Feb 21, 2017

not gonna lie, as dubious as i find this, i am looking fwd to one last nicholson performance.

anyway, my brothers, i reviewed logan. pls read: http://moviemezzanine.com/logan-essay/

@MovieSXN @Vahn @Dew @FilmAndWhisky @Worm

 

Feb 1, 2017

• 
  20th Century Women 2016
  ★★★★½ Watched 27 Jan, 2017
  
  A maturely scripted, engagingly shot, and humourously performed drama on masculinity & modern female perspectives.
  
  85/100 - Excellent.
  
  No likes
  
  
• 
  Paterson 2016
  ★★★★★ Watched 30 Jan, 2017
  
  Review Posted at Aesthetics of the Mind:
  bit.ly/2jEQvEm
  
  Through its dreamlike aesthetic, lethargic rhythm, and patterned mise-en-scene, Jim Jarmusch’s densely philosophical tone poem manages to convey a certain unutterable phenomenology, one which is surrealistically experienced in life’s poetic coincidences and confusions. It is mindfully realized through an acute sense of reality as a projection by the unconscious; it is the inner self manifest. This is life as a dream or mind at large, and a way of seeing the world as old as Buddhism or the Indian Vedas, but popularized by the acid counter-culture of the 1960s.
  
  Paterson (Adam Driver) at once embodies the city of Paterson while himself an individual, but it is through his conscience that the world around him takes shape, as if it were all created for him. In this view, the poet’s interpretation of reality is a measure of understanding the self and expressing the meaning of one’s life to oneself. This idea explains the privacy of poets, to wit Paterson, who displays apprehension in sharing with his girlfriend poems which she herself inspired. He neither chooses to make copies of the poetry, and when his notebook is ripped to shreds by Marvin, the bulldog, Paterson experiences a visible loss of self, which is later reinstated in bizarre fashion through a Japanese man’s wise advice.
  
  Neither contrived nor self-serving, this action which appears without context may exist in Paterson’s world simply because it is Paterson’s world in which it exists. The Japanese man arrives as response to an inner yearning, a projection of Paterson’s unconscious which has manifested in order to direct Paterson back towards a path of grace and poetry.
  
  Cross-fades and waterfalls convey this life within a life theme, supporting the film’s surreal atmosphere with superimposition of image over image. Dreams conveyed by his girlfriend become Paterson’s thoughts which later become part of Paterson’s experience. His poetry is thus informed by the surreal qualities of life which appear to reflect back on his own existence. It’s the poet in him that recognizes these bizarre coincidences and patterns as signs of meaning, which he then documents in poetic form as an act of self-revelation.
  
  Encircling Paterson’s poetic world is Jim Jarmusch’s cinematic poetry, which forges itself as a distinct layer of art, as one of creation and of pure expression. Paterson’s life thus expresses the poetic manifestation of Jarmusch’s creative act. The film is Jarmusch’s world as much as Paterson’s notebook writings are Paterson’s world. And so life exists within life, each layer supporting the other as if dream being manifest into a reality in which dreams manifest into a reality, each reality slightly removed yet fully encapsulated by the individual—existence itself the one line within a reality where the rest of it doesn’t really have to be there. It’s all just Paterson unfurled.
  
  94/100 – Amazing.
  
  No likes
  
  
• 
  Nocturama 2016
  ★★★★½ Watched 25 Jan, 2017
  
  A labyrinthian fever dream where music, persona, and gunshot each play a role in the collective hallucination. Modern Caraxian.
  
  87/100 - Excellent.
  
  3 likes
  

 

Jan 29, 2017

The PTA and DDL reunion has begun shooting.

 

Jan 25, 2017

Deconstructing Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller:
http://bit.ly/2k2i6TK

Because of its many moving parts and modes of storytelling, this is not an easy film to digest nor review. It is haunting and atmospheric, leaving a resonant melancholy long after viewing. And yet somehow the film does so by rejecting viewership and forcing a disconnect between subject and object. It is the closest in formal step where Altman mounts a Brechtian or Godardian influence; its renewal of Western mythos paired with a dreamy low saturation colour palette (flashes on the film strip itself) and contemporary romantic soundtrack appear to clash and alienate, creating a formal disharmony between sound, image, and story. This formal deconstruction is later pieced together by the sub-liminal as a collage of image and sound most relatable to one’s morning revelation of a dream. The film thus conjures a strange, unique experience of an untold world.

