Letterboxd — Your life in film

wrong ideas are the stuff of life

few films emulate a dream well enough to earn descriptors of the surreal, hypnotic, hypnagogic, or indeed the dreamlike, yet what this does goes so far beyond sustaining illusion; what it really does is make all those descriptors instantly redundant. not unusual for me to be left wanting to melt into a similar film’s atmosphere, but bi gan’s are the first to actually give me that freedom, to allow me to slip into its slumber and let the current take me, to dream its dream alongside it. he can make you feel it all, experience anything.

Mostly inert as an undercover cop mystery and serial killer procedural, and I’m afraid it only fares a little better as a psychological character study. It’s certainly an interesting one but unnecessarily muddled by Friedkin’s reckless and also frankly meaningless attempts at ambiguity. But aesthetically? As far as creating a world out of mood and atmosphere goes this is excellent, dangerous, problematic filmmaking that probably beckons for a better handle on the script.

Bergman's got nothing on this!

Although I'm getting especially tired of contemporary European cinema lamenting the days of communist occupation and/or government, there does appear to be some fuel left in that tank, and honestly the bleaker the better at this point. Leave No Traces is one of the most despondent of its relatively mainstream kind, at least until fairly late on—but it's also frankly exhausting at this length—with little in the way of tangible sentiment beyond hopeless outrage against the brutal systemic violence and injustices of 1980s Poland.

2021

I dunno, baseless period dramas loosely tethered to the interior life of a musical genius from central Europe usually make for better biopics than your standard "prestige slop" but every generation can't have its Waltzes from Vienna, I guess.

2022

The Dead Don't Die, they won't, or they can't. And who are the dead but the working class, the proletariat, the only true romantics among us all. This is my first Kaurismäki, and based off the theatrical experience I had it will be the first of many. If not one of the best romances or comedies of the decade thus far, certainly the most deceptively "nice" movie I've seen in a long time.

2023

Only fitting that after nearly ten years of making triad movies about the infantry of the apparatus as well as the cops hunting them, both caught in the crossfire of assassinations, gang wars, and triad infighting, that Johnnie To would interrogate its pseudo-democratic traditions, the corrupting influence of power at its very head, and the unique form of violence that it brings.

Johnnie To | Yau Nai-hoi | Hong Kong

Almost an ecological travelogue through a China in a state of constant flux, upheaval, and modernization enfolding before the eyes of a woman as she navigates an ever-changing world, a universe so vast that we are simultaneously both freed and imprisoned by its expanses.

China

About as bleak and depressing as one could expect given the piece of Latvian history that’s being retold here, but in spite of scenic locations this doesn’t really do itself justice, the actual filmmaking is quite uninspired and with a screenplay that leans into maudlin nationalism more than the characters themselves I didn't find it nearly as affecting as I was hoping.

2023

A sprawling mess of interconnected characters and storylines that embellishes each one quite fairly—to a fault. In an attempt to tie a bow on the whole affair this not only runs out of steam but also makes an unnecessary logical reach when all is about to end well, just to give you a like-for-like conclusion fifteen minutes later. Up until this point it's more than adequate as a thriller, positing the question of how long you can keep this sort of narrative going before and without crashing, but it certainly isn't as funny or memorable as the styles it's evoking.

South Korea | 2020