Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. - Matthew 23:12
Redmond Barry is a gambler, a fuckup, a wandering fool, getting pulled in one direction or another by the hands of fate or beautiful women or powerful men until he finally decides to fight back, claim his place in a world he thinks he deserves by any means necessary. He's learned a lot of bad lessons and he's using them to work his way…
Next time is next time. Now is now.
Perfect Days is a paean to the quiet superpower of curating the ability to enjoy life on a moment to moment basis. It's more than that. It's taking time to reflect on your surroundings. The sights and smells, the way pleasure can be drawn from almost anything encountered along the path. Finding sustenance and joy in a well-curated routine. Finding peace in shutting up and listening. Coloring every day with music and…
I've written before about why Mulholland Drive is so important to me and to its director's body of work, why it's so incredible, why it continues to mesmerize me almost a quarter century after I first fell into this pitch black rabbit hole, so I'm just going to talk about something I remembered last week on the day David Lynch died.
The original DVD came with paper insert featuring ten "clues" to help guide the uninitiated through the labyrinthine movie.…
Dead Calm always hung in the back of my mind as a budding movie nerd because I remembered so clearly as a young child hearing my mom and stepdad exclaim on a number occasions how unbelievably tense and harrowing this movie was. They were fucking shook apparently, because it came up multiple times over the years, and they were not the kind of people to obsess over or even rewatch a movie. Eventually I forgot about it, never bothered to…
I had a dream. In fact, it was the night I met you. In the dream, there was our world, and the world was dark because there weren't any robins and the robins represented love. And for the longest time, there was just this darkness. And all of a sudden, thousands of robins were set free, and they flew down and brought this blinding light of love. And it seemed like that love would be the only thing that would…
Fuck.
Eyes Wide Shut is about sex and money and class and culture, yes, but also a narrative about a regular guy - more wealthy than average but regular nonetheless - brushing up against the membrane separating us from actual power and getting the biggest thump of his life on the way back down. Right at the final crest of his storied career, Kubrick nakedly portrays the dynamics of capital, that omnipotent gravity pulling our world in whatever direction benefits…