From a cinematographic perspective, McCabes use of long lenses and zooms is unparalleled. What is considered a rudimentary, even crude technique, is the film’ most evident formal signature, from the slow zoom towards the centered but diegetically insignificant fiddle player to the zoom towards Keith Carradine’s dying cowboy figure to the zoom towards Warren Beatty’s still silhouette being hidden by the pure white of falling snow, the repeated utilization of slow zooms in soft lighting during emotive moments convey a chord of tragedy integral to the film’s unique audio-visual symphony.

On another signature element, Leonard Cohen’s music serves the film’s haunting atmosphere, and yet it does so by feeling asynchronous or out of place—in a world of its own. Though beautiful melodies stir one’s emotions, the soundtrack’s readily apparent isolation from story and cinematography deject the profilmic, pushing visual elements into the background while at once entering the center of attention. Rather than integrate the music and use sound as a tool for transformation of image, Altman here does quite the opposite; the brilliant visuals often subserve the music and thus the image is used as a tool for transformation of sound. This technique, which I would compare to Godard’s use of music in Le mepris, turns the film into something quite different and unique, inhabiting multiple worlds at once.

Though its artistic value is for question—I tend to more easily realize aesthetic experience when it is conveyed through a singular artistic vision than through multiple—McCabe’s innovative digressions from a traditional understanding of film art and cinematography is one worthy of exploring as it surely influenced a number of filmmakers and American cinema as a whole since its development.

88/100 – Excellent.

 

Jan 10, 2017

Love Reverse Shot, but how people found Neon Demon controversial is beyond me. They say it makes women look bad when the entire movie is about s-----y Hollywood scum. Everybody looks bad. Keanu's character is a child r--ist. All of the male characters salivate over a child. Everyone is superficial and petty, not just the women. f--- off with fitting everything into current social topics. The movie is dead simple. At least the "style over substance" argument is reality based, though kind of old hat with Refn at this point.

 

Dec 6, 2016

I still have pretty much everything to catch up on (Moonlight, Manchester, etc.), but as of rn my top 10 is:

1. The Witch
2. Right Now, Wrong Then
3. The Lobster
4. Arrival
5. Kubo
6. Everybody Wants Some!!!
7. Hail Caesar
8. Weiner
9. Blue Jay
10. Knight of Cups / Little Sister

 

Dec 5, 2016

I've debated whether my placement of The Lobster is too high, but then I remember the scene where Colin Farrell kicks a small child in the shin and I know I've rated it properly.

I go by US release date which is generally the convention for US critics in end of the year polls like Slant, Indiewire, and Film Comment.

 

Dec 5, 2016

1.) Knight of Cups
2.) Cemetery of Splendor
3.) The Neon Demon
4.) Krisha
5.) Right Now, Wrong Then
6.) Green Room
7.) Elle
8.) 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
9.) Louder than Bombs
10.) The Lobster

Come at me

 

Dec 5, 2016

Since everyone else is doing it...Current Top 10:

1. Toni Erdmann
2. Right Now, Wrong Then
3. Paterson
4. Moonlight
5. Elle
6. Manchester by the Sea
7. The Lobster
8. The Witch
9. The Measure of a Man
10. Demon

Still need to catch Silence and Jackie of course and catch some other stuff I missed.

 

Dec 5, 2016

Manchester by the Sea
Horace & Pete
Certain Women
Kaili Blues
31
Moonlight
Hail Caesar!
Knight of Cups
American Honey
Sully

There's some major films I'm waiting on that will f--- the whole list up tho but I promise Manchester ain't being topped

 

Nov 14, 2016

Moonlight 2016
★★★★★ Rewatched 10 Nov, 2016

Piece published on Aesthetics of the Mind:
bit.ly/24snzSn

On second viewing, I confirmed that Moonlight is truly a contemporary masterpiece, and currently the best film I've seen in 2016. My truncated review of past explained my primary observation: that the camera searches for and amplifies the quiet peace found in fleeting moments of connection with others. Herein, I wish to elaborate.

Though presented as a conventionally structured coming of age drama with three distinct chapters, Moonlight is far from a generic growing up story. Surely its structure is part of the mold, but the film stretches so far beyond the mold—through profound subtext, through subtle gestures, through inspired camera movement, through resonating visual and musical motifs—that it becomes difficult to capture in words how exactly it operates, and any attempt to describe Moonlight's intricacies would be a disservice to the film as a whole. But, alas, I will attempt to form a tapestry of highlights by describing some of its details.

