4v291o

Watched on Sunday June 8, 2025.

Watched on Friday June 6, 2025.

Watched on Friday June 6, 2025.

doesn’t always work as a movie but i like whenever it becomes a series of funny sketches like why did they kiss on the mouth and should we all just sing? and toad

Watched on Wednesday June 4, 2025.

the most perfectly timed burp in cinema history. TGI friday’s has never looked this beautiful. the fact that the white actors are awful makes the movie better <3

shoutout to gene

insane how many of my mentors' films i haven't seen but was so happy my first time seeing this was on tom's personal print!!! i love how this is shot and edited especially the very stylized scenes (the whip-pan interrogation scene is still top of mind)

[q&a with tom kalin & christine vachon]

i think it’s really brave that mike myers wrote that femme bot striptease for himself to do <3

this movie making me realize how subtly complicated/insane naruse plots are. like here we've got a newlywed couple who need a room to rent and the husband's solution is to bully his coworker whose wife just died that he should let them rent part of his house, and then the result of this is that the widower falls in love with the wife and is saying stuff to her like "i thought my wife was standard. she was homely, but i thought that's how wives were. turns out she was unhealthy and died of liver trouble. you changed my idea of what a woman is." ????? guys don't you hate when you accidentally instigate your own cuckoldry :/

maybe just behind YEARNING in my personal naruse ranking if i was someone who thought like that about movies. hideko takamine is so funny and spunky and assured and all the dysfunctional family mess in this feels so specific and complex. i love how naruse drops into a situation and lets it reach a boiling point before taking a whole other diversion in the last 20 minutes. the music in this is sooooo good too. everyone also loved the little cat <3

made dinner too slowly to go see naruse tonight (@japan society 6:30 is too early 🥲) so instead i went to see this at spectacle and oof it smelled like dirty socks tonight. no big deal though because this is pretty awesome. highlights for me were the freaky monkey and the translation of someone's name being "tiny cock" and how many times people drink piss or get pissed on. highlight for everybody was when all the holy peaches magically came together to form one all-powerful sentient peach man that makes stupid little noises.

i love a movie shot in antiquated format <3 also movies shot in the liminal space of a hotel during a convention and also every time the organizers of the convention go "this is our first woman we've ever had in the competition and we are so happy that she is here"

watched ~the 4k restoration of the dirtier cut~ at john wilson’s new movie theater in ridgewood where he was working concessions and sweeping up popcorn tonight. i can’t say it’s a great movie but norm rules and i hope we get more restorations of directors’ cuts of 90s studio comedies that bombed because that’s the kind of thing i would trek to ridgewood for. john goodman is in this for one shot and “semi-charmed life” plays in the first 5 minutes. also the preroll and decor at the theater are very good 👍

they really got the most abe lincoln looking motherfucker to play abe lincoln. this is some pretty incredible early john ford (who is being given this much money to make a western epic at 29 these days???) even though i think it's dulled by every part that is super broadly about american empire manifest destiny blahblahblah. sometimes it's kinda like...here is year by year timeline of the transcontinental railroad being built and i zzzzzz. nora mention though

also i watched it with this NTS playlist as the soundtrack and i highly recommend for any silent western xoxo

gets a little silly in places but i think the first episode is especially phenomenal and there's a lot about this that rings true even if you're not literally dying. i mean we're all dying. etc.

i can imagine someone making a 90 minute feature about this incident where every member of the family is interviewed and we see the whole court case and that would fucking suck!!! this doesn't!!!

kinda reminds me of when i was going up i had an uncle who would always ask, "is your father still mad at you?" because he loved to plant the seeds of paranoia in small children's minds apparently

film school has its problems but without it we wouldn't get to see the greatest filmmakers of all time act in their friends' mediocre short films

best ending of a short maybe ever <3

Watched on Thursday May 22, 2025.

kamala harris jumpscare

this doc features an old town road parody about bugs

kira muratova does fragmented societal sickness like nobody else. i was first introduced to muratova because of that extremely long miniseries called WOMEN IN FILM that referred to this movie so many times that in my mind it is among The Canon even though i don't think that many people have heard of muratova even within cinephile circles. just one of those movies that is ripe for discovery and discussion. honestly i'm so stunned/in love with how this film transforms just as soon as you're starting to latch onto it 40 minutes in that i don't have anything substantive to say about it. i just think she is a master especially with how she fluctuates between shrieks and shouting and total silence (shoutout to the sound system at walter reade actually being revamped now, not how it was when i first moved to new york and suffered through THE HOURGLASS SANITORIUM piercing my eardrums).

