kiss kiss bang bang - actually nothing about this movie has aged well. well kilmer and monaghan were fun at least. actually i started typing this as the movie was ending and holy shit this ending. wooooooof
blood simple - hm i would not have put this on a noir list. much more of like a psych thriller/suspense flick to me. didn’t do nearly as much for me as the others i’ve seen since i started this kick, or other coens.
point blank - ruled. a version of this where the lead isn’t some kind of superman would be a pretty ideal watch for me. pissed i watched kkbb tonight instead of the lorry which i have been lead to believe is in this vein
la conf - ruled. weird to see that 90s period look. why did movies look like then? everything is like.... kind of shiny. anyways totally besides the point i loved everything about this movie. maybe i should just revise this kick to ellroy adaptions
REAL BASED SLOB wrote:after the javy home run WGN came back with an extended fan cam sequence soundtracked by meat puppets - up on the sun and i've just been doing bong rips and jamming meat puppets since
Rewatched The Box cause it's on netflix and I hadn't seen it in years and was wondering, as an unapologetic fan of Richard Kelly, how it holds up. Overall, pretty well, and idk it seems to me like this movie is a strong refutation of the notion that Kelly is a "bad" director who can only make a good movie by accident. Yes someone said that in another thread, I'm not trying to subtweet here, it's something I think is reasonable to wonder aloud. Here he's purposefully restraining himself, but honestly this is probably his most Well Made movie depending on what you think that terminology might mean. Everything is put together well, this isn't Vanilla Sky or something. He runs through what would be a pretty good remake of the twilight zone episode, and then has an hour of runtime to go, so he starts filling in the story with Richard Kelly shit and it's actually a fairly well done spiraling outward even if it likely doesn't make any real sense. Do science fiction movies have to make sense? Would it make them better? It's maybe not a truly great movie, but it's pretty good, I think.
I gotta get in on watching some Richard Kelly movies again asap. Hes popped up a few times recently on here.
Specifically in the lynch thread it reminded me how much he aped him in Donnie darko. When I watched that a couple years ago I picked up on him doing that, which is something I totally missed when I was younger and watched all Kelly’s movies.
So now I’m thinking, damn now that my brains all fucked up from aging maybe I’ll vibe even harder with this idiots movies.
I agree about The Box. Darko Director's Cut showed his weaknesses, Southland had his massive upside, The Box is a perfectly confident, assured storytell.
Everybody's got a ticket to ride 'cept for me and my lightning.
la ciénaga (2001) - lucrecia martel impressive. a bunuelian social satire with amazing sound design throughout. also one of the most palpably humid and sweaty films i can think of alongside something like DAYS OF BEING WILD (1990)
le petit criminel (1990) - jacques doillon
rolling thunder revue: a bob dylan story by martin scorsese (2019) - martin scorsese i could do without the wellesian trick of playing with the mythology but all of the restored '75 tour footage is total balm for me. could watch hours of that stuff
in the shadow of women (2015) - philippe garrel hard to find a fault in this. the mistress, the cheater, his wife and her lover. perhaps the closet garrel has come to hong sang-soo. the boorish and cruel male lead, the precise mis en scene and managing to be one of the few artists who can successfully shoot on digital yet harness all of the advantages of light and texture that b&w can do
belly (1998) - hype williams stunning. i can't think of anything in american cinema this singular in how uniquely formal and visually expressive this is. i can only think of someone like eastwood, ferrara or cimino who achieves such texture and emotion with how they shoot
US (2019) - I liked this a lot more than Get Out. Seems like a much more assured and mature film in almost every regard. Just a really solid and interesting horror movie with great performances and it's beautifully staged and shot. i laughed a lot too. 8/10.
belly (1998) - hype williams stunning. i can't think of anything in american cinema this singular in how uniquely formal and visually expressive this is. i can only think of someone like eastwood, ferrara or cimino who achieves such texture and emotion with how they shoot
Yeah, watched this again recently as well and was pretty struck by how distinctive it is. Really wish he would make another feature
landspeedrecord wrote:mesh, what is even the point of making a post like that?
