'Tis the Season (2)
And here's the other. Enjoy.
2020-12-21 00:48:08 +0000 UTC View Post
msicism posts
'Tis the Season (1)
I really only like two holiday songs. Here's one of them.
2020-12-21 00:47:17 +0000 UTC View PostTenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)
I happen to be of the opinion that Christopher Nolan's best film is The Prestige (with Dunkirk a close second). The Prestige, ...
2020-12-19 03:27:54 +0000 UTC View PostNature (Artavazd Pelechian, 2020)
Armenian experimentalist Artavazd Pelechian has built a reputation on very little work, if by "work" we mean the actual length of film in circulation. Bu...
2020-12-18 22:09:41 +0000 UTC View PostND/NF: Is This Anything?
Since I am banned from Twitter, I have limited access to the Cinephile Hive Mind (CHM)™️. So I have to put the question to you. Have any of you seen some of these New Directors films? I'm wondering whether any of them seem to be worth a $12 re...
2020-12-17 20:28:16 +0000 UTC View PostThe American Sector (Pacho Velez & Courtney Stephens, 2020)
I seem to be in a distinct minority on this one, since most reviews I've read are fairly glowing. I wasn't all that impressed by The American Sector<...
2020-12-14 02:51:42 +0000 UTC View PostMr. Arkadin (Orson Welles, 1955)
I'd never seen Arkadin before, and I was partly prompted to see it because of all the discourse circling around David Fincher's Mank. T...
2020-12-13 06:33:27 +0000 UTC View PostSomebody please tell me why...
. . . The Prom is 130 fucking minutes long? Haven't we suffered enough?
2020-12-11 20:28:21 +0000 UTC View PostCold Meridian (Peter Strickland, 2020)
I have no interest in ASMR. Not only do I find the videos boring; the sound stuff doesn't work on me. I wonder if avant-garde film has inured me to this ...
2020-12-11 20:11:18 +0000 UTC View PostSpring Blossom (Suzanne Lindon, 2020)
One of the films that apparently would have been featured in Un Certain Regard if Cannes 2020 had actually happened, Spring Blossom (aka Sei...
2020-12-11 19:49:42 +0000 UTC View PostTommaso (Abel Ferrara, 2019)
Tommaso is a film that virtually compels us to read it as autobiography. It's about an American film director (Willem Dafoe) now living in Rome,...
2020-12-10 21:00:21 +0000 UTC View PostThe Midnight Sky (George Clooney, 2020)
NOTE: This "social reaction" is EMBARGOED. So let's keep it entre nous, fam.
I haven't ...
2020-12-09 06:36:49 +0000 UTC View PostCity Hall (Frederick Wiseman, 2020)
The great Frederick Wiseman will turn 91 on New Year's Day. Like a handful of old masters (Godard and Michael Snow come to mind), Wiseman is still going ...
2020-12-09 04:40:38 +0000 UTC View PostDear Comrades! (Andrei Konchalovsky, 2020)
With the exception of his brother Nikita Mikhalkov, Andrei Konchalovsky may be the most well-connected filmmaker in Russia. This may be irrelevant in eva...
2020-12-08 18:17:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe Maltese Cross Movement (Keewatin Dewdney, 1967)
Quite unexpectedly, I finally had the chance to see Keewatin Dewdney's The Maltese Cross Movement, a film I've read about ...
2020-12-08 17:29:49 +0000 UTC View PostDavid Byrne's American Utopia (Spike Lee, 2020)
"Utopia -- the more impossible it seems, the more necessary it becomes." (Yvonne Rainer)
Of course it isn't Stop Making Sense. No...
2020-12-08 07:26:31 +0000 UTC View PostMinari (Lee Isaac Chung, 2020)
Let's see: Dreamer dad (Steven Yeun), steadfast but skeptical wife (Han Ye-ri), mostly nondescript older daughter (Noel Kate Cho), adorable li...
2020-12-03 23:10:12 +0000 UTC View PostCollective (Alexander Nanau, 2019)
Over on Letterboxd, I discovered a Romanian writer, 2020-12-03 03:03:51 +0000 UTC View Post
White Lie (Calvin Thomas and Yonah Lewis, 2019)
White Lie is almost intolerable. It creates a scenario of fundamental tension -- a liar and grifter continually on the verge of being discovered...
2020-12-02 21:14:49 +0000 UTC View PostA Modest Proposal:
Someone should loop this soundbite into a kick-ass EDM cut called "Hit Those Speakers."
2020-12-01 19:35:47 +0000 UTC View PostUncle Frank (Alan Ball, 2020)
Ball gonna Ball. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's mystifying, in a way, that Uncle Frank arrives on global streaming the same week as Happiest Seaso...
2020-11-30 07:05:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe Mole Agent (Maite Alberdi, 2020)
An unconventional documentary in a number of respects, The Mole Agent is effortlessly entertaining and often quite touching. But it seems that s...
2020-11-30 06:30:06 +0000 UTC View PostRoutine Pleasures
Black Bear (Lawrence Michael Levine, 2020)
Back in 2014, I saw Levine's film Wild Canaries, but I didn't remember much ab...
2020-11-25 23:35:53 +0000 UTC View PostAfter Lucia (Michel Franco, 2012)
Michel Franco is not Michael Haneke. This strikes me as an obvious enough point that I really shouldn't need to articulate it, but everywhere I ...
2020-11-22 19:34:49 +0000 UTC View PostThe Nest (Sean Durkin, 2020)
With its insistence on atmosphere over plot, The Nest is kind of a perfect sophomore film, the sort of work that a young stylist gets to produce...
2020-11-21 21:06:40 +0000 UTC View PostFireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds (Werner Herzog and Armando Christian Pérez, 2020)
Cinetracts '20 (various filmmakers, 2020)
Omnibus films. We all have traumatic memories of them. Do you remember where you where when you saw 11'09"01, the cosmically atrocious internati...
2020-11-20 06:12:39 +0000 UTC View PostTwo Films by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese
It's a cliche, but it's unavoidably true. A critic experiences few pleasures greater than that of discovering a major new talent, partly because it's so ...
2020-11-18 07:10:06 +0000 UTC View PostMLK/FBI (Sam Pollard, 2020)
The documentary as preamble, or perhaps as prolepsis. It is understandable that every generation requires its reintroduction to Dr. Martin Luther King, J...
2020-11-13 18:31:38 +0000 UTC View PostMake Way For Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937)
Back when I taught Film 101, I always showed Tokyo Story. In general, students responded well to it -- as well as they responded to anything for...
2020-11-13 05:11:22 +0000 UTC View Post