tl;dr great movie about going so crazy that you're shoving people in the street and slipping and falling on floors that are too polished and making out while walking at the same time

oh and go to the muratova series wtf are you doing forget that the sun is out in new york now

Watched on Sunday April 6, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 6, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 6, 2025.

everybody comparing this to CLASSMATES (classic columbia film of the 2023 szn) only to be like oh the dp who shot CLASSMATES shot this too

could have easily sat for another hour with these characters and this situation. if anyone at NYFF is smart they will snatch noah up and program his stuff because this is exactly the kind of thing i want to see when i'm there (sweet, funny, thoughtful, talky movies that aren't really about plot so much as a strong perspective on the world and how people respond to each other in it). get dennis lim on the horn

Watched on Sunday April 6, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 6, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 6, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 6, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 6, 2025.

we love kai wen's new york city PARASITE

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

hey don't call your mother a cow

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

when you know SIGNS is one of cam's favorite movies it makes so much sense that he made this—but it's one of those things where the influence is baked into the thing rather than the thing trying to copy the influence yaknow? anyway filmmaker to watch alerttttttt

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

the version i saw didn't have the vfx termites yet but word on the street is that there a lot of them in there

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

starring russian hunter schafer

it would be really funny if i logged every time i watched my own movie... just like every day for 5 months... i think steven soderbergh does that on his blog

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

fred wiseman well represented so far

• Lightning
• Testament
• Honeysuckle Rose
• Koyaanisqatsi
• The Merry Frolics of Satan
• Mahjong
• High School II
• 25 Watts
• A Camel
• Near Death

a bunch of films i love a lot (everything i’ve given 4.5-5 stars), ranked by how recently i've watched/rewatched them. films watched most recently are at the top; films near the bottom i haven’t seen lately and maybe can’t stand by my rating anymore, so maybe withhold judgment? or don't.

this is the system bc i cannot rank movies <3 thx

• Mahjong
• Lightning
• A Camel
• Testament
• The Lady Eve
• 25 Watts
• A Woman Is a Woman
• Koyaanisqatsi
• Near Death
• This Property Is Condemned

...plus 400 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

ongoing list of directors whose work i want to check out and whose work i've checked out since making this list.

2 films listed for each director.
#1 - 396: seen 0 films
#397 - 576: seen 1 film
#573 - 864: seen 2 films since making list

(6/5/24 update: i got like 70% done with this list then decided that was too much progress so i added like 300 additional directors to get it back down to like 40% completion lol i am fine)

--

filmmakers i've watched 2+ films by since making this list back in 2019 (listed at the bottom of the list in order of completion so you can see what my first two films by all these filmmakers were if that's something that compels you): (this is truly a wild list like since then i have seen 13 lubitsch flicks for example, lol we have come so far)
powell and pressburger / pedro almodóvar / nicolas roeg / frank capra / andrei tarkovsky / preston sturges / ernst lubitsch / michelangelo antonioni / terrence malick / werner herzog / samuel fuller / yasujirō ozu / akira kurosawa / robert altman / john ford / rené clement / john cassavetes / shirley clarke / hou hsiao-hsien / whit stillman / jean-pierre melville / karel reisz / fritz lang / carlos saura / claire denis / paul schrader / tony richardson / dorothy arzner / robert bresson / david cronenberg / nagisa ōshima / f.w. murnau / ken russell / volker schlöndorff / céline sciamma / chloé zhao / satyajit ray / louis malle / aki kaurismäki / john carpenter / thomas vinterberg / sergei eisenstein / lois weber / rainer werner fassbinder / ken loach / claude chabrol / lucrecia martel / hong sang-soo / olivier assayas / chantal akerman / jacques tati / pier paolo pasolini / alain resnais / claude lelouch / wim wenders / leos carax / bernardo bertolucci / mani ratnam / dario argento / juzo itami / georges franju / marcel carné / maya deren / andrea arnold / frank perry / joachim trier / asghar farhadi / dardenne brothers / anthony asquith / emilio fernández / joseph l. mankiewicz / peter tscherkassky / tsai ming-liang / chris marker / jim strouse / lulu wang / ronald neame / mathieu kassovitz / nadine labaki / ramin bahrani / camille billops and james hatch / frederick wiseman / cecil b. demille / ruben östlund / james gray / jafar panahi / mario bava / michael haneke / zeinabu irene davis / miranda july / stephanie rothman / todd field / sam peckinpah / hirokazu kore-eda / keisuke kinoshita / alexander korda / erich von stroheim / mira nair / dino risi / ida lupino / bruce robinson / julie dash / apichatpong weerasethakul / jonas mekas / jules dassin / ivan er / nicole holofcener / charles crichton / roberto rossellini / kundan shah / christopher munch / christian petzold / kira muratova / tran anh hung / edward yang / pierre étaix / jacques rivette / oscar micheaux / catherine breillat / terence davies / kiyoshi kurosawa / guy maddin / med hondo / alice rohrwacher / john sayles / ryusuke hamaguchi / robert rossen / elia suleiman / lars von trier / bill forsyth / gina prince-bythewood / lance oppenheim / harmony korine / karyn kusama / michael moore / michael snow / stanley kwan / abel ferrara / su friedrich / m. night shyamalan / jacques rozier / miguel gomes / kazuo hara / andré téchiné / jerry schatzberg / kazik radwanski

