You Won’t Be Alone was very good
Something popped in my brain and made me think of the 1988 supernatural thriller Lady in White. I hadn‘t seen it since I was a young kid and it hit home video. This movie was a lot more intense in some ways than I remembered. It’s not stellar, but there‘s something there. I’m surprised at some of the scenes in it for a movie that appeared to be marketed to children or young adults…
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-I barely remembered anything about it, but definitely didn‘t recall the subplot of the framed black janitor and how his story ended up. Holy shit.
>! -Were we supposed to infer that the murderer also molested the children and then murdered them to cover it up? I don’t think I saw anything that explicitly said it, but dude was giving off some pretty creepy vibes.
Developing off of Tim saying that they should rename the character played by Tom Cruise in the Mission: Impossible movies to be named Tom Cruise:
Imagine the _Mission: Impossible_ movies but all of Tom Cruise's dialogue is replaced with him saying "Tom Cruise," like a Pokémon
Tonight in belated teenage milestones, I got absolutely blazed and watched Heavy Metal for the first time. Needless to say this is an excellent way to watch it, maybe the best, although sobriety can’t diminish how goddamned gorgeous it looks and how gloriously it shoots straight from its crude but (mostly) innocent teen boy id. A double feature with Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind is an exhaustive crash course on the best video game art direction of the 80s-00s, with Another World being a particularly obvious lovechild.
First Family (1980). Stellar cast and credentials, kind of a weird result. I can‘t even tell if I liked it or not. I think I feel like I did after watching Ghostbusters (2016) - this should have been so much better with everyone involved! The critics tore it to shreds and it’s not spoken of at all. For modern sensibilities, there's some mmmm problematic jokes and the like, but nothing too extreme or hateful.
The Naked Spur (1953). Watched this on a recommendation from someone. James Stewart apparently turns a corner around this time and I really like his performance here. I don't think anyone who can't get into old Western flicks will feel like this one stands out, but I enjoyed the story and character development. It's a story about a man who goes off to war and gives his wife PoA. She sells the farm and runs off with another man. In order to try to buy the farm back and regain some of his former life, he pursues a bounty. There's a little more here than you'd expect to be. I'm looking forward to watching all of the Mann/Stewart collaborations now, I read there's something like 8 movies they did together.
the Mann westerns I‘ve seen have all been good and I’d like to revisit them. I need to make an effort to track down good prints/scans rather than the greasy versions they have on streaming service whatever though
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@“2501”#p68388 Heavy Metal
the cheap trick song on the soundtrack kicks ass
@“yeso”#p68568 The Blu-Ray menu plays it on loop over some of the slickest bits of animation. Very very good palate cleanser as the chemical enhancement wears off.
@“yeso”#p68568 I will just say I love enthusiast trackers. 
TONIGHT is a special edition of the FORT90 FILM CLUB X Wonderville; it’s “THE OBLIGATORY STAR WARS _______________”, for fellow lapsed fans of the franchise (see https://www.wonderville.nyc/events/fort90tv-05-04-22)
The line-up includes EXP TV’s STAR WARS NOTHING BUT STAR WARS mixtape, which was a real hit last year, among the dozen or so who were around when I showed it around 3:30AM, along with Damon Packard’s THE UNTITLED STAR WARS MOCKUMENTARY, and also…
https://twitter.com/fort90filmclub/status/1521965404335259651
Stream starts at 8PM EST, over at the usual digs…
https://www.twitch.tv/wondervillenyc
BTW/FYI, am also going to play…
https://twitter.com/fort90filmclub/status/1521996036260208640
@“fortninety”#p68806 I just wanted to chime in and say I‘m sorry I haven’t tuned in to any of your streams yet but it‘s definitely not because you aren’t playing good stuff! I've never heard of any of these and they all look amazing.
Anybody watch that Portrait of a Lady on Fire?
Watched it recently and I thought it was incredible.
Layered with a fair bit of social commentary, but absolutely at one with itself and it’s characters. A rare treat. Something I imagine I’ll rewatch a whole bunch.
I‘m halfway through Smithereens (1982) that @exodus recommended recently and I don’t think I‘m going to finish it. I started it the other day and it’s been sitting paused on my secondary monitor since then. Hah. The problem is I simply despise most of the characters in the movie. Most of them are fake, shallow, selfish assholes. They remind me of the “punk rock” / “goth” kids I met when I finally moved from a very rural town of 900 people to a city of 40k as a teenager. At first I was all “oh, these kids like the same shit I do, cool.” No, they were pretty uncool.
In the meantime, watched Owned: A Tale of Two Americas (2018) since it popped up on Independent Lens. I had recently started absorbing a lot of content on urban development and the like, so this was more of the same. Not a bad little documentary. Kind of amusing that some of the realty folks acknowledge in 2018 that real estate is getting a little nonsensical again and dude, that was recorded in 2018 or earlier! I wonder what they think of this ridiculous bubble we're in now?
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@“Iain”#p68986 Portrait of a Lady on Fire?
I did! It is indeed good
Trailer for the new Cronenberg just dropped
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn4CQGddKlA
It's interesting seeing him returning to his more unhinged new flesh stuff, but I'm unsure on how successful it will be. At least it will be a stimulating visual experience I'm hoping.
I trust this one. Trailers usually don't tell a totally nice story but I feel like body horror will be on max. I feel also like people will go for the nudes and will be horrified, which is going to be even funnier, but I feel this can be as terrifying for me as it was when I saw the remake of The Fly.
