Air (Ben Affleck, 2023)
Let's get this out of the way first. Ben Affleck is a good director. While The Town and Go...
2024-01-18 21:56:57 +0000 UTC View Post
msicism posts
Red Rooms (Pascal Plante, 2023)
BY REQUEST: Morris Yang
Pascal Plante's last film, Nadia, Butterfly, ha...
2024-01-18 01:55:09 +0000 UTC View PostAnselm (Wim Wenders, 2023)
Covering some of the same ground of Sophie Fiennes' 2010 documentary Over Your Cities Grass Will Gr...
2024-01-15 20:25:32 +0000 UTC View PostA Brighter Tomorrow (Nanni Moretti, 2023)
Judging from the widespread disapproval A Brighter Tomorrow elicited at Cannes, it is getting ...
2024-01-14 23:37:12 +0000 UTC View PostTwo Girls on the Street (André de Toth, 1939)
BY REQUEST: Imperial Hean
First things first: I am woefully under-informed about...
2024-01-13 03:51:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Days of Happiness (Chloé Robichaud, 2023)
Of course it's a bit awkward, like showing up to the gala wearing the same dress. Robichaud's third fea...
2024-01-12 05:58:30 +0000 UTC View PostMonster (Kore-eda Hirokazu, 2023)
It may not be quite fair to say Kore-eda is in his flop era. After all, many quite appreciated his Palm...
2024-01-08 22:23:57 +0000 UTC View PostPast Lives (Celine Song, 2023)
Yesterday the National Society of Film Critics (of which I'm a member) voted Past Lives the be...
2024-01-07 23:32:57 +0000 UTC View PostThe Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki, 2023)
All art criticism is unavoidably subjective. And in some ways, I wish that weren't the case. Like anyon...
2024-01-07 22:52:31 +0000 UTC View PostNew Year, Another Subscriber Lottery
Okay, so since only one of the last three "winners" provided a film request, we'll just move along. (Th...
2024-01-07 05:46:25 +0000 UTC View PostOn the Adamant (Nicolas Philibert, 2023)
At last year's Berlinale, several competition titles were quite well received, including but not limite...
2024-01-06 05:02:01 +0000 UTC View PostPerforming the Border (Ursula Biemann, 1999)
Given my ambivalence about the place of the essay-film / video-essay in the current avant-garde landsca...
2024-01-06 03:53:34 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #7
Close Your Eyes (Víctor Erice, 2023)
About twenty years ago, academic studies o...
2024-01-02 21:31:01 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #6
Happy New Year, friends! Let's make it a good one without any tears, etc. I fell a bit behind on write-...
2024-01-02 03:08:48 +0000 UTC View Post25 Great Experimental Films of 2023
As we say goodbye to a very difficult 2023, I wanted to look back at some of the experimental films and videos from this year that inspired, entertained, and challenged me in the course of my viewi...
2024-01-01 01:50:34 +0000 UTC View Post(ALSO)
David and Abner, you still have the chance to contact me with your Lottery requests. If I don’t hear from you by the end of the first week in January, I will draw other subscribers’ names. But ...
2023-12-29 06:56:11 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #5
The Taste of Things (Tran Anh Hung, 2023)
Perfectly inoffensive middlebrow mater...
2023-12-27 06:45:37 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #4
Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella, 2022)
I've learned over the years that it's qu...
2023-12-24 00:55:28 +0000 UTC View PostRecent AI Works by Damon Packard
The films of Damon Packard are an acquired taste, to put it mildly. Although he is far too sophisticate...
2023-12-22 03:49:47 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #3
Memory (Michel Franco, 2023)
The last thing I want to do is oversell Memory<...
2023-12-21 21:38:52 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #2
La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2023)
Usually my opinion of a film is fairly consi...
2023-12-16 22:12:33 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #1
Yes, yes, it's that time again. Final grades are finally submitted, the lights are up along the eaves a...
2023-12-14 04:02:58 +0000 UTC View PostMay December (Todd Haynes, 2023)
As is often the case with Todd Haynes' films, May December is organized according to a very sp...
2023-12-08 04:44:33 +0000 UTC View PostFallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki, 2023)
The unavoidable familiarity of Fallen Leaves, together with its mere 80-minute runtime, initia...
2023-12-04 20:17:20 +0000 UTC View PostThe Teachers' Lounge (İlker Çatak, 2023)
I went into watching The Teachers' Lounge rather naively, since I did not realize it won sever...
2023-11-30 23:17:54 +0000 UTC View PostMusic (Angela Schanelec, 2023)
Before going any further, I invite you to read 2023-11-28 21:35:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Putney Swope (Robert Downey, 1969)
BY REQUEST: Robert Davis
"Where have you been?"
"Laying back ...
2023-11-27 16:40:28 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cram: Two Kinds of Disappointment
Frybread Face and Me (Billy Luther, 2023)
While Luther's debut film is nothing i...
2023-11-26 05:05:14 +0000 UTC View PostLottery Time Again
It's fortuitous that this random selection is happening on (American) Thanksgiving. That's because over...
2023-11-23 21:53:52 +0000 UTC View Post