“By 2025 we will have our second female president” [deep hurting]

Truly incredible vibes, sort of feels like it delivers on the promise of the live-action Mario Bros movie (I’m so serious). Also impressively presages web culture, specifically the kind of person who’d get lost in virtual worlds trying to simulate real experience; there’s a way to read the SQUIDs as analogous for AI. The script gets by on sensation, but the story is a muddle: there are basically two…

Something I’ve been meaning to do for a while is rewatch some of the movies I checked out in 2020-2021, which I just straight up do not remember. Generally I think it can be kinda useful and even revelatory to circle back to something a few years later, see how your perspective changed in the ensuing years, see how something holds up removed from the context it came out in: I know I’ve given a couple of embarrassing passes to…

A classic facet of suspense movies is nobody believing the protagonist when they tell the truth: this one has an additional edge where the people being disbelieved are women, who are dismissed out of hand on account of their hysteria (or, in Granny's case, their oldness and their hysteria). That this was directed and written by women is surely no accident, and there's some nicely pointed moments - a particular scene where someone tells an awful story where it initially…

The first, and unfortunately only Kelly Reichardt film I’ve really gotten into to date. I talked about this a lot in my log for The Mastermind but I admire the hell out of Reichardt and her minimalist, tactile approach to moviemaking, but the actual experience of watching those movies is usually a struggle for me. I’m fine calling it a “me” problem, but it’s still the case that this one - the closest she’s ever come to the thriller genre…

I'm a fiend for thriller films and as such can sometimes get put off by a movie that tries to subvert or "elevate" a genre I hold very dear as is, but I thought this totally worked. In fairness it's the type of vibes-based movie where I could totally imagine bouncing off it entirely if I'd seen it in a slightly different mood, but the headspace I was in allowed me to get totally engrossed in her aimless wandering, appreciating…

I always get a kick out of when directors who don't usually make thrillers try their hand at the genre. Andrea Arnold is of course most commonly referred to as a social realist, who makes hardscrabble dramas about uncomfortable subjects. Which this also counts as, but it could also be accurately classified as a thriller, with danger and twists and a main character pushed to the brink by a mission we don't fully understand until the end. It's uncomfortable to…

I appreciated but ultimately bounced off Lingua Franca, although thinking back on it (and re-reading my awkward log from several years ago) I wonder if its low-key minimalism and commitment to naturalism wouldn’t play better for me now, with the benefit of a couple years of maturity and a greater understanding of topics like trans identity and deportation - not that I was unaware back then, but these last few years have been a fucking rough wakeup call on a…

Lots to admire here. I especially liked how Talman (the hitchhiker himself) managed to exude menace at every turn, while also getting across that this dude is really fucking pathetic. Like every time the guys get on him that he would be NOTHING without his gun, it packs a punch because it is demonstrably true. I don't wanna ascribe everything to gender but I think Ida Lupino being one of the first women to direct a noir had something to…