Daguerréotypes (1975)

One of my jobs is teaching English online, to people all over the world. One of those people happens to live like 10 minutes from me on foot. She also loves movies and art and our lessons are entirely occupied with those – and the feelings about them.

Talking about movies we watch when feeling stressed, she mentioned Agnès Varda's "Daguerréotypes", a movie I'm unsure I ever heard of. It's available on the Criterion Channel, so I watched it.

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The silent ur-Wes Anderson sequence of still lifes, the disarray of each shop (messes really), the shopkeepers’ smocks, the old ads and displays as much part of the structures as the windows or walls, the butcher wiping his apron but never his hands, the mom who shits on her son for struggling with everything, the guy taking out gas cans with a lit cigarette in his mouth, the small change, the buttons (three, white), the bouffants, le pain quotidien, the old lady who touches a coat and seems to disapprove of it because it too must be inside right now, a flank steak here, a couple ribs there, things taken from shelves or restored to boxes but not with much care, memories, dreams, origin stories (seemingly everyone from somewhere else), the entrances and the exits, the opening and the closing.

So many moments in this movie are exquisite.

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Nine to Five (1980)

The last movie I watched in 2023 was “9 to 5” – er, "Nine to Five"^†. It's damned enjoyable and fairly, pleasantly progressive, and the performances are all great.

The biggest weakness is the fantasy sequences, which all could've been cut down to a few quick bits – they go on far too long.

This is probably the first time ever seeing this start to finish, and the bits I’ve seen before were probably like 40 years ago on TV. I should've watched it much sooner, as I've had free will for a while now.

Important note: I never realized as a small boy child what an absolute peach Dolly was. Good lord, I could've watched more of her all damned day.

3.5⭐️

^† This is the only film besides "Seven"/"Se7en" that I can think of that styles its title differently on its title screen and its posters. In the movie itself, the numbers are spelled out: "Nine to Five". On the poster, as above, it seems to always be "9 to 5". Fittingly, Letterboxd has the movie listed under its screen-title; shitass IMDb has its title listed with the numerals.

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Yesterday (2019)

Just a downright delightful time at the movies.

3.5⭐️

Blow Out (1981

Rewatching a slew of political-paranoia movies and was struck by the lack of paranoia in this one. Travolta’s character just knows he’s right and wants everyone else to know it, too. He doesn’t even seem all that concerned about the consequences.

4⭐️

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

The knock on this movie is they get together too quickly – or even at all. I suppose it’s not wrong. But this movie is a lot more adult than that. They don’t fall in love; the movie’s not sappy. They’re two lonely and scared people alone, together, in a bizarre, terrifying situation and they act out on that. And there are real repercussions that follow – she feels cheap and ashamed; he’s too wrapped around the axle of his own nightmare to realize he took advantage of her. But the conversations that follow are more grown-up than this aspect of the movie gets credit for.

The rest of it is always so much better than I remember, and I love this fucking movie. The acting elevates everything, including the many, many great lines:

Joe: I don’t remember yesterday. Today, it rained.

Higgins: He reads.
What does that mean?
Higgins: It means he reads everything.

Joubert: You have not much future there [in NYC]. It will happen this way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know, maybe even trust, will get out of the car. And he will smile, a becoming smile. But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to give you a lift.

Wabash: I go even further back than that. Ten years after The Great War, as we used to call it. Before we knew enough to number them.

Higgins: It'd have to be somebody in the community.
Joe Turner: Community?
Higgins: Intelligence field.
Joe Turner: Community! Jesus, you guys are kind to yourselves. Community.

Turner: I was born in the United States, Joubert. I miss it when I'm away too long.

4⭐️

The Parallax View (1974)

The fucking ‘70s, man. Such a shit decade in America for countless reasons, but not for American movies.

I love this movie. It remains great. And it has encouraged me to do a little political-thriller film fest soon.