Now I'm not sure. I read futurist like he was saying that that list was not noirs or something. What was he saying, anyways? Sorry?
edit: also "basic" is not pejorative in my world, if that helps
no my point was only that noirs have a broad thematic scope, so i was curious what amigo specifically liked in a noir. noir is fun because in some circles it's a thematic descriptor, and in others it's aesthetic. a list like the one posted has some good films on it but i wouldn't go as far to say that if you like one film on that list you'd like the others.
I saw dark Phoenix last week and I don’t know anything about comics but I do like the x-men movies a bit. I liked this a lot? I couldn’t believe how dragged it was. It’s kinda like the Vox Lux of comic book movies? Idk
wimbledon, strawberries, bubbles, please protect me. happy midsumma, hope you spend it in your heart, everyone is there. bitch.
dolor y gloria // pain and glory (2019) - pedro almodóvar
very restrained. feels like a thematic departure while at the same time being heavily self-referential. almodóvar heads will enjoy it. not sure if it'll be the best introduction for people unfamiliar with his films.
wig (2019) - chris moukarbel
lady bunny is an icon. this is essential viewing for anyone interested in new york history, queerness, drag, etc.
lady bunny is an icon. this is essential viewing for anyone interested in new york history, queerness, drag, etc.
did you get bummed out at all while watching this that you couldn't live in that scene in the 80s or am i just a weirdo i mean obvious 80s was also a terrible time in reagan's america and AIDS, but I even feel this way about Act Up meetings, etc, I wish I was there maybe it's because it stands in such juxtaposition to the climate right now with corporate rainbow-washing everywhere and oversaturation, maybe i kinda envy that time when queers were still outcast freaks and that common enemy thing woman rabbit mentions once in this film. of course there are still common enemies still today, maybe more, but the community isn't really united against them or politically minded
also i want to note in that TOOP above that obviously its coming from a place of extreme like, cis white gay privilege, i can recognize that while also feeling wistful about that time i guess, it's complicated!
i just recently had a conversation with my therapist who also does LGBTQ substance abuse research and he was telling me all about Gilead and PrEP and increasing HIV/AIDS rates in minority populations and it just seems like we've forgotten how to mobilize our community politically like in the ACT UP days, that common enemy thing, etc. i dont understand why Pride 2019 isn't completely aimed at awareness about how fucked up it is that we have the ability right now to end AIDS entirely and corporate greed prevents that from happening
eh, I feel like brooklyn drag has retained a lot of the spirit of what I've seen from east village 80s drag. bushwig has no corporate sponsors and is going on its 8th year this summer. go to metropolitan on a sunday afternoon for merrie cherry's bbq and you'll feel that same communal queer love depicted in the doc. I went there the day after the pulse shooting and it was as welcoming and as safe of a space as one could wish for. there are lots of people, drag queens in particular, who are doing the heavy lifting in new york to keep the queer community vibrant and tolerant.
financialization and its accompanying corporate greed is a much more difficult enemy to locate and mobilize against than the reagan administration was in terms of being a palpable threat to queer livelihoods. there are lots of groups resisting it, though they might not be solely gay/queer, and I think you'd find that sort of political community you're yearning for from this doc. I felt happy watching wig because it helped reinforce the idea that I am liberated, in part thanks to the performers from wigstock and the legacies they sedimented onto new york queer nightlife.
bunejug wrote:I felt happy watching wig because it helped reinforce the idea that I am liberated, in part thanks to the performers from wigstock and the legacies they sedimented onto new york queer nightlife.
yeah I agree 100%, and it's something i've tried to work on over the past year or two, that whenever i meet and come face-to-face with an older queer performer or activist in this city, to ask questions and really communicate my genuine interest and respect and reverence in their lives and legacies. i do feel so much gratitude towards them. I guess what I was feeling while watching Wig was a yearning to be part of that liberation and to cement a legacy of my own in the lgbtq community and give back in some way, and I just haven't found that yet. but I also don't think I've tried as hard as I could, truthfully.
also thanks for the bushwig and metropolitan reccs, i'm gonna buy tix for bushwig in september now so I don't forget
So for the cinema project where they asked me to pick a movie for screening, I ended up going for The Act of Killing. I had actually spent a long time making a shortlist of picks, with Ordet and The Honeymoon Killers near the top. But none of them were possible. Anyway, this is one crazy documentary. They're screening it in September, so I can take all summer building anxiety over having to introduce the film to a room full of people.