Bohemian layabout, man about town.
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The French Connection 1971
Popeye Doyle is a spiritual forebear of The Wire’s Jimmy McNulty: alcoholic, compulsively chases women, and obsessively pursues druglords with reckless abandon.
This movie is most influential in its having no more exposition than is absolutely necessary and in not cleaning up it’s compulsive hero’s flaws . No subplots, few digressions, just one headlong chase.
Because “going to the movies” was my cover, as a teen, for staying out late and getting drunk with my buddies, i saw this movie maybe a dozen times after it came out. Watching it as a sober adult, it loses none of its pull.
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Kneecap 2024
Perfect watch for Saint Patrick’s Day.
(Heavily fictionalized account of the Irish-speaking rap group from Belfast, but not fictionalized in the usual Hollywood bio-pic sort of way. it’s fun and has some sharp insights on a Northern Ireland still divided after the truce)Translated from by
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Nosferatu the Vampyre 1979
Klaus Kinski’s Dracula is such a deeply mournful and tortured vampire, that one feels he has deliberately sought his obliteration at the movies end. Herzog’s Nosferatu is an idiosyncratic and effective interpretation which nonetheless pays respectful homage to the Original film. Great score, and amazing performances by Kinski and Adjani. More creepy and macabre than terrifying—except for all those rats! Eek! i now await the Robert Eggers version.
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A Different Man 2024
I was expecting "body horror", or something like that, but what I got is a bittersweet parable about the nature of beauty, the nature of identity and the need to be loved for who you are. Kinda like a really solid Twilight Zone episode with fine performances all the way around. They made a laudable decision to avoid a cliched twist at the end--the twists come in the middle--but what does come at the end was just some unnecessary business. Over-all though, the writing is sharp and funny, and tinged with melancholy.
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