As for films recently seen, I haven't seen much but Almodovar's films, and I felt kind of liberated when I saw them. I feel like I'm very rigid creating, and seeing films as freeing as What I done to deserve this? feels very refreshing to me. My favorite piece as of recently, though, has been Margerite Duras' films, which I see as much as I can, and the way in which she films the words and the voice overs is somewhat magical.
@“Iain”#p68986 I love that one
I love how we see the painting/sketching going on, that they actually [filmed the artist's hands](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QRSzyUVNtA) doing that stuff; as she sketches Héloïse's face in charcoal her hand hovers over the canvas, making the motions of drawing before setting the charcoal down. You can correct mismade strokes of a paintbrush to some degree but once you put paint to picture you can't ever really take it back—some kind of metaphor in here about words of affection/love offered from one person to another, words which can't be unheard or unspoken, esp. in a historical, forbidden non-hetero love-for-love's-sake setting. The action of describing H's face in drawing plugs you into M's feelings about her as much as or more than her (few) words do.
Honestly not trying to get too silly here but it's a simple touch that I feel really makes the movie
So it’s Monday and I’m not showing movies tonight, tho I am showing movie-adjacent content in the form of someone‘s iPhone footage of the Bourne Stuntacular, which much like the one for Waterworld, blows away its inspiration out of the water; I basically have not been able to stop thinking of this tweet since first seeing it last week (no worries, I’ll be streaming footage that was shot in landscape)…
https://twitter.com/allmyheart319/status/1518236430161817600
Stream starts at 8PM EST, over at the usual digs…
https://www.twitch.tv/wondervillenyc
New Cronenberg hype + me being curious on watching some Rob Pattinson early performances (of the era when he started to get into arthouse indie stuff) made me watch Cosmopolis yesterday and: What The Fuck???
I remember this movie premiering while I was still studying in Madrid and all the reviews and critics trashing it and saying it was absolute garbage and such. And to a certain extent I guess it _is_ garbage? But it's fascinating and extremely interesting garbage, at least from the point of view of my interests and concerns.
Movie is a strange dystopia, an uchronia set in a kind of parallel universe where capitalism has devolved (or evolved, depending on your pov) into itself, it has competely detached itself from human realities, in spite of still being the global system. It has turned into something so abstract, strange and ininteligible that it's almost a tautology, a logical truth so circular, so complete and perfect, that it only really makes sense as an affirmation of itself, in the same way a mathematic formula or a numerical abstraction would.
Pattinson acts as the CEO of one of the biggest financial firms, someone who has cracked the code, who has "the vision" as they put it, he makes incredible sums of money within seconds, but you don't really know how or why, it's very bizarre. All the characters that show up are devoted to this system and speak in strange epigrams that register almost as religious, they are part of a cult of the numbers, it's so abstract and complex that they almost feel as oracular figures trying to make sense of the numbers going up and down in the same way a shaman could see the future in bones or currents of water. Their devotion to this system and way of being is so absolute they have completely disconnected themselves from their humanity and turned into pristine and pure vectors of the economy.
There is this scene where Pattinson speaks to someone who identifies herself as his "Chief of Theory" whose role seems to be making absurd and abstract conceptualizations, ideas constructed ad-hoc to legitimize the system and provide it some degree of reality and substance, almost in the same way a priest gives mass to actualize and enact the beliefs of its congregation via the realization of the rite. This scene takes place inside Pattinson's limo and the "Chief of Theory" goes on saying shit like "Cybercapital creates the future, money has lost its narrative quality, money creates time, it used to be the other way around" with a complete straight face. The scene goes on and on as the most bizarre pep talk ever conceived, when suddenly something happens.
A riot starts outside of the car, people start burning shit and throwing paint over the limo without any of them even blinking or caring in the least. The Chief of Theory keeps rumbling on and on with her nonsensical monologue while people are immolating themselves outside of the car. Really powerful metaphor for class struggle, it's not that these people don't care about the suffering going outside, it doesn't even fucking register for them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WFKdIBdpjM
This is the scene in question, in case someone is interested.
Fascinating movie. Very postmodern and only recommended if you are into something weird that it's more about the reasons why it doesn't make sense rather than what it actually says. It reminded me of Bacurau, oddly enough, the Kleber Mendonça Filho film. Feels like both movies should take place on the same universe.
Speaking of Cronenberg, the man is on fire, seems eager to make an epic comeback.
https://twitter.com/FilmUpdates/status/1524378090784407552?t=R7a95JZ8nV2UENE66wy5iw&s=19
Elaborating on the Cosmopolis - Bacurau relationship I mentioned on the former post, I meant it in the sense that they are both dystopian films dealing with the consequences and processes of metastasized capitalism. There are cool parallelisms like how both are subtly sci-fi and incorporate fantastic elements that are dropped almost casually, nonchalantly, and with a confidence that is really fascinating. The story doesn't need those elements but they are there to channel the energy of genre fiction in a way I find really cool.
At the same time, they deal with the same topics from almost extreme opposites. Cosmopolis shows what would be going on at the very top of the pyramid, what the ruling class and the individuals holding the power are doing with it; while Bacurau tells the story of what is going on at the very bottom, a story of the people living so deep in poverty and at the fringes of that same system they are almost no part of it, but are affected by it anyway and have to deal with it.
I don't know, it feels like they should take place on the same universe! It's a shame they aren't, but there is always headcanon, and in any case, listen, what I'm really trying to get at is this: if you haven't watched either of those, do them together, it's probably going to make for a really cool double session.