Subscriber Lottery: "Winners"
So most likely tomorrow I will watch the remaining request from the last subscriber tombola. That would be from Matthew McGee, who made me smile by assig...
2023-07-28 06:21:29 +0000 UTC View Post
msicism posts
Jimmy's Hall (Ken Loach, 2014)
Maybe I like minor Loach, when he and Paul Laverty are not trying to hard to make a statement and are content to explore Britain's rich history of class ...
2023-07-28 02:59:26 +0000 UTC View PostWelfare (Frederick Wiseman, 1975)
BY REQUEST: John Powers
Aside from a few shots that follow clerks "upstairs" to another department, Wiseman's Welfare tak...
2023-07-26 17:52:33 +0000 UTC View PostSee You Friday, Robinson (Mitra Farahani, 2022)
One of the most disarming aspects of See You Friday, Robinson is the portrait it provides of one of its subjects, Jean-Luc Godard. An elderly ma...
2023-07-26 04:27:44 +0000 UTC View PostScarlet (Pietro Marcello, 2022)
After seeing three of his earlier films, Pietro Marcello finally made sense to me with Martin Eden. Not only was in anchored by a brash lead per...
2023-07-24 19:02:48 +0000 UTC View PostAsteroid City (Wes Anderson, 2023)
I changed my mind just a bit on this one, going back and watching a few key scenes after I'd come away with a mostly favorable impression. And although I...
2023-07-24 03:22:30 +0000 UTC View Post...ere erera baleibu izik subua aruaren... (José Antonio Sistiaga, 1970)
I was moved to finally watch this acknowledged experimental masterwork because its maker, the Basque artist José Antonio Sistiaga, passed away last mont...
2023-07-21 03:02:06 +0000 UTC View PostA Kitten For Hitler (Ken Russell, 2007)
A brief note about A Kitten For Hitler, which I watched out of perverse curiosity. Word is that Melvyn Bragg, producer of The South Bank Sho...
2023-07-19 03:26:03 +0000 UTC View PostTchaikovsky's Wife (Kirill Serebrennikov, 2022)
It feels like I've been seeing an inordinate amount of this guy's films lately, but hey, blame Thierry Fremaux. Tchaikovsky's Wife is Serebrenni...
2023-07-19 03:03:59 +0000 UTC View PostCave Painting (Siegfried A. Fruhauf, 2023)
A bit of context for the uninitiated. Siegfried Fruhauf might best be characterized as a B-player in the contemporary Austrian avant-garde. I wouldn't ca...
2023-07-16 05:45:54 +0000 UTC View PostFour Nights (Scout Tafoya, 2023)
BY REQUEST: Scout Tafoya
Dear Scout,
Please excuse the possibly cloying approach of discussing your film in epistolary form ...
2023-07-15 03:42:14 +0000 UTC View PostThe Grind Don't Stop
If you ever check my viewing logs on The Academic Hack, you'll know that I have been mainlining recent experimental films, mostly because I have my Novem...
2023-07-13 02:34:18 +0000 UTC View PostIn the Shadow of the Blue Rascal (Pierre Clémenti, 1986)
BY REQUEST: AR
-Basements were recently my thing. Do you know what I found? I swear I'll propose only good things. I see woode...
2023-07-07 04:26:30 +0000 UTC View PostA Conundrum
What would you write about if an editor offered you the chance to write about anything you wanted to? I mean, within reason -- film or media related, at ...
2023-07-07 03:25:11 +0000 UTC View PostSubscriber Lottery: Fast Forward Selecta!
Side note: isn't it weird that the Unilever ice creams have, like, twenty different brand names? Theoretically, a brand benefits from international recog...
2023-07-03 04:33:37 +0000 UTC View PostDRIB (Kristoffer Borgli, 2017)
BY REQUEST: Emilio
It's fitting that as Kristoffer Borgli's newest film Sick of Myself is wending its way through theater...
2023-07-02 05:01:24 +0000 UTC View PostMatter Out of Place (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, 2022)
I have been a fairly consistent champion of the documentaries of Nikolaus Geyrhalter. He is an Austrian formalist whose visual essays ask us to look clos...
2023-06-30 02:46:18 +0000 UTC View PostNEKO-MIMI (Jun Kurosawa, 1993)
BY REQUEST: Kevin Wall
We all have our aesthetic biases. It's unavoidable. The only thing a conscientious critic can do is keep tr...
2023-06-28 00:59:40 +0000 UTC View PostPacifiction (Albert Serra, 2022)
In many respects a radical shift for Albert Serra, Pacifiction is about history and delusion, the carving out of an imaginary place out of time ...
2023-06-26 20:52:14 +0000 UTC View PostGodland (Hlynur Pálmason, 2022)
A title card at the beginning of the film informs us that it was inspired by a set of late-19th century silver collodion plates. Alas, Godland i...
2023-06-25 22:43:33 +0000 UTC View PostThe Wall of the Dead (Eugène Green, 2022)
Eugène Green's latest film begins with a quote from St. Augustine, relating to the nature of time. There is no past, present, or future, according to Au...
2023-06-24 19:39:39 +0000 UTC View PostSubscriber Lottery Results
These three subscribers have gotten the short straws. Or the long ones. Depends on how you look at it.
#87: KEVIN WALL
Hello, It's Me! (Frunze Dovlatya, 1966)
BY REQUEST: Daniel Wood
Բարեւ, ես եմ
Ես երկար ժամանակ մտածել եմ մեր մասին*
A redis...
2023-06-23 06:04:18 +0000 UTC View PostA Thousand and One (A. V. Rockwell, 2023)
If you follow my writing (which presumably you do, to some extent), you know I have a few hobby-horses I come back to again and again. And one of them re...
2023-06-22 00:11:04 +0000 UTC View PostSpider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson, and Kemp Powers, 2023)
Another of the handful of sequels that actually improves upon its predecessor, Across the Spider-Verse isn't bogged down by 45 minutes of the "n...
2023-06-21 03:02:38 +0000 UTC View PostPetrov's Flu (Kirill Serebrennikov, 2021)
If proof were needed that I can never leave well enough alone, I decided -- felt obliged, really -- to go back and finish Serebrennikov's 2021 Cannes ent...
2023-06-21 01:15:49 +0000 UTC View PostToo Late (Dennis Hauck, 2015)
BY REQUEST: Luke Fowler
See, this is why I think this subscriber-request lottery is turning out to be a good idea. Mr. Fowler's re...
2023-06-18 06:20:35 +0000 UTC View PostSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Rodney Rothman, Peter Ramsey, and Bob Persichetti, 2018)
I'm sure this will come as a surprise, but I am not a devotee of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When a specific film gets good notices, like <...
2023-06-16 18:26:52 +0000 UTC View Post¡Que Color!
Sorry for the inactivity, but man alive, it has been too hot to move, think, or write. The AC can only do so much to keep up when it's over 100 degrees (...
2023-06-16 03:42:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe Eight Mountains (Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, 2022)
While watching The Eight Mountains, more than once I thought about Brokeback Mountain, and not just because both films are about the lo...
2023-06-13 04:37:10 +0000 UTC View Post