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It's a perfect movie. It's almost too perfect. The fashion, the look on Cate's face when Theresa (Rooney Mara) is walking to her at the end, the line reading of "ask me things, please"; the fact that men are the joke throughout the movie.
It makes me wonder about representation and the limits of it because of how womanly and queer this movie is, despite the fact that it never feels like a movie made for women. It's just a great movie.
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Céline Sciamma’s queer feminist period drama about two wammin passing the Bechdel test in the Age of Patriarchy gets a thumbs up from me. I watched this movie on the plane and it’s common knowledge that flying makes you emotional/horny, which might explain why it left such a lasting impression.This film has everything you could possibly want: lesbians, nudity, costumes, art history references, vision — all while maintaining an uncharacteristic degree of restraint and not going too hard on the political statements. The casual absence of men for the most part is a nice touch. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s up there in my hall of fame, along with Harold Pinter and Joseph Losey’s The Go-Between, Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract and Alain Corneau’s All the Mornings of the World. The only thing that would’ve made it better in my opinion is if they delivered on all the threats of self-immolation in the end, but endings are something that filmmakers historically seem to struggle with, so next.
Aug 23, 2022
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This film is, to me, perfection. Lesbian adjacent stalking, huge focus on real estate and the two GOATiest GOATS- Cate B and Judi D- going head to head at the speed of hysteria. This is what I hoped I was getting when I decided to make a home in London (every part except an affair with a fifteen year old boy. Not good!) Not only do I love the aesthetic- a kind of drab cashmere cowl-neck with a hippie skirt, the sense that everyone is ten degrees too cold, tons of crown moulding- but I love any film about our obsessive cultural interest in catching mothers stepping outside of bounds, and what that punitive glee says about us. Watch for the complex social message, stay to see a young Juno Temple whimper-cry “I’M FAT AS FUCK, MUM!" (she’s most definitely not, but she plays it perfectly.)
Jan 3, 2023
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I'm often accused of being an "old soul", a categorization I vehemently dislike because it pretends as if my taste is because of nostalgia, as opposed to what is actually cool and compelling. (If something cool comes out now, I enjoy it, but we're in a down period when it comes to culture). But, something old about me, is that I do not care at all about TikTok ending, if does happen. If Elon takes it over from the Chinese, you might as well leave anyway, but I'm just worried at why this is a huge deal for people. It's just an app. Another one will be made. TikTok is not culture, it directly flattens culture into these ten second clips that take music, movies --- things that you need to process --- into something that is now consumed by everyone at a rapid pace, not allowing for the nuances, the style, the aesthetics to sit with us.
I have never watched something on TikTok and thought that this is something in that pushing American culture to deeper heights. I am sorry. Now I am sure they're good stuff on the app, but it's not really a necessity. Whenever I hear the words "it's blowing up on TikTok", my mind immediately growls.
I understood why X becoming overrun with Elon bots and right wingers is a big deal; X actually created things, made careers, made American life, and American events available to be seen by everyone. However, TikTok is a corrupt fantasy, chopping at the wires that make physical connection important.
Read a book! Go to the movies! Go to the restaurant of a cuisine that is unheralded, go to a baseball game. Who cares about TikTok?
Jan 14, 2025
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There's something quite startling about Martin Scorsese's 1980's period compared to the rest of his decades as one of America's greatest filmmakers. In the 80's, he was weird, strange, and making weirdly manic films that feel more New York than even some of his movies about the mob. They're movies about characters who aren't glamarous people that they want to be, but rather, are losers who can't seem to correctly fucntion in normal society. They're non-violent sociopaths. I saw The King of Comedy at Metrograph recently, and it's exhilarating, hilarious, manic, and scary. With Jerry Lewis, Bobby De Niro and Sandra Bernhard, Scorsese was able to create a world where incels who are bad at comedy are wishing for fame. Sound familiar?
This is a great movie. In 1983, it was a box office flop. But in 2025, it is magical in how it's telling the future. A future of scam artists who don't want to work to get there, and don't want to sit in their mediocrity: they want to steal to get their fifteen seconds. Go watch this masterpiece.
Jan 28, 2025
The minute that Gene Hackman walks into the brothel in the 1992 Neo-Western Unforgiven, he's so casually evil that you want to spit phlegm at him to the screen from your couch. It's a particular role too, since the movie regards the previous iterations of Westerns as false. Unforgiven is about how all the outlaws of the past were no-good liars, that this is a no-good way of life. Clint Eastwood's William Munny is an alcoholic, wrestles with his pigs in the mud because he could no longer stand the pain from his exploits. But, it is Hackman --- who died in his Sante Fe home this Thursday morning -- who most understood the bleak vision that Eastwood is projecting to us. Sheriff Little Bill, his character in Unforgiven, was a keeper of sadism, a keeper of that bleakness that Eastwood conveys. Where the sheriffs of the myth that you read would be righteous veterans respected for their sincere integrity, or big defenders of justice, Little Bill is a gang in the way policemen are in didactic urban movies. When he needs to be empathetic, he is cavalier, letting the men who abuse the lovely prostitute in the beginning of the movie leave without any repercussions. When he is needs to be fair, he is sadistic; to him, vigilantes are one thing: villains here to take the shine away from him in his small-town that he runs for the sake of his ego. Hackman is shiveringly good as Little Bill; it's my favorite role from him in a career full of dynamic screen performances that have captured the rot of American life. You get the point that there is no point to any of what Bill is doing besides his own egocentrism. He finds vigilantes bad, not because it is amoral, but rather because they get the credit and not him. Popeye Doyle, for all of his tenacity, has a twisted sense of justice and what the police can do. The nastiness he conveys in his service of a conspiracy that goes beyond anything what Doyle can defeat -- yet, he can't help but continue the imperial march for his own ego. When you look at television cops like Jimmy McNulty or Vic Mackey, you see Hackman's portrayal of Doyle, and his Captain Ahab-like drive to be lower than the criminals he is chasing.
I was nervous to write about Hackman, that's why I took so long to complete this blog. I didn't know what to write about, what performance to highlight, or how to start it. He's lived a monumental, complete life that brought a presence which changed the way audiences viewed actors. He wasn't a movie star in the way that Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, or even James Cagney was, but he was not a underrated character actor. Instead, his definition would be "a screen presence" --- a word used for an actor who is always the key component of the movie regardless of what his screen time is. He was both Popeye Doyle and the best of an ensemble cast, like he was in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenebaums. He was great as Denzel's antagonist in Crimson Tide, as a ruthless meat boss in Prime Cut. Those roles suggested a brilliance that was unpretentious but intelligent.
I would be remiss if I didn't bring up that performance as the Tenebaum family patriarch. His old man period was awesome -- he felt like a hired gun for a baseball team every free agency period, like he signed one year deals with every famous director on the planet --- and Royal Tenebaums is a prominent character in Anderson's filmography for his joy, irresponsibility, racism, unique humor, yet there is an underlying humanity that sets him apart from the other deadbeats. When Ben Stiller's Chas says "I've had a rough year, Dad." Hackman, in a line reading that is a caption for the wonders of friendship, empathy, and understanding says, "I know you have, Chassie." Cinema can really be unsettlingly pertinent, and that Hackman role is as good as a string part of a grilled cheese sandwich.
Feb 27, 2025