Friday night I watched Parasite (2019). I hadn’t seen it before and was a little surprised it won best picture that year, but looking at the other nominees it probably was the best of those.
For some reason I was expecting the rich family turn on the main family but they never really did, they just acted on their own interests. The ‘ghost’ was pretty freaky and wasn’t really ready for that ending.
Saturday night I watched The Sweet East (2023). I really enjoyed this one, it was a bit arty so maybe not for everyone’s taste. The mirror song was a nice intro and made me ready for the rest.
There was quite a bit of internet/social commentary sprinkled in which is whatever, but the movie is really strong as a adventure/nomadic tale. It was also all on film (?) so just really pleasant to look at.
I watched Godzilla Minus One last night and the entire time I was thinking about that tweet (that I conveniently cannot find now) about the guy seeing it in theaters while the Beyonce movie played in the theater next door and watching Godzilla die while Alien Superstar played softly in the background
this happened to me during Killers of the Flower Moon with Eras playing in the theater next door. i thought it was pretty funny and was surprised my friend didnt notice
in my ongoing quest to watch all of juzo itami’s filmography, i crossed off the last dance and a quiet life from the list.
i watched last dance almost two months ago according to my letterboxd log?! which is wild, time goes so quickly. immediately after watching it i thought it was mid-tier itami but i’ve sort of felt it creeping up the ranking since then - it juggles tones and filmmaking techniques in a way that’s quite ambitious, and i’m not sure he’s done another movie that’s as audacious and varied. (maybe taxing woman’s return, which i maintain is extremely underrated.) it has at least two of his most memorable sequences and a lot of lovely bittersweet complexity - both savage and understanding towards its main character. it’s a heck of a movie.
a quiet life, which i just watched this evening, is similarly multifaceted, and i think generally successful in what it tries to do. buuuuut it suffers from a very kitschy view of neurodivergence - it is quite of its time in this way - and a certain literalism in his movies that really rears its head whenever he tries to address misogyny in his filmmaking. (to wit, he will film sexual assault scenes in very cliched and sort of thoughtless ways - not careless, but not particularly sensitive either.) i actually think this movie has his best attempt at making one of those scenes actually land the way it’s supposed to, but it’s sort of diluted by the more sensationalized stuff around it. interesting movie with a lot of good points but not my favorite of his. beautifully shot though! and has one of my favorite nobuko miyamoto wigs:
the only one i have still to watch is woman in witness protection. which is crazy! i started watching his movies two years ago after tampopo blew my mind wide open. i love his movies and i have no idea what my project will be after i finish them all.
A Clear and Present Danger is kind of bad. It has interesting stuff in it. and Willem Defoe is really enjoyable in it. But it’s a bit of a snoozer despite having cars blown up by grenade launchers. Good thing Harrison Ford stopped doing those.
Got to go to the movies for the first time in awhile.
Caught two things, Antiporno at metrograph, which was amazing, and Sinners which I seem to be in a minority of people kind of cool on it.
It’s fun I guess but I’m not sure it lands on all it does and it tries to do a lot. Like a lot a lot, like a lot a lot a lot. I would be curious peoples thoughts. I dunno, I can be cool and say vampires are cool though.
No Other Land, the Oscar-winning documentary from a group of Palestinian and Israeli directors about the effects of the conflict on the communities of Masaffer Yatta, is available for on-demand home viewing in North America for the next three weeks.
All profits from renting the movie go directly to supporting the communities shown in the film that are still affected by ongoing state-sanctioned violence.
I guess this is the most fitting place to talk about this:
I went to The Moonwalkers: A Journey with Tom Hanks at The Kennedy Center. It is described as an “immersive experience narrated by Tom Hanks that offers a unique perspective on humankind’s future voyages to the moon”
“It’s like TeamLabs,” I was telling friends. “I think it’s gonna be like the Kusama infinity rooms,” I said, talking about how the past 5-10 years have seen a shift to the “immersive experience” in the art world
Bitch, it was a movie.
Flop. FLOP!!! Biggest jester flop in the fucking clown circus!!! I felt so dumb.
“Immersive experience.” The immersion was that they made us sit on the floor. Sitting on some fugly carpet watching a movie for a full hour… And it was a movie projected on the walls of a square room, so you’d have to crane your neck 90 degrees constantly to look af the walls.
Like, just put it imax. This was so physically uncomfortable
Watched Mickey 17 with Mrs. Gaagaagiins last night, which was exciting as Bong Joon Ho is our shared favourite director.
It wasn’t a Parasite level masterpiece by any means, and in some ways wasn’t even as funny as Parasite (some of the dialogue felt a bit quippy) despite being explicitly more of a comedy kinda movie. But I certainly enjoyed it. Kinda like some weird midway point between Okja and Starship Troopers, in a way. A lot of the political commentary was a little too on the nose, which was actually kind of effective because we really do live in Clown World at the moment, but didn’t have the same kind of sardonic, brutal edge to it that in my opinion is what elevated Parasite from a great movie to a masterpiece. Mickey 17 just didn’t have that same… fire, to it, if you know what I mean.
I think my favourite aspect of the movie was far and away Robbie Patti, who I’d never really seen in anything beyond seeing him as Edward Cullen via half osmosis, half noncommital hatewatch, all consumed in contexts which I can no longer remember (seriously, like, I know I’ve seen at least some of Twilight but I can’t recall how or why that would have ever happened). I didn’t know his voice sounded like that, or could sound like that. I think I’ve been converted into an instant Robbie fan. What else is Robbie good and weird and fun in? Mrs. Gaagaagiins wants to watch The Lighthouse at some point and I’m inclined to agree.