1. Wings

   larisa shepitko (0)

2. The Ascent

   larisa shepitko

3. Come Drink with Me

   king hu (0)

4. A Touch of Zen

   king hu

5. Pacifiction

   albert serra (0)

6. The Death of Louis XIV

   albert serra

7. Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?

   william klein (0)

8. Mr. Freedom

   william klein

9. Love & Pop

   hideaki anno (0)

10. Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion

    hideaki anno

...plus 854 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

i am Very Bad at being a completist (except for when i occasionally get totally immersed in someone's stuff in a short period of time—see: truffaut, warren beatty—but this hasn't happened in a while) even when i love the work a lot. i like to always have something new to look forward to. but also finishing truffaut's filmography was really rewarding and personally inspiring to me (that book of correspondence was obviously part of it as well), and i think i want more of that.

so: making this ongoing list of directors whose filmographies i've already made a big dent in and could probably finish if i was more intentional about it. will hopefully add more as i make progress, but TBD i love to set goals and never follow through.

ranked by films remaining to hit some level of completion, least to most. mostly dealing with fiction features except for some directors.

***
completed since making this list: john cassavetes, christopher nolan, todd haynes (fiction features), jane campion, sofia coppola

• The Grandmaster

  wong kar-wai: 1 fiction feature left (not including the new miniseries in here)

  seen 10 out of 11 fiction features (not anthology films etc.)

  16 out of 24 total projects

• Exhibition

  joanna hogg: 1 fiction feature left

  seen 5 out of 6 fiction features

  (6 out of 9 total projects that are actually accessible)

• The Calm

  kieślowski: 1 fiction feature left

  seen 21 out of 22* fiction features

  (should be 21 out of 27, though 5 of these are insanely hard to track down or seemingly only available with chinese subtitles for some reason)

  (24 out of 54 total projects, please send me some of his doc shorts with english subs, thank u)

• Andrei Rublev

  andrei tarkovsky: 2 fiction features left

  seen 5 out of 7 fiction features

  (5 out of 11 total films)

• Inherent Vice

  paul thomas anderson: 2 fiction features left

  seen 7 out of 9 fiction features

  (8 out of 24 total projects)

• Singles

  cameron crowe: 2 fiction features left

  seen 6 out of 8 fiction features

• Peterloo

  mike leigh: 3 fiction features left

  seen 19 out of 22 fiction features

  (22 out of 33 total projects)

• Night Moves

  kelly reichardt: 3 features left
  
  seen 5 out of 8 features

• Inland Empire

  david lynch: 3 fiction features left

  seen 9 out of 12 fiction features (including TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN)

  (17 out of 70 total projects (but some of this stuff is like...idk if i need to see "out yonder - chicken"))

• Mr. Jealousy

  noah baumbach: 3 fiction features left

  seen 9 out of 12 fiction features

  (9 out of 15 total projects)

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

trying to get back to this. stuff i plan to watch/rewatch soon.

