THE LOVE WITCH dir. Anna Biller (2016)

Watched this around Halloween and still thinking about it. (Also watched Halloween for the first time.  So good!)



Shot in this incredible throwback style, with the stylized-stilted acting of a Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie.



Set theoretically in present-day, but a sort of brew of the present back through the Sixties, which allows examination of the ebb and flows of the different waves of feminism, and their results, additive or not.



Elaine is a survivor turned predator who crushes men like Lenny in Of Mice and Men.



Funny, weird, creepy: I wish I'd gotten around to recommending when it was more seasonally appropriate, but I didn't know quite how to wrap my head around it. David Bax of Battleship Pretension wrote it up better than I can, and it made his top ten of 2016.



The creator is a strange cat herself, an art school autodidactic filmmaker whose significant other is one of those 50 Laws of Power! and 33 Leverage Positions!! kind of authors that rappers like.



The production design for this self-funded film is damned admirable.



I have a strict don't-drink-from-enormous-red-goblets rule.



Damn fellas, gotta practice goblet awareness.

Mark McGuire DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR (2018)

my guy always seems in Christmas-adjacent spirit anyhow, now he put out this moonlight-on-snow bright record of instrumental guitar+/-synth tunes, in case you want to get seasonal but don't need Feliz Navidad stuck in your head quite yet.

Kelly Moran ULTRAVIOLET (2018)

Hypnotic prepared piano with sweeps and synth washes to seep into the crevices, freeze and burst the whole thing apart. Reminiscent of Anton Karas' zither score to THE THIRD MAN, wherein velocity brings its own tension, no matter how light a touch.

True Top Forty 2018

One my favorite yearly traditions is making this playlist.  Hit me up if you have a great song I missed!

It goes more to less essential, and even if you're a Lana Del Rey doubter, please give Mariner's Apartment Complex a listen: she made a truly great Leonard Cohen song.

I AM LOVE dir. Luca Guadagnino (2010)

My guy Yorick Le Saux shot on a a couple different film stocks for a mood that can seem chilly yet lovely and grand on the city-scale, and warm and dangerous on the human scale. I love how those snowy scenes place the film spiritually in the seventies.









Guadagnino says "For me, the production design always leads" and I think that sentiment makes his films enveloping worlds where the characters are lovable and forgivable. Wouldn't you be a little absurd if you lived this luscious life? With affection for this loving, neglectful family, he turns up the gentle simmer to an operatic boil and ends with the heroine's flight, as if grief and shame were even more potent rocket fuel than desire.









If I could pick a job in film, it would be director of photography. I'd be the guy with strong opinions about ethers.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS 1.85:1 35mm Arricam Lite; Arri 535B Cooke, Angenieux and Arri lenses Kodak Vision3 500T 5218; Fuji Eterna 250T 8553 Printed on Kodak Vision 2383

A BIGGER SPLASH dir. Luca Guadagnino (2016)

Call Me By Your Name only grows in my estimation, and we wanted to go backwards through Guadagnino's "Desire" trilogy to see just where he came from. This film features three enormously good lead performances and Dakota Johnson.



Ralph Fiennes is most surprising as an exuberant libertine music producer, full of energy and lust and knowledge of the hidden gems on this beautiful Italian island he claims to hate. The romantic rival to his Zorba is Matthias Schoenaerts, who plays frustrated repressive very well.



Tilda Swinton gets to play otherworldly, her wont, as a rock star recovering from vocal surgery and thus effectively mute. It gives the other actors a fighting chance.



I loved to see visual motifs p-recur from CMBYN, as another ad-hoc family luxuriates in Italian summer. Submerged masculinity. Wild, hillside tumbled rock versus various happenstance-laid stone, enduring with the intentions of whoever laid it centuries ago.



Guadagnino touches on the migrant crisis in several places, and his North African roots seem to give him at least as much empathy for those as these privileged visitors.





Yorick Le Saux continues to be one of my favorite cinematographers.







I have had a situation recently where we had a houseguest, an old friend, that I merely tolerated, so when that betrayal in status reveals itself to be the engine of anger in Harry against Joe, it sunk me. This could have been set in Roman times, or the Renaissance, and the structure would have been the same. Trying to protect your life from the winds, even bearing Sahara sand, can do more damage than letting them blow through.

Mariah Carey CAUTION (2018)

small p perfect chardonnay-pop from a woman who sings at lovers like she's gently giving them a negative performance review and laying out modest benchmark goals for the next quarter.



ariana is good but Mariah will always be the queen of bubblebath bops

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU dir. Boots Riley (2018)

I absolutely love where its heart is; with the people who are slowly being reduced like a goddamn red wine sauce into perfectly useful and toothless employees+customers. A citizen without a vote is a captive.



I think it suffers from Mr. Riley overstuffing it with fury to the point of perfervid overindulgence. The sci-fi third act might give it legs to a younger, possibly more male demographic, and maybe he intends it more as a wake-up call to them. Which would make sense, as I and ineffectual leftists like me already agree with nearly everything he has to say.

I think the supporting performances give the film the grace and nuance it so sorely needs. Tessa Thompson, Danny Glover, Steven Yeun, and Jermaine Fowler round out the Oakland that is maybe five years of T**** administration away.



If agitprop (meant with kindness) was the goal, I guess it was successful. If incisive commentary with sophisticated humor was the promise, I've got a set of books to sell you.

YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE dir. Lynne Ramsay (2018)

This was tailor-made by the simulation for me: Joaquin Phoenix is my favorite actor, Jonny Greenwood made a terrific score that hews to the movie as close as shrink wrap, and the disregard for dialogue, and especially exposition, makes my heart glad. The story is a perfect distillation of (you're going to hate me, hold onto your rolling eyeballs) both seasons of TRUE DETECTIVE.  But did it do anything to challenge, or was it just a perfectly executed, beautifully shot thriller--oh yeah, with an Oscar-worthy, unbuzzed performance by the greatest American actor of his generation? I am going to come back to the relationship between Joe and his mother, how she survived so he could survive, how trauma bound them, and how he could transfer that propulsive element to partnership with another life that, despite it all, wanted a milkshake and a drive.

BLACKKKANSMAN dir. Spike Lee (2018)

There's a lot to recommend the movie for: it succeeds in being both  a period piece throwback buddy-cop comedy and a dire warning against letting down our guard against white nationalism, while experimenting with, and critiquing, some wish-fulfillment, audience-service set pieces. The part that will stick with me for years to come is without a doubt Harry Belafonte's incredible performance, narrating the brutality of a lynch mob in broad daylight.  The film has something more subtle to say about charisma as well, how vulnerable we are to story-tellers, and how much we want a shared history, a righteous inheritance.

Robyn HONEY (2018)

ethereal, sweatless Galadrielpop, Lothlórien club music. Send To Robin Immediately is the emotional centerpiece, tremendously evocative synthwork, and a Robyn so in command that she can appear and disappear as the song requires. not for nothing, Galadriel was the one who nourished the fellowship, you can live a long time on lembas or music even.