We need a complete and total shutdown of Letterboxd until we can figure out what the hell is going on here. I did not expect to like this movie, but I did think it would end up being some baseline level of good. Boy was I wrong.
Despite trying harder than just about any other movie I can think of, this was only very rarely funny. The photography was flacid. The apparently YouTube-inspired fight choreography was goofy, and not in…
In 8 1/2 Daumier asks Guido the following after reading a script for his film: "What monstrous presumption to think that others could benefit from the squalid catalog of your mistakes. What do you gain by stringing together the tattered pieces of your life, your vague memories, the faces of those you could never love?" 12 years later, Tarkovsky made the exact film described by Daumier.
A bit rote as a documentary, but I must say that between The Kingdom and this, I am growing quite fascinated by Corsica. Until last may I had no idea how fraught things were there.
It's funny to come to see how great of a New York City director Baker is when my first exposures to him were set in Florida and Texas. He conveys the rhythm of the city in a way that many aspire to and few succeed at. And, as ever, he manages empathy for marginalized people of all stripes. Excellent stuff, certainly among his best.
