by ·Comments Off on It Is Night in America (2022, Ana Vaz)

Long pan across a blue-tinted skyline… slow, fast, then way too fast. From the city streets to individual animal portraits at a rescue/rehab/zoo. Back to human landscapes, then close focus on animals – including wild monkeys and hawks, back and forth. What sound like distant processed animal calls over the city scenes… long takes of traffic and a waterfall. I can’t tell if all the fidgeting with focus is meant for artistic effect, or if they just can’t keep it stable. We see a fox rescue operation, and learn that otters make awesome sounds and that anteaters are cool in general. Between Bestiaire and Sr and this, sometimes you gotta watch slow arthouse zoo films.

Love the credits, which scrolled top to bottom:

by ·Comments Off on Panic Room (2002, David Fincher)

Jodie Foster is divorcing a pharma boss, diabetic daughter Kristen Stewart in tow, moving into the Manhattan home of a dead guy with a missing fortune, and nobody here has ever seen a scary movie before. On their very first night, entitled rich kid Jared Leto breaks in with corrupt security expert Forest Whitaker and psychopath Dwight Yoakam, and the standoff begins. I remember this being the most tense movie I’d ever seen in theaters – obviously not as wild the second time around two decades later, but a real good time.

Not the panic room but the elevator:

I’m reading the Adam Nayman book on Fincher and rewatching a couple movies. Production of this one (and all his movies, haha) was difficult. Adam says the cinematography has a “floating, disembodied aesthetic” and he compares it to other apartment movies and contemporary thrillers.

Jodie’s ex Patrick Bauchau (La Collectionneuse) gets involved:

by ·Comments Off on Poor Things (2023, Yorgos Lanthimos)

It’s not shocking that I, a habitual enjoyer of Yorgos movies, greatly enjoyed the one where Emma Stone plays a grown woman with a baby brain raised by a chopped-and-sutured Willem Dafoe then taken into the world by a ham-comic Mark Ruffalo. Doesn’t quite track as an On The Count of Three reunion – Jerrod Carmichael is an intellectual friend of Hanna Schygulla – in different scenes/country from Chris Abbott: Emma’s former husband, “The General,” who they lobotomize so everyone can live together happily.

The critics are mostly angry over the fisheye lens. Also: “the movie’s provocations are all at the level of its ghastly aesthetic, which feels like a prank on the viewer” per Brendanowicz, it’s “infantilizing and visually one-note” per Josephine, and I dunno what Ali and Jon‘s issues are. Movie funny, movie good. Some people get it.

by ·Comments Off on Dex Romweber double-feature (1987-2006, Tony Gayton)

Athens GA Inside/Out (1987)

“Mike Mills can smell ants.” A portrait of a scene and the bands within, the Decline of Western Civilization template in a more chill environment. Pylon was broken up at the time of filming, but were still nice enough to do an interview. Ends with the title “Save the Morton Theater.” They must have saved it – I saw Of Montreal there more than 15 years later.

–
Two Headed Cow (2006)

After his cameos in Inside/Out, a full Dex doc, full of good stories and quotes. “I’ve found it very hard to join this society on a normal level ever since I became an adult … I became some weird alienated folk artist without even intending to.” Exene (another Decline connection) calls his music “hardcore americana.” Looser than the other movies, more downtime, hanging out on tour. Dex gives the Duo Jets history himself, no alt narrator, and explains why they dissolved (his bandmate disagrees). After the split, archive footage of “who can I count on if I can’t count on you” (harsh), and Dex says he entered a “semi-psychotic spiritual odyssey.” Half the movie is Tony’s own archive – this was his attempted follow-up to Inside/Out, abandoned and then finished 16 years later. Nice tricks: a duet between Dex’s older and younger self, a time-lapse of a full solo show with snippets of each song. Sara’s not in the movie, she replaced Crash on drums in the Dex Duo the year after this came out. I’ve been listening to all their records… RIP…

by ·Comments Off on The Past is a Grotesque Animal (2014, Jason Miller)

I don’t sit around wondering about the private/interior lives of musicians, but ever since the classic Of Montreal lineup (roughly from Gay Parade through False Priest) broke up, whenever I hear one of their songs in a mix or they release a new annoyingly-titled record, I think “what is Kevin’s deal anyway?” So I watched this to discover what is his deal. BP Helium sums it up pretty clearly at the start of the movie (“Kevin is a weirdo”) then at the end after firing all his bandmates Kevin reports that he “chose art over human relationships.”

