The paranoia thriller is back!! Aster is the only person who could be trusted with depicting the excesses of the virtual gristmill without decaying into a caricature of so many grandparents. Had a blast catching the premiere with Erin and Ian (one of them called it a dizzying pendulum of 2020s ideology — make that the subtitle)!~
Dude I’m glad I waited so long for this rewatch because the movie that was my favorite movie for 15 years isn’t about what I remembered it being about! I say this is, like, 10% man/nature conflict and 90% treatise on stoicism. Life is suffering and we are all going to be touched by evil and warped by it, and the best we can do is make sure our curses die with us. (Apt timing; will keep trying!) It stood…
Whoaaa those nighttime B&W chase scenes were to die for. Along with the immaculate Miz Cooper. Hard world for little things!!!
“Harry, you look great today. Harry, I’m proud to have you following me.” Like Paris, Texas meets High and Low.
It would have been cool if between walking around LegoLand and succumbing to her child-bearing hips, Julia Cicero had like done something. But then we wouldn’t have enough time to look at the oyster mushrooms
I didn't really care for it beyond the scarf scenes. I do like that every single film set in San Francisco is some director's Vertigo manifesto.
A lot of what I loved from Naked Lunch is in here! Really liked how the “sometimes you gotta do your character’s thing and it feels like psychosis” thing played out as an audience experience — super fun to watch the two leads’ acting to try to read whether we’re in the game or not. Cronenberg really figured out how to get the “layered simulation” premise to play off film conventions. (Matt is still torn up about whether this > The Fly)
Ok now that I have seen Wages of Fear and caught this on the rewatch I feel like I milked like 50% more out of it! The violent byproducts of aimless capitalistic striving being treated like a natural disaster was, like, a pretty sweet idea. Also love the shots of guiding the trucks as dragon-taming, shit’s on the money all the way down 👌
The correct chaser for Casablanca. When and how did this become my favorite Ghibli
The perfect 100th movie! Hate to say it but Cronenberg might be the S-tier to Lynch’s A-tier. I need a Kiki to pawn off to the parrots to get my second chapter written by tomorrow :p
“What a pain! I’d just go get laid.” Really liked how much this seemed to be playing around with Vertigo, but the soundtrack didn’t work for me as much as with Chungking Express. Liked the roleplay scenes a lot. Mrs. Chan’s wasp waist continues to be mesmerizing.