Air (Ben Affleck, 2023)
Let's get this out of the way first. Ben Affleck is a good director. While The Town and Gone Baby Gone weren't perfect, they built on A...
2024-01-18 21:56:57 +0000 UTC View Post
msicism posts
Red Rooms (Pascal Plante, 2023)
BY REQUEST: Morris Yang
Pascal Plante's last film, Nadia, Butterfly, had an odd fate. Not only was it "selected" for the ...
2024-01-18 01:55:09 +0000 UTC View PostAnselm (Wim Wenders, 2023)
Covering some of the same ground of Sophie Fiennes' 2010 documentary Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, Wenders' film wisely adopts a less instru...
2024-01-15 20:25:32 +0000 UTC View PostA Brighter Tomorrow (Nanni Moretti, 2023)
Judging from the widespread disapproval A Brighter Tomorrow elicited at Cannes, it is getting harder for viewers to distinguish between Nanni Mo...
2024-01-14 23:37:12 +0000 UTC View PostTwo Girls on the Street (André de Toth, 1939)
BY REQUEST: Imperial Hean
First things first: I am woefully under-informed about de Toth as a filmmaker. This is only the second f...
2024-01-13 03:51:30 +0000 UTC View PostFerrari (Michael Mann, 2023)
I'm not a huge fan of writer Dan Kois...
2024-01-12 20:35:21 +0000 UTC View PostDays of Happiness (Chloé Robichaud, 2023)
Of course it's a bit awkward, like showing up to the gala wearing the same dress. Robichaud's third feature follows just a year after Todd Field's T...
2024-01-12 05:58:30 +0000 UTC View PostMonster (Kore-eda Hirokazu, 2023)
It may not be quite fair to say Kore-eda is in his flop era. After all, many quite appreciated his Palme d'Or winning Shoplifters much more than...
2024-01-08 22:23:57 +0000 UTC View PostPast Lives (Celine Song, 2023)
Yesterday the National Society of Film Critics (of which I'm a member) voted Past Lives the best film of 2023. Embarrassingly, I had not seen it...
2024-01-07 23:32:57 +0000 UTC View PostThe Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki, 2023)
All art criticism is unavoidably subjective. And in some ways, I wish that weren't the case. Like anyone who strives to be a critic, I have certain crite...
2024-01-07 22:52:31 +0000 UTC View PostNew Year, Another Subscriber Lottery
Okay, so since only one of the last three "winners" provided a film request, we'll just move along. (Thanks to Robert Davis for serving up Putney Swo...
2024-01-07 05:46:25 +0000 UTC View PostOn the Adamant (Nicolas Philibert, 2023)
At last year's Berlinale, several competition titles were quite well received, including but not limited to Past Lives, Afire, Musi...
2024-01-06 05:02:01 +0000 UTC View PostPerforming the Border (Ursula Biemann, 1999)
Given my ambivalence about the place of the essay-film / video-essay in the current avant-garde landscape, it seemed like I should learn more about the h...
2024-01-06 03:53:34 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #7
Close Your Eyes (Víctor Erice, 2023)
About twenty years ago, academic studies of both Theo Angelopoulos and Alexander Kluge were ...
2024-01-02 21:31:01 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #6
Happy New Year, friends! Let's make it a good one without any tears, etc. I fell a bit behind on write-ups, so these may be a bit shorter than usual. No,...
2024-01-02 03:08:48 +0000 UTC View Post25 Great Experimental Films of 2023
As we say goodbye to a very difficult 2023, I wanted to look back at some of the experimental films and videos from this year that inspired, entertained, and challenged me in the course of my viewing. Some of these films I've written about, some m...
2024-01-01 01:50:34 +0000 UTC View Post(ALSO)
David and Abner, you still have the chance to contact me with your Lottery requests. If I don’t hear from you by the end of the first week in January, I will draw other subscribers’ names. But no pressure. 🤷🏽♀️
2023-12-29 06:56:11 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #5
The Taste of Things (Tran Anh Hung, 2023)
Perfectly inoffensive middlebrow material, somewhat elevated by directorial flair. In it...
2023-12-27 06:45:37 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #4
Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella, 2022)
I've learned over the years that it's quite possible for a film to do everything "right" a...
2023-12-24 00:55:28 +0000 UTC View PostRecent AI Works by Damon Packard
The films of Damon Packard are an acquired taste, to put it mildly. Although he is far too sophisticated to be relegated to the "outsider art" category, ...
2023-12-22 03:49:47 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #3
Memory (Michel Franco, 2023)
The last thing I want to do is oversell Memory, since it is a relatively modest film and one...
2023-12-21 21:38:52 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #2
La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2023)
Usually my opinion of a film is fairly consistent throughout, but with La Chimera, I ...
2023-12-16 22:12:33 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cramming, #1
Yes, yes, it's that time again. Final grades are finally submitted, the lights are up along the eaves and in the yard (see above), and it's a mad dash to...
2023-12-14 04:02:58 +0000 UTC View PostMay December (Todd Haynes, 2023)
As is often the case with Todd Haynes' films, May December is organized according to a very specific conceptual matrix. Haynes is not a filmmake...
2023-12-08 04:44:33 +0000 UTC View PostFallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki, 2023)
The unavoidable familiarity of Fallen Leaves, together with its mere 80-minute runtime, initially made me think that this film represented Kauri...
2023-12-04 20:17:20 +0000 UTC View PostThe Teachers' Lounge (İlker Çatak, 2023)
I went into watching The Teachers' Lounge rather naively, since I did not realize it won several majot Lola awards including Best Picture, or th...
2023-11-30 23:17:54 +0000 UTC View PostMusic (Angela Schanelec, 2023)
Before going any further, I invite you to read 2023-11-28 21:35:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Putney Swope (Robert Downey, 1969)
BY REQUEST: Robert Davis
"Where have you been?"
"Laying back in the cut."
Ah yes, what to do about <...
2023-11-27 16:40:28 +0000 UTC View PostYear-End Cram: Two Kinds of Disappointment
Frybread Face and Me (Billy Luther, 2023)
While Luther's debut film is nothing if not watchable (it clocks in at a scant 82 minute...
2023-11-26 05:05:14 +0000 UTC View PostLottery Time Again
It's fortuitous that this random selection is happening on (American) Thanksgiving. That's because over 300 years ago, I stole this web domain from membe...
2023-11-23 21:53:52 +0000 UTC View Post