Don't let Gaspar's most humane film fool you. In Noé's world, where time destroys everything, the compassion is the cruelty. Vortex is a sharp departure from his usual brand of carnal violence, but it hollows you out just the same. To some degree, each work in his catalog explores the cruel division between the insignificance and fragility of human bodies, minds and lives and the profound significance each one has for all of us. We live within a dream, and…
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The Piano Teacher 2001
After falling head over heels for this film—a top first watch of last year—I found I didn't have much to say, relative to how much the movie spoke to me. Partially this was because on Valentine's Day 2021, Dallas was besieged by a snowstorm, and I spent the afterglow on my porch, having walked out onto the ice just like Erika. The next day we lost power because of that storm, so letterboxd got stuck with this goofy review, which…
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Tampopo 1985
In the quest for the ultimate meal, you can't skip a single step; the perfect flavor, the master chef, the ideal experience must be built from the ground up. Ingredients, recipes, technique, originality, are all critical components, but the stick-to-your-ribs good-to-the-last-drop, thank-you-ma'am-may-I-please-have-another shit? That's a different situation entirely. That takes love. Because what is food? It is an animal sacrifice, the fruits of the earth. Food is maternal love, and is the body itself, manifested in culture, routine, community and…
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Je T'Aime, Je T'Aime 1968
The only thing worse than bad memories
Is no memories at all
From the age of 20 to 22 I had five friends
None of whose names I can recall
And as I would walk down K Street to some temping job
As winter froze the life out of fall
Yeah, I must've been having a ball
Different scene outside your window now
Same VCR, same cats
Different people at the very same job
Similar alley, different ratsYou thought…
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Tenet 2020
Christopher Nolan is here to save cinema as we know it the only way he knows how, and in a way only his most fanatical devotees could love - an expensive looking, action-stuffed James Bond pastiche with funky video game mechanics. This movie has exactly two modes: ceaseless exposition and loud, convoluted setpieces, yet no matter how didactically it explains its physics to you, the mechanics never come close to making sense. It's horribly apropos that a third of the…
