There are things which cannot fully happen. They are too big to be accommodated in an event, and too wonderful. They only try to happen.
The Hourglass Sanatorium is a hypnagogic masterpiece, the best representation of dreams I've ever seen on film. It's an effortlessly magnetic picture, constantly drawing me deeper into one man's oneiric spiral into oblivion. I fell into its flow and floated from one scenario to the next via the inexorable gravity of dream logic. Dancing with…
One thing I love about revisiting movies, especially ones that carried a lot of meaning for me, is the way I can sort of gauge my own life against this static slice of time, feeling the ways I've changed since last watching, taking internal stock of my own life along the way. The Royal Tenenbaums is a movie that I bonded with a certain set of friends over, twenty years ago, and never stopped loving. But I did stop rewatching…
Mad Max 2 aka The Road Warrior laid down the the blueprint for the series going forward: a mythological story about a wounded man reluctantly saving the lives of a hardscrabble band of survivors from a flamboyant marauder gang. The original is a perfect origin story, a horror movie about the end of civilization that sees our hero stripped of everything he loved as the walls of society come crumbling down, left with only vengeance to fill the hole in…
- What did you dream about?
- Someone who disappeared.
Another dive into one of my favorite movies of the past decade or more. Pure hypnosis. The final single-take hour still feels like a miracle, but it's all the little imperfections that both give it away and make it feel alive. A bifurcated movie where each half feels like a dream and it's impossible and beside the point to figure out which one is real - no wonder Long Day's…
Fuck.
Eyes Wide Shut is about sex and money and class and culture, yes, but also a narrative about a regular guy - more wealthy than average but regular nonetheless - brushing up against the membrane separating us from actual power and getting the biggest thump of his life on the way back down. Right at the final crest of his storied career, Kubrick nakedly portrays the dynamics of capital, that omnipotent gravity pulling our world in whatever direction benefits…
"The day Oto died... She asked before I left if we could talk when I got home. Her tone was gentle but determined. I had no plans that day, but kept on driving. I couldn't go home. I thought that once I went home, we would never be the same again. I found her collapsed when I returned late at night. I called an ambulance, but she never regained consciousness. What if I'd gone home a bit earlier? I think…