4⭐️

The Revenant (2015)

This movie is fucking gorgeous and I wish I would've seen it on a screen bigger than my antiquated iMac's. It's like Iñárritu made a Terrence Malick movie using CGI – which is both a compliment and not but mostly a compliment. Iñárritu is brilliantly talented.

And speaking of talented mufuckers, Tom Hardy should've won Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. I'm sorta mind-blown that he didn't; he's incredible in this movie. DiCaprio is too, but that goes without saying.

This movie is stunning, intense, occasionally elegiac, well-made and -told, and the acting is incredible. I'm probably never going to watch it again. It's truly fantastic. It's in no way fun.

4⭐️

Predator (1987)

There’s so much weird 1980s oiled-up militaristic and homoerotic America-rah-rah machine-gun muscular bang bang bullshit in this movie that it could function as a microcosm of Reagan-era America.

And yet, eye rolls aside, it’s still an effective horror/action movie, not inartfully made. The special effects are still pretty gripping, aside from the Force lightning. And the alien is still fucking terrifying when it pulls off its mask.

Worth the rewatch.

3⭐️

Coming 2 America (2021)

I rewatched the original a few weeks back. I was impressed how well it held up. It hasn’t all aged well, of course, but it still works and it’s still fun.

The new one, tho. It has, being generous, a few good lines, but there are too many funny people involved for this movie to be this bad.

1⭐️

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

I watched this only once prior – more than 20 years ago. I recalled the fairly iconic editing, of course, but I’d forgotten how jazzy and hip the music is – and how annoyingly loud it gets.

Good movie; stylish, convincing. Not one I need to watch again for the next 20 years.

3⭐️

Argo (2012)

Still really effective on my, I think, third watch. I don’t particularly care how accurate it is or isn’t, it does a nice job setting the scene and telling its story. It’s funny and tense in the right moments and to an entertaining degree.

I’d forgotten how short the op itself was. They’re in and out (by necessity) in just a couple days.

I enjoyed the con-building more this time and I could’ve watched more of it. In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing a movie wherein a fake movie is marketed and sold.

Argo fuck yourself.

3.5⭐️

Pretty Poison (1968)

I came across this initially while looking at a list someplace of movies referenced in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. (Can’t find it now but it was super informative.) I don’t think I’d ever heard of Pretty Poison before then. After watching Thief and looking up its cast members (specifically Weld, in this case), I decided to actually watch it.

A few things: I liked it. Tuesday Weld does a nice job as an increasingly obviously disturbed person. Anthony Perkins is a terrible actor and yet he plays weirdos... weirdly effectively. Somehow his performance here ~kinda works.

Odd movie that I appreciate more now than when I finished it a few hours ago.

3⭐️

Thief (1981)

I watched this a few days back. The more I think about it, the better it gets. Just absolutely tremendous.

Great performance by James Caan, who I’m not a huge fan of typically. The music is simultaneously horrid and perfect. In almost any other context it would be maddening, but this movie probably doesn’t work anywhere near as well without it.

As I tweeted: I can report that Willie Nelson was old every day of his life.

4⭐️

Coming to America (1988)

First time in at least 25 years. Absolutely holds up; still a fun flick.

It’s always a joy to see a young Eddie, whose ability to smile widely while saying stuff remains one of comedy’s great things.

“What does ‘dumb fuck’ mean?”

3.5⭐️

Zulu (1964)

One of my favorite people is The Long Winters' John Roderick. I've listened to every podcast of his that I'm aware of, or nearly so, and am endlessly impressed by how strangely similar he and I are (and how different, but that's a stream for another day).

Recently, he and two friends started a podcast called "Friendly Fire" wherein they watch and then talk about war movies. I've been watching along and listening to each enjoyable episode. That's how I came to finally watch the 1964 British masterpiece Zulu.

