msicism

Negative Space (Chris Petit, 2000)

This is one of a number of Channel 4-sponsored essay films by Petit, perhaps best known for his Wendersesque anti-road movie Radio On (1979). I'd been meaning to catch up with it for awhile, and wasn't disappointed by it in terms of content. I only wish it had been a little longer, since it features two of the most compelling aesthetic theorists the U.S. has produced. As the title suggests, ...

Family Plot (Alfred Hitchcock, 1976)

Is this a controversial film among auteurists? I would assume that diehard Hitchcock fans would argue that Family Plot is appropriately valedictory, showing the old master in a much looser, playful mood, manipulating the tropes of the genre he virtually invented. There are mysteries, MacGuffins, double-crosses, and the like, and Hitchcock plays them like a charming old melody, comforting in ...

September Poll: Single Serving Films

In accordance with the wishes of the ruly mob, I am asking you to select FOUR films below. (You could choose more, but we are on the honor system.) I will then view those four during the month of September (which should be a nice respite from Festival Fever).

Films of the Month (Not Directors)

Hey, so the poll was nearly 3-to-1 in favor of choosing select films every month, instead of a single director. Cool.

Watch this space (or one very much like it) for a new film-laden poll. 😊

Annette (Leos Carax, 2021)

It's difficult to fairly evaluate Annette, because there's something glorious about the fact that it even exists. It's not just that brothers Ron and Russell Mael have tried and failed to bend cinema to their will. (Although it should be said, the inability to get a Tim Burton vehicle off the ground was probably a blessing in disguise.) The idea that Sparks, a musical act as consi...

Jerzy Skolimowski: Two Early Films

Through the courtesy of the revived cinephobe.tv website, I recently saw these two early Skolimowski films, his second and third features. What was most instructive to me is just how much more sophisticated a filmmaker Skolimowski became between the two productions, only a year apart.

Walkover (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1965)

A fast-paced effort that, oddly enough, ca...

Before I Go (Eric Schaeffer, 2021)

So this item randomly came up on a torrent site I frequent, and it occurred to me that I had never actually seen an Eric Schaeffer film. While this didn't exactly strike me as a major lack in my viewing history, it did make me feel as though I'd missed out on a strain of Schadenfreude specific to my generation of cinephiles. Nearly twenty years ago, when I started talkin' 'bout movies on the...

Preliminary Poll for September: Format Change?

Should I continue selecting a Filmmaker of the Month? Or should I conduct a more MD'A-esque poll involving specific major films I've never seen? (In this case, I'd have you select four choices from a broad slate, and the four winners are the ones I'd see.)

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Mikio Naruse, 1960)

In his invaluable e-book A Mikio Naruse Companion, Dan Sallitt mentions that he does not consider When a Woman Ascends the Stairs to be a major work, and evinces a bit of confusion at the fact that this the Naruse film that made the strongest inroads with Western audiences. While I agree with Dan about the film's shortcomings -- it is rather narratively deterministic -- I'm not surp...

Orphea (Alexander Kluge and Khavn, 2020)

Last year I tried to watch Orphea and bailed after a scant 20 minutes. But recently, the Houston Cinema Arts Society selected the film for a one-week virtual run, which put it back on my radar. How did this happen, exactly? As far as I know, Orphea still has no U.S. distributor, so securing the rights probably took a bit of extra effort. Someone in the organization (with which I am ...

Întregalde (Radu Muntean, 2021)

The first fifteen minutes of Întregalde, the latest from Radu Muntean, are so stuffed with activity that it's difficult to even guess what the rest of the film might hold. We open in what looks like a crowded food market, but in the course of some coordinated activity and cross-talk, we figure out what we're actually seeing. It's the organizational hub for an aid effort organized by the (un...

Oh Bondage, Up Yours!

I've just watched episodes one through three, and I detest this. Any reason I should continue? I mean, it's just going to be the same thing over and over and over and [APHEX TWIN] over and over and [MEKONS] over again, right?

I'm open to counter-arguments, because I know I "should" finish this because it's "important." But Jesus....

Catch-Up Poll: Max Ophüls

Catch-Up Poll: Mikio Naruse

Catch-Up Poll: Alfred Hitchcock

Catch-Up Poll: Satyajit Ray

Catch-Up Poll: Powell & Pressburger

(This one is mostly procedural. I know the outcome.)

