Song to Song

Song-to-Song Song to Song. Rooney Mara might be the best dizzy princess Malick's ever had. This one also has some of the best music. It's also one of the few Malick's to ever make me laugh multiple times. I was surprisingly swept up for the first hour or so. And yet... the staying power wasn't there for me. Still good, though. Updated Terrence Malick power rankings:

  1. Days of Heaven (as if!)
  2. The New World
  3. Badlands
  4. The Thin Red Line
  5. The Tree of Life (maybe one spot higher?)
  6. Song to Song
  7. To the Wonder
  8. Knight of Cups

That is a solid body of work.

The Neon Demon

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The Neon Demon. This is Nicolas Winding Refn's best movie, haters. I think it was More Than One Lesson, their episode on this movie, where Tyler Smith talked about this being a perfect pairing: Refn loves image and surface and sheen, and here he finds characters to match. Mirrors everywhere, all-consumptive. Don't forget it's a horror movie. My Refn power rankings:

  1. The Neon Demon
  2. Drive
  3. Bronson
  4. Only God Forgives
  5. Valhalla Rising
  6. Pusher

A Ghost Story

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A Ghost Story. I loved this movie. I will probably put it on my favorites-of-2018 list. I like this view of ghosts as sort of outside of time, in both directions. Ghosts as unfinished business. Ghosts with flaws and hang-ups. And the idea that places are saturated with history, and by the same token history isn't just events in time but in a space. Solid soundtrack, too.

War for the Planet of the Apes

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War for the Planet of the Apes. Kind of a bummer. At first I was really into the melodrama. Eventually, it became very tedious. It seemed like they were stopping for a sappy moment every 5-10 minutes. The Gollum/Jar Jar ape didn't help. I also don't understand why a crucial character uses a crossbow in a world with guns. Another hang-up was that I couldn't figure out how the world fit together. That's one thing I liked about Rise... and Dawn... – the geography was clear. You knew who was where. This one started in those awesome rainforests, then moved to a snowscape, and then to the Sierras? Or Tahoe? The previous ones were strong in that they felt like our world. I don't know what happened to it here. Bummer. Filed under: Planet of the Apes.

Why Walking Helps Us Think

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When we choose a path through a city or forest, our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward, and translate that plan into a series of footsteps. Likewise, writing forces the brain to review its own landscape, plot a course through that mental terrain, and transcribe the resulting trail of thoughts by guiding the hands. Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts.

– Ferris Jabr.

Margaret

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Margaret. The first film of the new year was so damn good. Takes the everyday and shows its operatic moments. The surly, volatile teen protagonist is all of us at some point, many points – heroes of our own story, center of the universe, disappointed by and disappointing those who care about us. One especially nice touch is the sound. Throughout there are interludes where you hear snippets of other conversations, city life, sometimes even more clearly than the main characters. Loved it. Bright Wall/Dark Room did an entire issue about Margaret; lots of good reading there. The only other Lonergan movie I've seen is Manchester By the Sea. Solid, but I'd rank this one way, way higher.