• Last Year at Marienbad
• Mission: Impossible
• The Artist
• Taipei Story
• 3-Iron
• Touki Bouki
• To the Wonder
• Theodora Goes Wild
• The Earrings of Madame de...
• The Long Day Closes

...plus 57 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

so excited about this series at moma celebrating the distinct characteristics of new york's rep cinemas <3

www.moma.org/calendar/film/5821

• Chess Fever
• The Big Trail
• Sans Soleil
• The Rules of the Game
• Sullivan's Travels
• Fireworks
• Vampyr
• Blood of the Beasts
• Tokyo Story
• Pink Flamingos

...plus 31 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

this year's lineup for new york's best experimental doc festival <3

NOT ON LETTERBOXD YET (as of 4/20/25):
How He Died is Not Controversial (Gio Lingao, 2025, 14min)
Thunderland, as a matter of fact (Y'a Matière au Pays des Éclairs) (Charles-André Coderre and Frédéric Boisclair, 2024, 45min)
The Early Sun, Red as a Hunter’s Moon (Adam Piron, 2025, 13min)
All Said Done (Micah Weber, 2025, 22m)
Concrete Resources (Thank you for keeping me a company of images) (Emir West, 2025, 9min)
Remote Views (Alexis McCrimmon, 2025, 15min)
Center (Burak Çevik, 2025, 6min, 16mm)
The World Doesn’t End When You Do (marlow magdalene, 2024, 10min)
受难日/Good Friday (Xiaolu Wang, 2025, 9min)
Some Strings Pts. I & II (Various Filmmakers, 96min)
Tuktuit (Lindsay McIntyre, 2025, 15min)
Necessary Trip (Kevin Jerome Everson, 2025, 5min)
Courtney Stephens and Shiv Kotecha present Films and Poems from the Fifth Season (ft. Courtney Stephens, Shiv Kotecha, Jjjjjerome Ellis, Tiziana La Melia, Diana Hamilton, and Courtney Bush)
Some Strings Pts. III & IV (Various Filmmakers, 110min)
ws.3 (Cho Seoungho, 2003, 6 min)
Some Strings Pts. V & VI (Various Filmmakers, 84min)

• Palestine Will Win
• Your Touch Makes Others Invisible
• A Black Screen Too
• adieu ugarit
• Winter Portrait
• Buseok
• Empty Rider
• May the Soil Be Everywhere
• Rhythm of a Flower
• Half Halt

...plus 33 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Gaucho Gaucho
• White Grass
• Demolition
• The Blanket
• Zoo
• Colorado Cowboy: The Bruce Ford Story

so far leigh's quotes are taken from the book MIKE LEIGH ON MIKE LEIGH by mike leigh and amy raphael.

[in progress]

• Radio Days

  "[His opinion of Woody Allen] varies between blind adulation and deep loathing, depending on which film you're talking about. RADIO DAYS would be on my desert island with me..."

• Match Point

  "...if you wanted to subject me to excruciating torture, you'd send me there [to a desert island] with a copy of MATCH POINT. I wouldn't survive twenty-four hours."

• Manhattan

  "MANHATTAN infuriated me because I thought we could all make films like that if someone would just give us a chance."

• Crimes and Misdemeanors

  "I love CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS..."

• Bullets Over Broadway

  "I love...BULLETS OVER BROADWAY."

• Annie Hall

  "I like ANNIE HALL but..."

• Hannah and Her Sisters

  "...prefer HANNAH AND HER SISTERS."

• Zelig

  "I loved ZELIG..."

• The Purple Rose of Cairo

  "...but can't stand THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO. But to me RADIO DAYS stands head and shoulders above all the others."

• The Rules of the Game

  "Renoir became a major influence..."

...plus 26 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

creating a canon of movies where a dude faints

(fainter listed in the notes.)

• Maurice

  Hugh Grant

• Jezebel

  Henry Fonda

• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

  Jimmy Stewart

• Vertigo

  Jimmy Stewart (again. someone get this man a fainting couch)

• Run Silent, Run Deep

  Clark Gable

• Spellbound

  Gregory Peck

• Casino Royale

  Daniel Craig

• Too Many Husbands

  Melvyn Douglas

• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

  Daniel Radcliffe

• Bringing Up Baby

  Cary Grant

...plus 143 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

i was pretty good at keeping up with new releases last year and this is to keep track of stuff that's coming out soon and so i don't miss anything in theaters that i'm actually interested in

• Presence

  1/17

• Misericordia

  tbd

• Happyend

  2025

• The Shrouds

  2025

• By the Stream

  TBD

• bluish

  TBD

• Us and the Night

  TBD

• Seven Veils

  TBD

what a year!!!!!!!

