Punch-Drunk Love. I put this one off for a long, long time. I started very skeptical, but it won me over. Brings out sides of Sandler I never knew were there, and gotta respect a movie that drifts so freely from convention when it feels right. My PT Anderson power rankings:
Cameraperson. Man I loved this one. A collage of footage from director Kirsten Johnson’s work on other films. It works as an experience of the lives she documents and as seeing through her own eyes, and as wrestling with the choices of what or what not to show and how or how not to tell these stories. Highly recommended.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I remember having the biggest crush on Dr. Elsa Schneider as a kid and feeling very conflicted about it. It’s a fun ride, but also felt a little frustrating sometimes when they’re playing for laughs.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I forgot how weird this movie was, is. Breakneck zany with no patience for sitting around asking questions.
Raiders of the Lost Ark. It holds up the best of the original trilogy. I feel Iike the Marion Ravenwood character still hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves – Karen Allen is great. Watching as an adult you realize that Indy is… often not very good at what he does. Still gorgeous and fun and it’ll be that way for years to come.
It’s not Wikipedia that we binge on all day.
“Because modern horror is usually this masochistic titillation bullshit, a lot of people in interviews will tell me [The Witch] is not a horror film, it’s a psychological suspense thriller with supernatural elements,” he said, putting on a tone of faux-snobbery. “And I’m like, ‘O.K., that’s cool.’ But then fucking Edgar Allan Poe isn’t horror, either. “What’s important to me about horror stories,” he continued, “is to look at what’s actually horrifying about humanity, instead of shining a flashlight on it and running away giggling.”
Robert Eggers, Director of ‘The Witch,’ on the Horror Right in Front of Us | | Observer
The Witch. Second viewing. Incredible movie, and my appreciation grows and grows the more I think and read about it.
Blue Ruin. Second viewing. I wasn’t as gobsmacked as I was the first time I watched it, but it holds up really well.
Stormy Monday. I like its stylishness, the moody, cynical, compact story. Also enjoyed Mike Figgis’ Internal Affairs.
Love & Friendship. If you like Jane Austen and/or Whit Stillman, you can’t go wrong here. Chatty, witty, gossipy. Things really pick up when Sir James Martin appears. It’s like someone tossed a confetti bomb into the room. I should watch more chamber pieces.
Inside Llewyn Davis. I liked it but I feel like I was missing a little something. It’s just not the Coen way to get super sappy. Can’t help but see this movie as the two of them trying to work out how they’d carry on without the other. I’d rank this one third out of their movies I’ve seen, behind No Country for Old Men and Fargo and way ahead of The Big Lebowski.
I’m interested in how animals are connected to the internet and how we might be able to see the world from an animal’s point of view. There’s something very interesting in someone else’s vantage point, which might have a truth to it. For instance, the tagging of cows for automatic milking machines, so that the cows can choose when to milk themselves. Cows went from being milked twice a day to being milked three to six times a day, which is great for the farm’s productivity and results in happier cows, but it’s also faintly disquieting that the technology makes clear to us the desires of cows – making them visible in ways they weren’t before. So what does one do with that knowledge? One of the unintended consequences of big data and the internet of things is that some things will become visible and compel us to confront them.
Genevieve Bell: ‘Humanity’s greatest fear is about being irrelevant’ | Technology | The Guardian
There was a lot of inherent cultural relativism in the science fiction I discovered then. It gave me the idea that you could question anything, that it was possible to question anything at all. You could question religion, you could question your own culture’s most basic assumptions. That was just unheard of—where else could I have gotten it? You know, to be thirteen years old and get your brain plugged directly into Philip K. Dick’s brain!
That wasn’t the way science fiction advertised itself, of course. The self-advertisement was: Technology! The world of the future! Educational! Learn about science! It didn’t tell you that it would jack your kid into this weird malcontent urban literary universe and serve as the gateway drug to J. G. Ballard.
And nobody knew. The people at the high school didn’t know, your parents didn’t know. Nobody knew that I had discovered this window into all kinds of alien ways of thinking that wouldn’t have been at all acceptable to the people who ran that little world I lived in.
Resentment might start with a wrong that’s done to you, but harboring it in silence is a wrong you do to others.
Be wary of tools that solve a problem that didn’t exist before the tool. GPS helped solve a problem that existed for a long time before it came along (how do I get where I want to go?), so did Google (how do I find this piece of information I need?). Snapchat, by contrast, did not. Be wary of tools in this latter category as they tend to exist mainly to create addictive new behaviors that support ad sales.
The Neon Demon. If divisiveness was Refn’s goal, it seems he delivered. Lots of hate and eye-rolling for this one, and I get it to a degree (especially when the director is kind of a troll). But I liked it. I appreciated Lauren Wilford’s perspective. Movies are not just the stories they’re about, but also the way they are about it. Gotta make space in the world for demented fever-dreamy impressionist movies, too.
Bone Tomahawk. It’s a western and a horror film. I shouldn’t have to sell it more than that, but I’ll add that it has a script that just blew my mind. So funny, so sharp. There’s some thematic richness, too, in how these characters (all pretty well-drawn) manage what they face together (some, uh, seriously horrific stuff – fair warning). So pleasantly surprised with this movie. I need a rewatch!
Arrival. I loved the short story collection that this movie draws from. I wish they’d played the extremes just a bit more. Maybe get even more nerdy with the science/linguistics, and even more fragmented/playful with the chronology. Can’t have everything, though. It’s about as good an adaptation as you can ask for that’d still get wide release.
Moonlight. Loved it. Broke my heart many times over. One of my 2016 favorites.
Mark Larson 