The "quiet peace" I name is summed in the film by Kevin's speech to Chiron on the beach, just before they kiss. He says that he loves the cool breeze, it brings a peace. "it feels so good", he states. Kevin's not merely talking about the literal breeze of cool air but about a certain state of feeling, a feeling of peace, the kind of peace that can be found in that moment just before a kiss, or while letting go holding hands. That peace is a fleeting feeling of love and connection with another person, and the cool breeze is a physical reminder of that peace because it brings out a similar moment of stasis, of pleasure, of feeling connected. That beach, where Chiron learned from Juan how to swim and where Kevin opened his heart and touched him, would remain special to him. These are few of the moments of real human connection which he would nostalgically consider when plunging his face in a sink full of ice or when peeking his head in the freezer.

This conveyance of fleeting human connection is the key theme of the film, and Kevin's speech is the key scene. The cinematography follows in such a way to support this theme. Throughout the film, which is made up almost entirely of dialogues, there is no shot-reverse-shot editing. In most frames, the handheld camera slowly moves from one character's face to the other then back again. Each time the camera transitions between characters it forms an invisible line connecting the characters in the world in which they coexist. The camera thus serves to make equal and make connected their conversations. This is especially noticeable during the conversations between Chiron and Juan in the first part, and Chiron and Kevan in the following two. Often times when the camera glides between these two characters it nearly halts between them, as if searching for that peace, that euphemistic cool breeze, that connection between them. The characters almost appear as if in slow motion, such as when Chiron shakes Kevin's hand after getting dropped off or when Kevin wipes his hand in the sand: their hands and the camera linger for a moment of quiet peace.

This languid rhythm coupled with moon lit night scenes and a strikingly cool blue colour pallette work together in forming an indelible mise-en-scene, one which conveys a great sense of sincerity and contemplation. What it contemplates; however, is not always readily obvious. While critics have been quick to reveal Jenkins intentions of exposing African-American masculinity and the further complexities of growing up a h---------- black male from a rough neighbourhood, Moonlight is truly about much more than mere portrayal. Being black and h---------- feeds into its plot, but what makes the film so strikingly relatable is how subtle these stereotypes are played. Viewers can see that Chiron is black, but this is never part of the conversation within the film, and neither is his sexual orientation. Besides one brilliant scene wherein Chiron asks Juan 'what's a fa----', to which Juan compassionately responds that 'you can be gay, it's alright, but no one can call you fa----', there is no need for pedantic #blacklivesmatter or #homosexuallivesmatter conversation.

Moonlight is one of few films which has done 'black films' and 'queer films' right, and it did so by removing the stigma while still acknowledging its existence.

What's more powerful is the film's love story. As children, Chiron and Kevin are seen play-fighting. Kevin tells him, "I knew you weren't soft, Little", and they run away together. Their fight, which is shot with somewhat erotic tones, is perhaps the first time Chiron felt that he might be gay. In wrestling with Kevin, he felt his body; he later asks Juan "am I a fa----'. Surely this is because others have been insulting him, but surely too it is because he feels something inside of him. When they're in high school, Chiron gets his chance with Kevin, and when they grow up he's still with him in mind and later in flesh.

The shot immediately before the surreal finale of Little on the beach is one of Kevin holding Chiron's head on his own shoulder. It is an exact mirror image of the shot in Chapter 2 when Kevin holds Chiron's head after fondling him. The visual rhyming between the three chapters, from wrestling to fondling to holding one another are mere instances of a love which, to Chiron, a young black man from Miami, is forbidden. And so he lives a life where he rejects these thoughts. They remain behind closed doors and at the beach, and he takes advice from Juan in "choosing [his] own life". He wears fronts because he is a front. Black is not Chiron; Chiron is Chiron. Kevin sees this now; he spawned the nickname 'Black' which Chiron adopted into his trapping lifestyle, but ironically it is Kevin as an adult who is able to give him his name back. He calls him Chiron; he sees him how he is. Together with Kevin, Chiron can take down the fronts.