• Brewster McCloud
• Céline and Julie Go Boating
• The Brother from Another Planet
• Kiki's Delivery Service
• Fitzcarraldo
• I Was Born, But...
• Moving
• Where I Am Is Here
• Hospital
• Solaris

...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

this man is always out here getting rejected, ed over for another hunk, or just generally being the odd man out around a couple. poor guy.

(there are definitely more, please make suggestions!)

• The Awful Truth
• His Girl Friday
• Hands Across the Table
• Let Us Live
• Forbidden
• Spitfire
• Carefree
• The Wedding Night
• Headline Shooter
• Picture Snatcher

it's the most wonderful time of the year <3 anything urgent i missed i’m gonna try to catch at montclair 🫡

1. Grand Tour
2. Eephus
3. April
4. Hard Truths
5. Exposé du film annonce du film "Scénario"
6. Bona
7. No Other Land
8. Universal Language
9. Scénarios
10. Lázaro at Night

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

in theory i'm making a movie soon, so

• Travolta and Me
• The Green Ray
• The Girlfriend Experience
• Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s in Brussels
• Simone Barbès or Virtue
• All the Boys Are Called Patrick
• Sherman's March
• Le Pont du Nord
• I'm Hungry, I'm Cold
• A Tale of Winter

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

very excited about this programming series at anthology july 24-august 13 !!

"Paradoxically, many of the films here both reach towards a special “authenticity” by incorporating verbatim speech, while simultaneously re-distancing this language via various methods: having actors lip-synch audio recordings, setting interviews to music, reenacting documentary material, or utilizing highly stylized visual approaches. One way or another, the verbatim technique partakes of the tradition of reenactment or restaging, but with a special focus on written or spoken language, and a special insistence on the power of the word."

anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/57916

not on letterboxd: LIFE AND TIMES: EPISODE 8 (2015), made for TV series

• Saint Omer
• Fires in the Mirror
• Twilight: Los Angeles
• The Great Chicago Conspiracy Circus
• Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8
• The Future's Getting Old Like the Rest of Us
• Public Hearing
• Mediums
• Growth Opportunities
• The Trial of Joan of Arc

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

in general i am the person people turn to when they cannot the name of a movie but here are pairs of movies i mix up because they have similar titles or vibes or posters or i am just fucking stupid, actually.

ongoing as i what films i confuse for other films. explanations in notes.

• The Big Chill

  two films about bland friends in the 80s? these are the same movie to me

• St. Elmo's Fire
• Single White Female

  the posters just look similar to me and even though i've seen SWF these are the same movie to me

  ** even since watching THE BEDROOM WINDOW they are still the same. sorry.

• The Bedroom Window
• People on Sunday

  people...in the country...having a day....the titles just get mixed up and i forget which is the german one and which is the french one, oops

• A Day in the Country
• The Triplets of Belleville

  something about the muted warm colors of this and tokyo godfathers make me mix em up. 2003 2D animation poster blindness

• Tokyo Godfathers
• The House of Yes

  was watching house of yes thinking it was penned by david mamet because these movies are the same to me

• House of Games

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

i don't rewatch movies so much, but recently i've felt like reevaluating certain movies (ones i loved and wonder if they hold up for me, ones i hated that i wonder would land differently with me now, etc.)

so here is a list of movies i intend to rewatch (+ have rewatched recently). noted is my original rating vs. my updated rating so we can all appreciate growth or whatever. things i've rewatched most recently will be listed first, things i plan to rewatch are everything after REDS.