Catch-Up Poll: Vincente Minnelli

August: Voting Body

Hey everyone, I have decided to use Our Beloved Month of August as a catch-up period. More specifically, I am going to watch one more film by each of the previous months' directors, rather than tackle a brand new OOV-ruh. So I will let you guys decide which six films I'll be seeing. (I am skipping Charles Burnett, who I pretty much exhausted.) So stay tuned for the super-quick polls in a few minutes....

Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)

I am beginning to think that Minnelli just isn't my guy. He's certainly a competent technician, and knows how to structurally organize a film with a lot of moving parts. His adaptation of James Jones' novel is rather admirable in the way it keeps a number of arguably peripheral characters, ones that a lesser director would probably jettison. At the same time, this may indicate a literalist streak in ...

Il Buco (The Hole) (Michelangelo Frammartino, 2021)

[Embargoed. You are not reading this right now. It is an illusion.]

It was eleven years ago that Michelangelo Frammartino became a signficant new name on the festival scene with his second feature Le Quattro Volte. That highly unusual film combined a kind of rustic classicism with the extreme reduction of drama typically associated with the avant-garde. Like fellow cin...

Zeros and Ones (Abel Ferrara, 2021)

[This is EMBARGOED, just so's you know.]

Are you by chance one of those long-time Ferrara fans out there who hasn't really appreciated the director's recent turn toward classical high-art modernism? If so, rejoice! The half-assed, scattershot Ferrara is back, the one whose intellectual B-movies inspire embarrassment and awe in about equal measure. Following the career high poin...

Cutlets (Bertrand Blier, 2003)

In deciding to catch up with some old Cannes titles, I've initially gone with some films that were severely lambasted at the time of their world premiere. It can often be instructive to see what sorts of films cause this particular subset -- the Cannes audience -- to rankle, since most of the time these films, whatever their flaws, will at least be auteurist efforts exhibiting some style and ideas. A...

Please Evict My Dumb-Ass Senator

As you all know, I am not on Twitter. But I check in with the site now and then, just to see if there are any under-the-radar news stories I might otherwise miss.

Right now, there's another "debate" raging about PEMDAS, aka the order of mathematical operations. The fact that there is a debate, as such, just shows how intimate the connection is between the Internet and our current post-truth cul...

Taurus (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2001)

As a secret contrarian, nothing would delight me more than to say that Taurus slaps. Alas, slap it does not, although I also think that the harsh rejection it received in Cannes may have been just a little off-base. Flawed as it is, Taurus is at least a mostly coherent statement, which is more than be said for Faust, Sokurov's inexplicable 2011 Golden Lion winner. Divided i...

Pig (Michael Sarnoski, 2021)

Pig is an auspicious debut film, to put it mildly. First-timer Michael Sarnoski displays a remarkable control over tone and ambiance, which is all too rare in independent English-language films these days. But what's more impressive is that he uses that control to navigate his extremely strange, highly literary screenplay through very treacherous waters. This is a film that is continually in...

We Interrupt This Program...

Hey folks, what can I say? I have grown bored, with movies, with television, with food and drink, with life in general. So for now, I am suspending the Minnelli-fest to explore some older Cannes titles that look intriguing.

Now, for those of you who voted for Minnelli, take heart. I will spill those viewings into August. I just need to...

2021-07-22 02:12:45 +0000 UTC View Post

Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, 2021)

Peter Tscherkassky's newest film world premiered in Cannes, his fourth appearance in the Quinzaine. Cannes is not particularly friendly to non-narrative and experimental film, to put it lightly, but Tscherkassky is one of a handful of avant-gardists whose work has captured the attention of the broader cinephile community. (Nathaniel Dorsky is another, and recently folks like Kevin Everson, Sky Hopink...

Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944)

Okay, now I'm starting to get it. Minnelli's direction here actually strikes me as a distant cousin to Hawks and Capra, in that he deftly manages a large, variegating ensemble, navigating between the margins and the center. The center, of course, is Judy Garland, who is a very generous performer here, well aware of her starring role but committed enough to her character's family orientation to share ...

Introduction (Hong Sangsoo, 2021)

Hong Sangsoo's two films from 2021 form an instructive if frustrating diptych. Where his most recent effort, In Front of Your Face, reduces some of the director's thematic moves to their bare essence, Introduction is a strange exercise in form, one that quite literally amounts to less than the sum of its parts. There are three parts, to be exact, and each vignette orbits ...