I think, when I was a child, and I saw this movie for the first of many times, it was the first of many times I considered the apocalypse. The human caused destruction of everything holy and loving, the barren biblical wastelands caused not by four horsemen but by our own stupid hands. Powerful, anonymous people behind doors carving human beings into lines on the map, creating a post-colonial civilization, no hero can stop the coming tsunami of the deadly…
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The Other Boleyn Girl 2008
The best movie about why you shouldn't be a helicopter parent.
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Ball of Fire 1941
It's unbelievable the cast of character actors they assembled for all the professors. Seeing all my faves walk through scenes in unison, chewing scenery and crushing color commentary, makes me want to run through a wall. Must be what a Marvel fan felt like watching The Avengers for the first time.
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Portrait of Jennie 1948
The magic and impermanence of love and life, and why art is the only thing that can attempt to save it and still fail doing so in the end. Plays a card in the finale that I’ve only see a few movies do but I love when it happens every time.
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Titanic 1997
As a younger, stupider man, I thought the romance and grandeur of the first half as so superfluous and drawn out. But you only get great spectacle when great things fall, and the quality of this film is showing just how truly great something like a Titanic could be. The love, the passion, the heart of the first half is what makes the second half so stomach churning and soul crushing. The viewer can't believe what they are seeing and pray, while knowing the opposite, that this can't, won't, really happen. Watching Ozymandias' kingdom fall in the hands of James Cameron is unforgettable.
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F for Fake 1973
“Truth becomes fiction when the fiction becomes true”
Cao Xueqin would have loved late Orson.
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Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life 1925
Seen at the Cleveland Cinematheque with an incredible live accompaniment composed and performed by Mahtab Nadalian.
Real adventure, false storytelling. A priceless and thoughtful portrait of a little-documented people painted with care and beauty, or a racist caricature of a vulnerable society sketched carelessly and disingenuously: one could feel either way with this film. Both could be accurate. Inherently, Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life can be summed up in two words: pure documentary. Like Nanook of the North, this…
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I Flunked, But... 1930
A fascinating movie about the desire to cheat your way into the adult world and realizing it was better to be stuck in the child's world all along. This story is a youthful variation on what Ozu's entire career would be about from here on out: the difficulty of entering a new phase in one's life. His trademark still, symmetrical filming style is starting to come out of the birthing canal but hasn't fully seen the light of the world.…
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Killers of the Flower Moon 2023
I am going to write a spoiler review after I’ve let it sit for a little more time, but for now will just say…
This could be the film of the decade. The film of Martin’s career. I have hardly walked out of a film so devastated. It’s a weird comparison but it feels like Scorsese’s Magnificent Ambersons. Death and decay of an era. So many wrongs done… all for the desire of owning the American landscape no matter the “collateral damage”. Evil that claims delusion. It’s perfection. Went in with highest expectations and honestly kind of exceeded them all.
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