got around to watching parasite and damn what a phenomenal fucking movie in every possible aspect, definitely oscar worthy even if the oscars don’t mean jack shit
7 Likes
recent movies watched:
Basic Instinct (1992): this kinda feels like lesser Verhoeven to me tbh. i get the whole point of the movie is that everyone (especially the protagonist) is a sleazebag, and i do like how much it uses the setting of San Francisco… sort of like a grotesque version of Vertigo, which i imagine might have been some of the intention behind it. there were some funny scenes in there. but i dunno man. it ain’t no Showgirls to me.
Carol (2015): this was a rewatch. it’s a period romantic melodrama that feels elevated because of some good filmmaking (and not idealizing the era that it’s from, but also not making everyone in that era out to be Totally Evil). maybe a boringly good movie, but it’s still a good movie. also i watched it mostly because Basic Instinct left a bad taste it my mouth and i wanted to watch a movie with lesbians i could feel good about. it succeeded there.
But I’m a Cheerleader (1999): fun campy gay movie featuring a shockingly young Natasha Lyonne (of Russian Doll fame)! also inexplicably it has RuPaul in a role i don’t hate. i imagine this movie is cathartic for anyone who was forced to sit through Christian anti-gay conversion therapy bullshit. good ridiculous set design and costumes also.
PeeWee’s Big Adventure (1985): several different people have recommended this movie to me over the years and i just never saw it for whatever reason until now. i said this on letterboxd: “it feels like everyone making the movie is having fun being part of the creative process and not thinking too much about what the rules are or what they’re supposed to be doing. it’s almost accidentally great.” kinda like Godard in the way that it intentionally breaks with a lot of conventions… or for a lower-brow comparison, the ending to Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles (not a movie it’s easy to admit you liked nowadays but i always thought the ending was great). but yeah. fun movie!
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989): i am honestly shocked i didn’t see people constantly making the hack comparison with this movie in the last few years of Trump, because everything about it screams that to me. i guess Trump was a creature of the 80’s though, and this movie was a response to that. it’s really hard to talk about everything in this movie without coming off too obvious. so many people i have been around or witnessed online are the Thief character in this movie - they don’t really truly understand or enjoy anything (aside from having power), but they’ve built an image up of being some kind of authority about things and they will never shut up about it ever again. definitely a five star movie, and a good one to watch in tandem with The Act of Killing imo.
Batman Returns (1992): i watched this because i was feeling deeply depressed about the season and wanted something that was as much the opposite of a wholesome family Christmas movie as possible, while still technically being a Christmas movie. i think i have some kind of long sublimated memory of this coming out as a kid (i definitely remember Batman being very popular around then), but i don’t think i ever saw more than small pieces of it. i say long sublimated because Catwoman probably brought up a lot of stuff with gender and sexuality for me that i was forced to repress for many many years, only to arise as an adult.
this movie did a surprisingly good job of shoving a bunch of storylines in one and making it feel like it all worked together in the end. and it was a bold move to make Batman kind of a secondary character in the story. i said this on twitter but in contrast to the whole faux-uplifting imperialist “lean-in” power fantasy garbage a lot of newer superhero movies adapt, i really like this movie’s view of costumed superheroes (and villains) as weird obsessive loner sex freaks with big traumas and bruised egos who do what they do mostly out of compulsion. i can relate to… all of those things. that actually feels way more empowering to me than current superhero movies as an aging weird loner artfreak even if it’s not an empowerment fantasy per se. and indeed, Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman is the only movie superhero i’ve ever related to on a deep level.
8 Likes
and when you compare the world modern studio writers and producers and actors live in this makes sense, especially next to the '80 and '90s ‘art weirdo looking trying to break into a locked-down corporate production’ perspective. Today the entire fishtank is, have I done enough to expose my brand online today? have I used my acknowledged privilege to help my tax-deductible self-named charity organization? Have I appropriately networked with my peer group?
3 Likes
god it’s true. and it’s so dark. tbh i think the 2010’s were another manifestation of the 80’s just with self-important brand consciousness substituted for “greed is good”
Blazing Saddles poster + half soy face = cancelled
8 Likes
So I saw Soul and while it was better than Inside Out I guess I really don’t know what all these people on twitter are talking about with how great it is or whatever. Still don’t think Pixar ever earns its right to treacle.
2 Likes
I watched an entire Jake Gyllenhaal movie thinking it was Ryan Gosling
5 Likes
ya got jake’d
2 Likes
weirdly before i saw this post i started watching Donnie Darko on a whim for the first time because i saw it for free on some streaming service. it was… okay i guess.
2 Likes
epic rap battles of himbo-ry
1 Like
DumbLand owns and I recommend you watch the 8 episodes if you can get your hands on a copy of it. It is not surprising to me at all that David Lynch makes great cartoons.
1 Like
I think Soul was pretty damn great. If nothing else it’s hopefully another Oscar in the bag for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Their music was godlike, S-Tier stuff and so unlike anything Pixar or Disney have ever done. It only almost fit the movie but it 100% made it better and more affecting. It’s the movie’s fault for not stepping up to the level of the music completely
Now my favorite Pixar movie, closely beating Ratatouille although at this point you can’t really compare the two… Soul really is a different kind of movie
i didn’t really get a lot out of Soul, but i do sort of want to rewatch it.
speaking of computer animated movies, i watched Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within tonight, for the first time since i saw it in theaters. i’d say that, having no expectations this time, i enjoyed it more than when i was a teenager. i didn’t dislike it back then, but i was, at the least, kind of disappointed.
but overall, yeah, not a bad time, but it’s just completely baffling. like there is nothing Final Fantasy about the movie lol. it really should have just been called something else, but then i guess they wouldn’t have gotten money from Columbia Pictures, without brand recognition. i think in retrospect, it’s easy to see how this would have bombed, but i guess at the time, the sky kind of was the limit for what Final Fantasy could be, theoretically.
but still, it’s kind of unbelievable to me that no one pulled Sakaguchi aside and was like “look, this is cool, but what the hell is this?” i guess he was just too untouchable back then. anyway, decent time, but still kind of strange.
3 Likes
inspired by this round of “sex onscreen is obscenity” discourse i had to watch a neo noir so i popped on kill me again. it’s just solid all around film making that makes me realize just how far the median has fallen in hollywood. these kind of constant, seemingly effortless attractive compositions are a lost art, or maybe i’m just a film fetishist.
12 Likes
I’ve never understood people that say this, it’s as Final Fantasy as anything I could imagine. An ecological adventure story about defeating the bad red spirits with good blue spirits with a plucky band.
5 Likes
i watched subway which is some movie with the possession lady by the fifth element guy from the year of my birth and there was great hair in it but why is that director obsessed with bad bleach jobs
the dinner scene was the best part and i want to cut it out of the movie and replace beetlejuices dinner scene with it