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The Gunfighter 1950
Excellent film all around: impeccable writing that feels more like a play, with intricate stories and suspense; great acting; and beautiful black and white cinematography from Arthur Miller. I can't think of another Western from this early in the mid-20th century written so well (and definitely not another that made me a little misty) -- this obviously influenced the writing in Unforgiven to some extent.
Rented on dvd from The Video Underground in Jamaica Plain.
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Babyteeth 2019
I liked this but I wish they would have not gone with the jumbled editing that works only in more experimental films (e.g., Tree of Life, though partly I'm thinking of that because these both use Má Vlast: Vltava); this could have been better because it's an interesting story with diverse characters, it looks cool, and the music is great. The acting is solid across the board as well...Ben Mendelsohn I remember mainly from his great performance in The Place…
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Red Rocket 2021
Very well done all around. Mikey is a more interesting character than you would think at first because of how he seems to be able to completely disregard any possible negative connotation or pangs of conscience in any of his manipulations; at the same time, he's funny and can be nice and charming, even if it's largely self-serving, which makes things feel more realistic and less arbitrarily villainous.
I think Shih-Ching cracked me up the most though because by now…
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The Life of Oharu 1952
Not as harrowing a concubine story as in the contemporary Raise the Red Lantern but for 1952 this still conveys much of a repulsive practice -- in particular how women were treated like cattle (or "a fish on a chopping board" as Oharu is referred to in one scene) -- and has a more common, mounting, woeful arc (as Gilberto Perez put it, "Her story ends as it began: the hierarchy that cruelly thwarted the passionate love of her youth…
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