Songs are cut pretty short until the title track, a great montage of fans singing along with his divorce lyrics. The band had been bleeding members as they got big, hiring too many new members at the peak of their popularity (Solange is onstage, Susan Sarandon is a fan), then when he recorded Sylvianbriar he fired anyone who was left. Brother David concurs: they’re here to make art, not to make friends. It’s all pretty promotional-chronological, with zero mention of Kevin’s trans alter ego, even though record reviews made a huge deal of it back then. Great scraps of concert footage anyway, a valuable collection of their antics and costumes.

with Nina Twin:

by ·Comments Off on Strange Way of Life (2023, Pedro Almodóvar)

On Valentine’s Day I watched the Ethan Hawke gay cowboy movie. He’s a lawman, and says his old flame Pedro Pascal’s no-good son killed someone, so Pedro shoots Ethan so the son can get away. Pretty good sketch of a movie, not as fully-formed as The Human Voice. Cheap digital cinematography, “maybe an ad for something” I wrote, and I think it’s the clothes – costumed and produced 15 years posthumously by Yves S/L, whose Bonello biopic I should watch one of these days.

by ·Comments Off on Club Zero (2023, Jessica Hausner)

Mia Wasikowska is new at boarding school, teaching “conscious eating” to five students, either because they’re weight-watching or environmentalists or looking for an easy grade. It’s a culty class, but everything in these kids’ lives is culty. She has them eating less and less, then nothing. “You could be among the few who could actually live, when the rest of the world is going under.” She’s fired for associating with a pupil in private, because she took Fred to the opera, not for endangering their lives. Some kids take the course more seriously than others – environmentalist Elsa loses her mind completely – and at Christmas break four of the kids disappear.

Great soundtrack. My first Mia movie since Piercing, but that’s on me for missing Bergman Island. Funny to watch this right after Thanksgiving – both movies feature a trampoline and electric carving knife. That movie had more horrific deaths but this one has more disclaimers in its credits. Blake took it seriously in Filmmaker.

Fred, Ragna, Helen, Elsa, Ben:

by ·Comments Off on Thanksgiving (2023, Eli Roth)

Lotta characters in this – at least the third feature film based on joke Grindhouse trailers – but what’s important is that the survivors of a black friday riot are being hunted, captured, and posed at a private “turkey” dinner by bereft psycho cop Patrick Dempsey, who loved riot victim Gina Gershon. The killer hides behind a pilgrim mask until the climactic parade, when he swaps out for a killer klown mask. Lotta nastiness – one girl gets corncob holders in the ears then chucked into a table saw. Enough victims and false leads to get over the 100 minute mark. A gross good time, but not substantially better than the two-minute version. I’ve skipped everything by Roth for sixteen years – since Hostel 2 he’s done a couple TV things, a shark documentary, a remake, a kids movie, a cannibal horror, and a Keanu Reeves movie I watched the last ten minutes of.

When you’ve been facially mutilated and cannot call for help:

by ·Comments Off on 7 Chinese Brothers (2015, Bob Byington)

Jason Schwartzman is an underachiever, an anti-authority loser who accepts his lot in life. He hangs out with his mom Olympia Dukakis until she dies and leaves her fortune to caretaker Tunde Adebimpe. He takes a jiffy lube job to get close to Eleanore Pienta, but Tunde likes her too. He talks to his dog. The title song plays over the closing credits. I didn’t feel like immediately rewatching it, a la Frances Ferguson, but I’ll rewatch them all if I live long enough.