I've known about this movie for just about as long as I can remember knowing about movies. But I'm not sure why. I can remember my dad watching bits and pieces of it. I never saw the whole film and have no memory of him watching it titles-to-credits, tho he must have. Perhaps this is because it was often on TV early in my childhood. Or perhaps this is one of the laserdiscs my dad would rent back when I was too young to help hook up the rented player(!), but old enough to know they were awesome. Regardless, spotted among my early-childhood memories are bits of this film.

And what a film it is!

Weirdly, perhaps, it's effective not exactly in the way it was intended. We're meant to root for the British and (spoilers!) find relief at their ultimate survival. And there's definitely relief at the end. But I suspect the road I took to get there wasn't the road on the map.

I'm American and I have a natural revulsion to Empire. The British were particularly foul, absolutely everywhere. So as this movie sets up the characters - the Cassandra-like preacher succumbing to increasing hysteria, the lieutenants Chard and Bromhead (the competent and the absurd), and so on - I spent most of the time rooting (against history and filmmaking) for the Zulu warriors to drive out their invaders, protect their own land, prevail, and rewrite the textbooks we're all disappointed by.

But history is awash in malignancy.

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Because life, I didn't finish writing this earlier and most of my concrete thoughts at the time have blurred to abstractions. But I wanted to say something about how wonderful the soundtrack – apparently never released on LP/CD – is, how well the movie's suspense builds, how terrible the effects are, and the honor paid to the Zulu (even as they're made to honor jolly-old British courage). The scenes with them chanting and singing are extraordinary and affecting. Amid the awful effects and ridiculous accents is a humanity films of this type and era too rarely paid people of darker skin tones - just as in history, they're treated as tools (plot-devices, in the movies) at best, sources of terror at worst. But here a softer light shines on them - and the rareness of this increases its effect.

This movie is imperfect, but it is damned good.

終 MacBook; April, sometime; 4 stars.

The Last Emperor (1987)

Watching The Last Emperor again, after what must have been decades – it's possible I last saw it shortly after it became available on VHS because I'm fucking ancient – I'm impressed both by how different it is from the film in my memory, and how similar. I remembered that it took place over time, of course, with the Emperor at many different stages of life and influence. But I'd completely forgotten about the cross-cutting between eras, a choice that is startling effective and disappointingly undercopied.

These days (as in GoodFellas, a movie I'll write about shortly), movies too often open with a scene from some point farther along its arc, then snap back to the story’s origin in the past before proceeding chronologically. This is also effective (as in GoodFellas), but it's become so standard as to be nearly immediately obvious. Watching this film open with the middle-aged former Emperor in a prison camp, I assumed it would follow that roadmap. Thankfully, and arrestingly, it doesn't.

The story is fascinating, even ~30 years later; the movie has aged quite well. Interestingly, it's of a man whose life, nearly entirely, was spent imprisoned - the war ultimately frees him from his confinement, but also of his power.

The performances, even by some of the kids, were great. And its cast, happily, appears to be stocked with actors of the appropriate races. The sets are brilliant and so is every pair of glasses....

I don't have much to offer here, really. However something occurred to me during the chronologically-early scenes with the young emperor trapped within the Forbidden City's walls:

John Kennedy remarked that we've learned from the past that "those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside." The thought I had was related, but from a slightly different angle: it must be uncomfortable for a tyrant, regardless of whatever form his or her tyranny takes, to ponder, in moments of reflection, that the people they control will one day come for their head. If the tyrant is harsh or benevolent enough, maybe they'll escape life before the hangman comes, before the forbidden knocking at the door comes as a furious pounding. But that daunting thought must linger. And when it festers into the paranoia which invariably rankles tyrants, it must be overpowering. Putin must know it as surely as Stalin did, and Assad does.

There may be one, but I can't think of a time that this (or some charitable impulse) impelled a tyrant to reconsider his (for they have always been men) power in favor of broader, deeper freedoms for his people. You might offer George Washington, a could-have-been tyrant, and you'd have a point, but an ugly one: I’d counter that he traded the tyranny of state for the local tyranny of his plantation. So fuck him, too.