• The War Room

  2018: 4.5 stars
  2024: 4 stars

• The Deep Blue Sea

  2014: 1.5 stars
  2024: 3.5 stars

• Apur Sansar

  2021: 4.5 stars
  2024: 4.5 stars

• East of Eden

  2016: 4 stars
  2017: 5 stars
  2024: 4 stars

• The Conversation

  2017: 4.5 stars
  2024: 5 stars

• As Good as It Gets

  2008/09 (estimated): 2.5 stars
  2024: 4 stars

• Toni Erdmann

  2019: 5 stars
  2024: 5 stars

• Almost Famous

  2016/2017: 4.5 stars
  2024: 2.5 stars

• The Limey

  2017: 4.5 stars
  2024: 3.5 stars

• Yearning

  2020: 4.5 stars
  2024: 5 stars

...plus 153 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

"This July, Spectacle provokes contemplation of the slow, inhuman, ever-constant churn of containerized matter across international waters with ten films, ranging from short to feature to colossal in length. LOGISTICS, a 52,420 minute Warholian document of a container ship’s transnational voyage, prompts a revival of Spectacle’s online streaming platform in order to show it in its entirety. Tuning in and out of the stream, viewers are welcome to the theater to gaze upon even more HEAVY METAL CONTAINERS through documentaries that cross into essay film (THE FORGOTTEN SPACE), ghost story (SCRAP VESSEL), science fiction (DEAD SLOW AHEAD), and computational compression art (ALBATRE). While a few of these films highlight the diverse and precarious human experiences of modern life at sea, this is most true of the delightful series outlier, FROM GULF TO GULF TO GULF, a film made in collaboration with seafarers transporting non-containerized cargo across the Western Indian Ocean aboard giant sailing vessels made of wood instead of steel."

www.spectacletheater.com/heavy-metal-containers/?mc_cid=03054da77c&mc_eid=3d0405f095

• Logistics
• The Forgotten Space
• Sea – Shipping – Sun
• Albâtre
• Silesilence
• Dead Slow Ahead
• Scrap Vessel
• Canadian Pacific I
• Canadian Pacific II
• Drift

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

movies featuring people with memorable eyebrows. owner of the eyebrows in notes.

i'll take suggestions but i'll be the one to judge whether the eyebrows are significant enough to be added to this list.

• The Tales of Hoffmann

  robert helpmann (in the first act)

• The Flowers of St. Francis

  that one scary guy in all the armor

• We're the Millers

  i know will poulter has been in other things in the past 11 years but any time i forget his name i describe him as "that kid with the eyebrows from WE'RE THE MILLERS" so this goes on here

yes my movie-watching stats look a little insane at first glance but partially to blame is that i've watched 900 short films and here they all are (probably mostly) (i'm sure there are ones i never logged).

(updated 5/14/24)

1. Antoine and Colette
2. The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins
3. The Slow Escape
4. Dog
5. The Recorder Exam
6. The '">View the full list on Letterboxd. ]]>

Prismatic Ground is an annual festival in New York City centered on experimental documentary and avant-garde film.

May 8-12, 2024
wave 1 | blueprint of a pleasure machine
wave 2 | only fascist mummies don't jump
wave 3 | mortality is a prison but to know it is the key
wave 4 | ping pong ping pong ping pong ping pong ping pong
wave ∞ | the future is still bigger than the past

• Fertile Memory

  opening night

  Pre-film reading by poet Hala Alyan; followed by a conversation between Tiffany Malakooti (Bidoun) and researcher, writer, and curator Adam HajYahia. Co-presented by Bidoun.

• Blueprint of a Pleasure Machine

  wave 1 program 1

• Amma ki katha

  wave 1 program 1

• Let's Go to the Mines

  wave 1 program 1

• No Stranger at All

  wave 1 program 1

• Homing

  wave 1 program 3

• Wolves

  wave 1 program 3

• conical signal

  wave 1 program 4

• ascensions

  wave 1 program 4

• breathing

  wave 1 program 4

...plus 81 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

“I had to come back to Montreal. I have total disrespect for Hollywood, it still makes my hair stand on end. Yukk. They’re all creepos.” –Micheline Lanctôt, 1984

anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/57404

• Dirty Money
• Dream Life
• Bar Salon
• A Pacemaker and a Sidecar
• Good Riddance
• Moonshine
• Elvis Gratton, Le King des Kings
• Sonatine
• Scale Model Sadness
• Whoever Dies, Dies in Pain

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

ranking films is not my beat but this is an exercise and i am doing this while i drink my coffee today

***A DISCLAIMER BEFORE ANY OF YOU YELL AT ME: whatever my star rating of these movies currently sits at factors in but this is more of a complex stew of 1) if it's been a while, what i feel like i would rate these movies if i watched them again 2) how fun i think it is that it won best picture 3) whether they're a movie i'd actually like to rewatch 4) memorability and 5) vibes. but mostly vibes. if i redid this tomorrow it'd probably be different. THANKS

1. The Apartment
2. Amadeus
3. The Departed
4. The Lost Weekend
5. The Best Years of Our Lives
6. It Happened One Night
7. On the Waterfront
8. Parasite
9. The Godfather
10. Moonlight

...plus 56 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

how many drinks did he have? oh, we're on!

and now, with their salute to the best music from the year's best films, the 5 neat guys.

on golden pond with the fondas
spent the whole summer with kate
in comes the kid
the film didn't hit the skids
and that's why that flick was so great

there's no reds
like dead reds
for me

raiders
of the lost ark
met a nazi
then his face melted
hey!

