msicism

Climax (Gaspar Noé, 2018)

Goddamn you, Gaspar.

Your work is often so rife with childish ideas and cheap provocation, it can be exhausting trying to appreciate your singular formal precision. I mean, there's no one else making narrative cinema right now that comes close to ...

Le Pont du Nord (Jacques Rivette, 1981)

What a joy. It's strange how few Rivette films I've actually seen, when compared with the amount of pleasure the ones I've seen have given me. With the exception of Celine and Julie Go Boating, I have only seen late Rivette thus far, those bein...

Something Old, Something New...

Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani? (Shinji Aoyama, 2005)

I'll admit, I don't quite get why Shinji Aoyama fell out of fashion. Perhaps it's a case of gaining popularity with a non-representative entry, creating expectations that were dest...

Walking On Water (Andrey M. Paounov, 2018)

This is a somewhat straightforward documentary from the Bulgarian filmmaker Paounov, whose previous work was a bit more on the essayistic side. Georgi and the Butterflies and especially The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories had a cert...

Turbulence (Ruy Guerra, 2000)

By almost anyone's reckoning, the 2000 Cannes Film Festival was in-SANE. In an average year, you're lucky to have maybe three, possibly four truly great films at the festival. But for whatever reason -- solid funding? pre-millennium tension? genetically...

Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972) / Jonas Mekas (1922-2019)

My viewing of Mekas's films has been a bit of a spotty patchwork. Of the confirmed masterworks, I have only just seen Reminiscences in full a few days ago, although I have seen large portions of it over the years. The same goes for Mekas's two ...

Daisy Kenyon (Otto Preminger, 1947)

There's a particular caveat one finds in David Bordwell's writing, one that always gives me pause. Bordwell observes that critics and theorists frequently trumpet this or that film as having some extraordinary aspect, without ever demonstrating that the...

"That's right! We won!"

So the people have spoken. Thanks for your help. 

As the great Nictate might put it, "Come at me, Daisy Kenyon."

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Terry Gilliam, 2018)

A few things need to be gotten out of the way. First, I'm not sure why this got such a horrid reception at Cannes. It's entirely possible, likely even, that the decades of legendarily plagued production on this film have created an aura of doom around i...

Time to Get Involved, Suckers.

I can't decide what I should watch next. Help me out, folks. Listed in no particular order:

Touch Me Not (Adina Pintilie, 2018)

For a film I really don't like, I have quite a lot of sympathy for Touch Me Not. It's a film that aims to explore the hidden depths of the erotic imagination, and how women in particular become repressed in their desires by social pressures and...

A Simple Story (Marcel Hanoun, 1959)

Marcel Hanoun's Une simple histoire is a film more commonly heard about in vague whispers than addressed head-on. This is because its maker, Marcel Hanoun, remained a marginal figure in the French New Wave, despite the fact that it was he -- no...

Rojo (Benjamín Naishtat, 2018)

It's often a dicey proposition when a highly experimental filmmaker aims for greater accessibility. But it doesn't have to be, and Rojo, the third feature from Argentina's Benjamín Naishtat, proves that a radical artist can maintain his unique...

I Remember the Crows (Gustavo Vinagre, 2017)

As hard as it may be to believe, even in 2019 there remains a significant dearth of films, television shows, or really any form of media in which trans folks are telling their own stories. This is why a show like "Pose," or the music of Sarah Jane Grace...

I Haven't Forgotten You....

I know it's been awhile since I've posted any new material. My apologies. But the spring semester begins Monday and I've been prepping my five (!) courses. So not much in the way of movie watching. However, look for some new stuff soon! And thanks for y...

Chongqing Blues (Wang Xiaoshuai, 2010)

Based on the three films of Wang's I've seen, he is a perfectly solid director of unmemorable films. Granted, it must be difficult being the Phil Ochs of the 6th Generation with Jia is your Bob Dylan. But, to be fair, I have not seen Wang's debut film <...

Knife+Heart (Yann Gonzalez, 2018)

Considerably more structured than You and the Night but no less decadent, Yann Gonzalez's latest ode to being queer, filthy and fabulous is centered around an ultra-low-budget gay porn production house. This allows Gonzalez to exercise his jone...

Tondal's Vision (Stephen Broomer, 2018)

No flies on Stephen Broomer! In addition to having made one of the most retro-poetic experimental films of the year, Fountains of Paris, he also completed a featurette of just over one hour, a film that bombards the senses with color and light ...

Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (Ben Wheatley, 2018)

Ashamed as I am to admit it, I have always liked the idea of Ben Wheatley more that I've liked his films. He is just the sort of shot in the arm that the British film industry needs, a young independent upstart with a sensibility that is equal ...

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford, 1949)

In my recent appearance on Craig Lindsey's "The Sour Hour," I made mention of the fact that my education in film history was, to put it lightly, spotty and incomplete. That's because I never studied cinema in a formal way. My academic training as an und...

Why did I watch Bird Box (Susanne Bier, 2018)?

Sometimes you've just got to try the shitty soup.

Three Selections from the Former Colonies

God Straightens Legs (Joële Walinga, Canada)

This is a potent medium-length documentary portrait of a woman named Renée, who we gradually learn is afflicted with cancer. She cannot walk, which may or may not be a side effect of ...

Sorry Angel (Plaire, aimer et courir vite) (Christophe Honoré, 2018)

As many reviewers have already noted, the poignancy of Christophe Honoré's new film comes not so much from its depiction of the AIDS crisis and the losses taken during that period. It's the way that Sorry Angel shows a group of men, of various...

Too Late to Die Young (Dominga Sotomayor Castillo, 2018)

Without the context of understanding that 1990 was the year that democracy returned to Chile after 17 years of dictatorship, the larger import of Too Late to Die Young is rather illegible. This isn't to say that the goings-on don't have inheren...

Top 30 Experimental Films of 2018

30. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, U.S. / France, 1976/2018)

29. Commute (Vincent Grenier, U.S. / Canada) 2018-12-26 18:39:04 +0000 UTC View Post

Double-Shot of Cannes Catch-Up

Asako I & II (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2018)

I would have expected to be providing a full-length entry on this one, but the truth is, it's surprisingly thin. Now to be fair, not every film is going to match the depth and expansiven...

The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018)

Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a filmmaker who generates highly original films that nevertheless wear their influences on their sleeve. Distant, the film that brought him to international attention, featured a comic scene in which the protagonist puts on...

Monrovia, Indiana (Frederick Wiseman, 2018)

Ordinarily, a sense of ambivalence would indicate that a film-text was richer than usual and had more to offer its viewers. But in the case of Monrovia, Indiana, I think it just points of an overall confusion. Wiseman's worst film in a long tim...

If You Wanna Hear Me Ramble...

...I am the guest on the newest edition of the great Peter Labuza's podcast, The Cinephiliacs. Peter and I talk about movies, politics, my son Jace, and Su Friedrich's Sink or Swim. Check it out! Oh, and that's about what I look like. 

Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018)

1. What if Africa were the center of the world? I mean, it's the cradle of humanity. So why not an economic superpower? Black Panther imagines a scenario in which a nation has the technological wherewithal to defeat colonialism, or at least ignore it....