice. Tom Gunning 16 mm.

  • The Game

    The Game

    ★★★★

    Does he change for the better?

    In an early scene, Michael Douglas tells his waitress, "this used to be iced tea." She doesn't exist for him except as a piece of furniture that fills his needs. God, what a casual asshole thing to say. Imagine going through life like that.

    Anyways, near the end, after he's been humbled and broken, he berates a waitress for trying to serve him water with the top already unscrewed. But then as if realizing…

  • In the Mood for Love

    In the Mood for Love

    ★★★★

    Never been my favorite WKW, but has some of the most sensuous and rapturous scenes ever put on film. Rain pouring down, Yumeji's theme, Maggie Cheung walking up the steamy stairwell after her noodles, Tony Leung on the way down, the camera glides over to a pipe that shakes and sputters.

  • Cocaine Bear

    Cocaine Bear

    ★½

    Haha cocaine bear

  • Kings of the Road

    Kings of the Road

    ★★★★

    Writing is action, stories are partial, unknown—they remain to be told or not told. Seeing obstructed by mirror in the center of frame or by a van hiding trauma. Great shitting and masturbating, thanks Wim you freak! Fucking and burning mashed together, desire denied. Americans colonizing our minds, the American open road film transported to an old-world, war weary country that doesn’t always allow openness. Silly walks and shadow miming.

    "Dreaming was writing in a circle til I had the…

  • Bottoms

    Bottoms

    ★★★★½

    I miss when he would touch my hair and say shiny shiny shiny.

    So much fun! Between this and Theater Camp this is turning out to be a good year for comedy (You People and Joy Ride not included). Is it because these writers/directors are my age now and we just have the same sense of humor?

  • The Velvet Underground

    The Velvet Underground

    ★★★★

    That line about underestimating the importance of danger (after talking about how much they hate hippies).

  • Detour

    Detour

    ★★★★½

    Editing and scene transitions like a car weaving across the dotted line: car mirror> nightclub singing>back to car mirror> back to "present" where he's silent but a disembodied voice is narrating>back to dead body.

    Raindrops on the windows falling like tears. Dreaming releases a series of images fading incessantly into each other. Motion blur. First half of this movie is all forward movement into oblivion, and then it becomes all stasis, trapped in that hotel room like a rat in…