Chungking Express worked for me. Fallen Angels doesn't. The latter started as a segment in the former, but maybe the two stories in the former were enough for Wong Kar-Wai to riff on Godard. Obviously not; he made another movie. It's the night time companion to the daytime dreaming. There are shots in the movie that are transfixing: the final turning upward at the end from the misfits in the tunnel, the violent outbursts of night and the detachment these characters have from reality. Is it an anticipation of the modern isolation of smart phones and wireless earbuds? Now one-sided conversations passing us on the street are an everyday occurrence, everyone following their little water tubes like Donnie Darko, which is an apt comparison because it too is a movie about nothing, that feels closing your hand on so much sand draining between the gaps in your fingers. Isolation and…
With no commute I'd have time for writing, for reading. There were essays I'd planned: drafts existing in the dust-bin of the ideal internet hosting solution for nobody's witness. Eugene asks who the audience is, appealing to a narcissism about writing that must exist. Why do it, otherwise?
Is it okay for a film to ask a question and not have an answer? A stupid question, I know.
It's a funny feeling to be out of step with pop culture. I like a lot of things that are poppy. But when it happens in an egregious fashion, it gives me perspective on my taste. And the last time I recall being suckered in to to something I should have known better was with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's The World's End (2013). I read a review that suggested it was an indictment of nostalgia and being stuck in a state of arrested development. An alien invasion thriller/comedy with a thoughtful streak sounds good. I like Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Martin Freeman, Rosamund Pike, they're all fun with infectious attitudes. It had a 90+% rating on Rotten tomatoes (settled down to a damning 89%). It had to be good, right? After the brilliance of Hot Fuzz (2007) and begrudgingly[1], Shaun of the Dead (2004), there had to…
I was waiting for the real monster. I love this movie -- It's so scary. Why? I do not know if I am prepared to answer that question. The movie is concerned with much of the same concerns some of my short stories are: how does illness transform and transcend generations? Does it? Assuming it does, how does that change us, and predate our destinies? With Hereditary its a foregone conclusion, I'll grant you, it's hereditary after all. And yet when it spins off the rails in the last 30 minutes, can we really be sure we are seeing reality? Or is it just the fevered dreams of people waiting in line to receive the baton marking the arrival of their inheritance? It takes you fully into that dimension: there are headless bodies positioned to prayer and silent participants awaiting the coming of whatever conclusion they await. The camera lingers…
Fourteen years ago, I ran into a guy from high school in Canal Park in Duluth. I wrote about it the following March, when I was back in New York and working a night job for the city that was a total drag
This is not going to go well.…