Non-seasonal comfort viewing as an extremely low stakes almost-slow-cinema version of the getting-the-band-together story. Exudes charm without being bothered to overdo anything. Extreme cinematic nonchalance is embodied in the impromptu lead singer's assured awkwardness (just realized that's Bae Doo-Na of the Host and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance?!) This has far far more Letterboxd views than I would have thought possible for something so unassuming.
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Berlin Alexanderplatz 1980
Somehow I managed to see this with almost no inkling of the structure besides the runtime, so I won't be the one to over-explicate it, but just as much as this is a story in "Thirteen episodes and an epilogue", it's equally a very particular feature film with a hyper-extended prologue. Very much a journey, and a taxing one in places, but there's something almost pleasant about surrendering to in all its messy, frustrating inner life. Until, time and again,…
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Knife+Heart 2018
A couple years ago, Maya and I got caught up in a conversation on a feature film we'd have tried to make if that was something we could reasonably do: a modern giallo rethinking where exclusively beautiful young men die, free to bask in the questionable aesthetics of death the genre trades in by flipping the codes. It seemed so obvious that we couldn't believe no one had done it, at least as far as we could think of. Well…
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Totally Fucked Up 1993
Someone warned me that this was about 85 percent teen angst, but they failed to tell me that the other 15 percent was postmodern video diary structuralism, complete with Dennis Cooper name check. And I can't not love that early Araki energy, or the way gay fiction of this era posits a universe where straight people are relegated to background plot points at best. One of the leads gets seduced by the promise of rare Nine Inch Nails bootlegs, but honestly the whole early 90s industrial/fuzz zeitgeist soundtrack is a delight.