[groovy sock-hop riff]
absence of malice!
[riff continues]
absence of malice!

there were chariots of fire
but i have to inquire
why they didn't have no chariots
in the movie

[booing]

arthur
was a drunk little rich kid
he drove around in limousines

and that's our tribute to the screen....
...'s best films!

[booing continues]

• On Golden Pond
• Reds
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Absence of Malice
• Chariots of Fire
• Arthur

films by directors who have a film in my favorites list and it's the only film of theirs which i've seen.

(always in progress)

• Lola Montès

  Max Ophüls

• Body and Soul

  Robert Rossen

• Housekeeping

  Bill Forsyth

• The Last Performance

  Pál Fegös

• Everybody's Fine

  Giuseppe Tornatore

• Watermelon Man

  Melvin Van Peebles

• Puzzle of a Downfall Child

  Jerry Schatzberg

• John and Mary

  Peter Yates

• The Outside Man

  Jacques Deray

• Django

  Sergio Corbucci

...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

a log of silent films i've synced with music that is not whatever normie classical hits or jaunty MIDI piano soundtrack amazon prime/youtube/etc tried to feed me. my music choices are in the notes.

silent films are about the shots and performances, and the music should be secondary to their impact anyway! figure out the emotional vibe of the first 2 minutes and pick some tunes accordingly and live your life! will die on this hill sorry!

(updating as i do this with more movies. most recently watched movies at the top.)

• Neighbors

  a playlist:
  - "yesterday when i was mad" pet shop boys
  - "heaven's above" the style council
  - "life of surprises" prefab sprout
  - "it's going to happen!" the undertones
  - "life's what you make it" talk talk
  - "these days" jackson browne

• Blood and Sand

  EL MAL QUERER by rosalía and EL MADRILEÑO by c. tangana

• Body and Soul

  PHARAOH by pharaoh sanders and ILLUSIONS by arthur blythe because i am in my free jazz era

• The Circus

  1. OUTSIDE by david bowie

• Street Angel

  put on clap your hands say yeah's eponymous album on a loop and honestly has the perfect light circus vibe to go along with parts of this film's content

• 7th Heaven

  a succession of nick drake albums, starting with BRYTER LAYTER, then FIVE LEAVES LEFT, then PINK MOON, then back to BRYTER LAYTER again for the last few minutes. kind of the perfect vibe i think.

• The Wedding March

  i was getting irritated with the overwrought midi score after a while and turned on a playlist of 90s dance music and honestly? the film was impactful regardless. corona's "rhythm of the night" during the final sequence was wild and incredible.

• A Fool There Was

  violator by depeche mode

• Different from the Others

  mendelssohn violin concerto & shostakovich violin concerto no. 1, played by hilary hahn

• The Seashell and the Clergyman

  on avery island by neutral milk hotel

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

quotes about some of these films included in notes, but like, go read the book :) the guy was good with words and this book is nice because it's mainly him raving about filmmakers he loves.

"Today I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between; I am not interested in all those films that do not pulse."

(in progress)

& here is my other truffaut list that took forever to make and of which i am very proud :)
(i say it took me forever but really i read that book in a month, but typing out all the quotes i guess was time-intensive. lol)

other miscellaneous quotes in this book that i think are funny/insightful:

"To make a completely successful film means imbuing it with qualities that are varied and almost contradictory, a difficult and rare achievement. It's often said that a film is 'cinema' or 'not cinema' without saying precisely why. For me, a filmmaker must know how to make or show something better than the others do. That chap, for example, is not a good storyteller but he directs actors better than someone else; another one spoils scenes, but every shot is perfect; a third piles up three hundred prosaic shots that add up to a powerful movie; a fourth has wonderful camera work; a fifth allows things to get confused but he knows how to create real characters, etcetera, etcetera. In short, no film is a total success, and it's awfully easy to criticize what it's not. It's our job to try to discover what it is." (1960)

"Two and a half years ago, my friend Claude Chabrol and I met Alfred Hitchcock when we both fell into an icy pond at the Studio Saint-Maurice under the gaze, at first mocking and then comionate, of the master of anguish. Because we were soaked, it was several hours before we were able to seek him out again with a new tape recorder. The first one had literally drowned; it was ruined." (1957)

• The Devil's Envoys

  truffaut skipped school to see this film ("i liked it a lot") and then got home from "school" only to be invited out to see this film by his aunt and he had to pretend he hadn't already seen it. sneaky sneaky

• Le Corbeau

  he saw this "five or six times" before it was banned post-liberation of , then watched it "several times a year" after the ban was lifted. sir, control yourself i beg

• The Rules of the Game

  “…some of the best evenings of the year would be spent watching LE RÈGLE DU JEU.”