96/100 - Masterful
5 Stars

5 likes

 

Oct 24, 2016

Haven't been posting much recently, but I've seen a lot of new films at NYFF and elsewhere. For a quick recap for those not on letterboxd...

Toni Erdmannn (GREATEST FILM EVER)
Paterson (DOPE AS f---)
Elle (ALSO DOPE AS f---)
Personal Shopper (Perplexing, but growing on me...possibly great)
Yourself and Yours (Good but not one of Hong's best)
The 13th (Solid)
Certain Women (Uneven, but mostly solid)
Fire at Sea (Disappointing though mileage may vary)
American Honey (Also somewhat disappointing, but not without merit)
The Handmaiden (A blast)
Under the Shadow (Not especially scary, but a smart genre blend)

Going to check out Moonlight this week.

 

Oct 14, 2016

wrote on the dekalog after finishing rewatching the series

https://aestheticsofthemind.com/2016/09/08/dekalog-kieslowski-1988/

 

Oct 9, 2016

What a sad day for the world and Polish cinematography. Andrzej Wajda is dead

R.I.P

 

Jul 31, 2016

Got sum criterions for my bday:

The New World
Inside Llewyn Davis
Barcelona
Blow Out
Code Unknown

 

Jul 28, 2016

Pretty strong lineup at Venice this year

Competition
“The Bad Batch – dir. Ana Lily Amirpour
“Une vie” – dir. Stéphane Brizé
“La La Land” – dir. Damien Chazelle
“The Light Between Oceans” – dir. Derek Cianfrance
“El Ciudadano Ilustre” – dir. Mariano Cohn & Gaston Duprat
“Spira mirabilis” – dir. Massimo D’Anolfi & Martina Parenti
“The Woman Who Left” – dir. Lav Diaz
“La Region Salvaje – dir. Amat Escalante
“Nocturnal Animals” – dir. Tom Ford
“Piuma” – dir. Roan Johnson
“Paradise” – dir. Andrei Konchalovsky
“Brimstone” – dir. Martin Koolhoven
“On The Milky Road” – dir. Emir Kusturica
“Jackie” – dir. Pablo Larrain
“Voyage Of Time” – dir. Terrence Malick
“El Cristo ciego” – dir. Christopher Murray
“Frantz” – dir. Francois Ozon
“Questi giorni” – dir. Giuseppe Piccioni
“Arrival” – dir. Denis Villeneuve
“Les beaux jours d’Aranjuez 3D” – dir. Wim Wenders

 

Jul 18, 2016

 

Jul 16, 2016

I dug Cafe Society quite a bit...For me, it was more in the class of recent hits like Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine than say...Magic in the Moonlight and To Rome with Love. It does have a similar scattershot quality as much of Allen's 2000s work, particularly in the area of character development, but here that quality is at least partially by design. Less neat and less rigidly constructed than some of its recent predecessors, Allen's core narrative of unfulfilled love (played with considerable chemistry by Stewart and Eisenberg) is surrounded with a number of diversions and asides that allow the movie to breathe and, in a way, reflect the chance experiences and incidents that directly and indirectly chart the course of one's life. Though these narrative asides may vaguely resemble the real world, the backdrop of 1930s Hollywood, on the other hand, is lovingly and fantastically idealized, strikingly captured in Allen's first digital effort by Vittario Storaro.

Underneath all of the beautiful images and glamour, however, lies a strong undercurrent of melancholy (Allen's own weathered and resigned narration adds to this effect). Though both main characters ultimately end up with perfectly loving partners, Cafe Society nonetheless resonates with the heartache of paths not taken and the imagination of what might have been.

 

Jul 13, 2016

Everybody Wants Some!! is dope! A riveting and consistently entertaining look at human behavior and connections made with a warm, loving, and a self-aware, nostalgic touch.

On the topic of the criterion sale, I just picked up Mulholland Dr. and Phoenix!

 

Jul 7, 2016

I just bought The Devil's Backbone myself. I may get another 1 or 2 before the sale ends.

Just rewatched the Coen brothers' Blood Simple for the first time in years. It was never one of my favorites as I remember finding it somewhat cold and mechanical. This time though, I really dug it and it definitely jumps a lot higher on my list for the Coens. While It certainly is cold, it's such a concise, sharply executed thriller that I found myself much more taken by its precise, exacting technique on second viewing. Although the characters don't amount to much more than chess pieces on a board, the pieces are at least being moved by masters.