For the first time in awhile, I watched a movie in the morning. I feel like myself again.
The movie was Visconti’s Ossessione. It was made under fascism in 1943. The gay male gaze is great. The way Gino eats an ice cream cone is something to be seen. I really love the way the landscapes and interiors are shot. The way Visconti films people really makes you want to get close to a warm body.
Just got out of No Other Choice and it was fantastic. Capitalism might be bad y’all.
theater a few blocks from my place is showing lovers on the bridge, angel’s egg, cabaret, and all that jazz in the next month… finally some good fucking food
Nobody told me Master & Commander is just miserable Star Trek
The books are even gayer than tos
My partner and I watched Barry Lyndon yesterday, neither of us had seen it before. I grabbed the Criterion 4K a while back cause someone told me the quality of the transfer of that film alone was enough to justify 4K existing as a medium. And let me say, whoever said that to me was right.
Easily Kubrick’s best film, which is kinda funny considering it’s his least transgressive movie, at least in terms of subject matter. As a teenager, I remember watching The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, and Fullmetal Jacket and being shocked by the violence, nudity, and profanity. There’s not much of that in Barry Lyndon.
Still trying to contain my thoughts. Barry is such a fascinating character to have as a protagonist. A kinda scummy guy who just takes every side quest available.
Hardly the first to say it, but every damn frame, every shot, looks like a painting in this movie.
just want to say that I agree with every word of this and it fuckin rules and I’m glad you enjoyed it
A great summary of Barry.
We fell in love with Ryan O’Neal after seeing Barry Lyndon in November and watched a couple other movies with him. What’s Up, Doc? and Love Story. He was the best part of both, by far.
for another 70s movie whose plot is driven entirely by the protagonist being a jerk who doesn’t know when to quit I highly recommend The Heartbreak Kid
I love Heartbreak Kid. It may be my favorite May. The ending scene pops into my head at least once a week.
I always say that Charles Grodin is my favorite actor because he is the only other person on earth who has ever reminded me of both of my parents
Mom (Heartbreak Kid): insisted, dementedly, on trying to bag a WASP against literally all evidence at hand
Dad (Real Life, Clifford, Beethoven): every attempt at acting like a normal patriarch produced confusion and barely concealed fury
remember when ryan o’neal died on my birthday
I’d heard this was good but had the impression that it was some kind of sports movie, something that wouldn’t interest me. But then I learned a week or so ago who the director was. I went to see it today and it was great.
I was happy to see during the opening credits that Ronald Bronstein was the co-writer, as with all the movies the Safdies have done together. Many years ago someone recommended Frownland on SB1 and I rented the DVD. I don’t know that I’d say I liked it but I thought about it a lot and for years after.
Okay, so Chalamet was able to look like he was so good at ping-pong because he practiced for years even before the official training for the movie started. I’d wondered whether it was done with computer graphics, and it sounds like only a few parts were.
Also interesting to learn that the Endo character’s actor is a competitive player who really is deaf.
https://letterboxd.com/actor/koto-kawaguchi/
I’d wondered whether the honey scene was based on a true story, and apparently it was.
so did del Toro consciously make his Frankenstein’s monster giant handsome gollum or
I think I kind of hate Nora Ephron. The weird essentialism people are so quick to pretend is real when they talk about the way she just gets Men and Women. And her bougie self-centered characters.
I like When Harry Met Sally. But maybe that’s cause of Rob Reiner and the performers in that film, rather than the supposed brilliance of Nora Ephron. I really don’t need to compare these two accomplished women directors, or mean to box them in as just that, but I watched a documentary recently about Nora Ephron that made me realize how many of her collaborators and concerns align with Elaine May’s… and I’d so rather that people gave May a similar amount of recognition as they do Ephron.
This all spurred by watching Julie & Julia last night, which was pretty dire. The way that movie has no ending and then rolls with a “where are they now?” type credit sequence that just reads like a list of facts, including “the book this movie was about writing would later be adapted into a film : )”
the third generation - great but where the fuck is mega man. the media rewrites history yet again.
really wild uses of sound, all the dialogue swamped or stranded by omnipresent film music, icy classical, barely distinguishable submerged rock stuff. so casually claustrophobic and close-up that iirc the first outside world establishing shot happens 2/3rds in and feels startlingly unfamiliar
everyone focuses on the great line abt capital and terrorism but generally feels less like a thesis film than a paranoid dream abt politics as evolution-style pseudodialectic, camoflague that works so well it’s no longer camoflague, old touch points getting unmoored and thrown up again in odd places in the churn. yeah everyone in the cell is getting really into nietzsche these days. don’t worry about it.
this reminded me of how much I liked Mikey & Nicky, so I watched A New Leaf and wow that rules too! walter matthau is such a clown, and there are a ton of really wild shots in the opening third, I kinda jumped at the first one in the part where he’s asking his uncle for money. I’m glad his heart grew three sizes, plants really can bring people together. I guess it’s pretty straightforward in the end, and regressive with a certain (mis)reading, but I thought it was so charming