This thought isn't related to the movie. The protagonist here, slips from power officially first, drifting into governmental irrelevance which softens his termination later. But the thought gave me pause.

Anyway, it’s a great movie that holds up under the weight of time. That’s an achievement, too.

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TV; April 8; 4 stars

The Big Short (2015)

I've now seen this twice. The first time I watched it, I was hopped down on pneumonia meds and was varying levels of comatose, but I liked it. I was impressed by its ability to explain complex concepts in a way that was engaging, fun, decipherable thru a medicated, feverish fog, and yet artfully limited to what you need to know for the movie to work. I find finance a mix of immorality and opacity - and I suspect the latter exists to mask more former. But I had no trouble following these moments of exposition without feeling that they bogged down the movie.  And I thought the three or four educational inserts fit quite nicely into the movie's form and sense of irreverence. (Still, they probably could've thought of a better one than the supermodel-sitting-in-a-bathtub, which is neither clever nor titillating, and felt both times like an interlude from a lesser era.)

Watching the movie a second time, I was thoroughly impressed by its structure. The direction and editing (by Adam McKay and Hank Corwin, respectively) are top-shelf. The performances are all believably fantastic. And so are the performances: Christian Bale, who I'm normally not a fan of, excels here; Steve Carell further demonstrates his incredible talent; Ryan Gosling continues adding arguments to his claim as the best actor of this decade; and so many others.

My one complaint - the only thing keeping me from giving it a 5-star rating on Letterboxd - is that two times the music lays too heavily over the dialog. Once, it's intentional, I'm pretty sure, as Carell talks to his wife about his brother, but I don't like the effect. And in both cases, the effect is exaggerated because I really like the songs. That may be a weird compliant, but both times it pulled me out of the movie.

But that's really it, my only complaint, a mild one. This is superlative work, a complete success, a wonder.

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4 stars; TV; March 26th.

Cool Hand Luke (1967)

A new coworker and I started talking movies about a week ago, and both made long lists of recommended movies afterward. Mine topped 50 titles; hers, nearly the same. One of the movies she recommended was this one, Cool Hand Luke, a movie I'd never seen.

It’s a beautiful movie: the cinematography is perfect, and the shot selection is fantastic, especially early on. It manages to be of-its-time, but not seem dated, which is an interesting trick.

But it isn’t an easy movie to watch. Newman is great. The story is interseting - iconic, often funny. But watching a character this masochistic isn’t enjoyable.

Luke does nothing to make his life easier - unless it will help make his life even more difficult later. I feel like foreign films at the time - and in a much more superficial way, movies today - would have examined his impulse toward self abuse. What caused him to behave so intensely self-destructively. But here it isn’t examined at all. (It may be hinted at, but only in the vaguest of ways - he was a war hero, he had to kill people in that war.) That isn’t a flaw in the movie, but it does make the movie more unapologetically masochistic than I’m used to seeing, or that makes for comfortable viewing.

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3.5 stars; TV; March 22nd.

And So It Begins... Again.

Some years ago, I maintained a stupid movie blog. I’d occasionally update it with inane comments on the movies I’d watched, including the order I watched them, and the method by which I watched them. After a while, it went from a glorified list, its raison d’être, to a perpetual annoyance.

To be honest, I don’t particularly care if anyone else knows what I think about the movies I see. But recently I’ve browsed the old blog a couple times to see what I thought of some movie I can no longer remember very well, or to look up some other included ephemera. So I now see that it does have some utility:  as a record for me - for the dystopian moments when I actually feel like reading what I once thought; or for when I need or want some actually helpful bit of information. I don’t care if anyone else ever sees this. But sometime in the future, I may want to look back at it. And that’s why it’s worth keeping — or, as it were, restarting.

And so that’s what this will be. I hope to make it look a bit better, to have some fun with its design — that ought to help keep it interesting, to keep me posting. But it’ll just be a record for me, probably not terribly interesting to anyone else; a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

En garde.

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