• Hiroshima Mon Amour
• Othello
• Hamlet
• Citizen Kane
• Singin' in the Rain
• Ordet

  "Not a frame escapes Dreyer's vigilance; he is certainly the most demanding director of all since Eisenstein, and his finished films resemble exactly what they were in his mind as he conceived them."

  "I only met Carl Dreyer three times, but it pleases me to write these few lines as I sit in the leather-and-wood chair that belonged to him during his working life and was given to me after his death. He was a small man, soft-spoken, terribly stubborn, who gave an impression of severity although he was truly sensitive and warm."

• Psycho

...plus 165 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

no i have not seen every james spader movie. yes i have seen several where a fetish takes over and/or ruins his life. ranked roughly by how all-encoming and destructive his sex life is. (see notes for scholarly, peer-reviewed reasoning)

1. Crash

   the zenith!!! this movie has a plot and then james spader's car fetish takes over and the second half just becomes increasingly dangerous car sex. he can't handle it! his fetish invades his life and the lives of everyone around him! destruction!

2. Secretary

   okay the fetish is not destructive in this one (it's quite the opposite!) but yes spader's entire life revolves around BDSM

3. sex, lies, and videotape

   the fetish is not ultimately destructive in this one! and he seems like a functional person who is able to hold a conversation with another person without it having to do with his sex videotapes, so it hasn't completely consumed his life. BUT! his fetish ruins OTHER people's lives a bit, so it remains near the top

4. Bad Influence

   yes he DOES have a fetish in this movie and it is doing whatever rob lowe tells him to do regardless of how self-destructive it is. and it RUINS! HIS! LIFE! his lack of agency over his fetish is quite astounding in this one

5. Mannequin

   andrew mccarthy is the one with the fetish here (fucking the mannequin) and james spader's life revolves around exposing this fetish. and the fetish DOES upend his career and his life. so even though it is not HIS fetish, A fetish has such an influence on him that i'm ranking this higher than it probably deserves.

6. Dream Lover

   again no fetish in this one but his sex life absolutely puts him in peril and mädchen amick destroys him!!!!! he sees it spiraling out of control but does nothing to stop it because the sex is so good, rip

7. True Colors

   so this is SUBTEXT but clearly it is the sexual tension between james spader and john cusack that motivates them to ruin each other's careers. they are subservient to their dicks and their dicks alone, i'm afraid

8. White Palace

   another movie where james spader's horniness does not ruin him! however! because he meets susan sarandon he ultimately cuts ties with uhhhhh all of his friends and family (but it's for the best?) and possibly moves to another city, therefore dropping his job too? but like, it's a good thing! however yes sex does uproot his life

9. Tuff Turf

   his fetish is BIKES and DANCING and BEING 80S JAMES DEAN and multiple people get shot or die or get mauled by attack dogs because of it, but he's thriving

10. Less Than Zero

    okay i saw this in 2017 and do not anything about it apart from that james spader is an asshole in it. from this youtube edit about robert downey jr and james spader set to placebo's "bitter end" i am guessing that james spader doesn't ruin his own life but DOES ruin RDJ's. not because of sex, i don't think? (unless...subtextually...maybe?)

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

compiled from: www.moma.org/calendar/film/5632

everything MoMA is programming as part of this series during the next month

• Harmonica
• The Stranger and the Fog
• Ballad of Tara
• The Rook
• Downpour
• The Raven
• Filmfarsi
• Still Life
• Anxiety
• The Strike

...plus 45 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

going to moma every day during february would not be responsible but i am tempted

everything happening here:
www.moma.org/calendar/film/5666

• The Young and the Damned
• Nazarin
• Viridiana
• The Brute
• The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz
• Mexican Bus Ride
• Illusion Travels by Streetcar
• Gran Casino
• The Great Madcap
• Robinson Crusoe

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

some of the films covered in IN PERSON: REENACTMENT IN POSTWAR AND CONTEMPORARY CINEMA by ivone margulies, using as reference for one of my thesis films

• Close-Up
• The Third Memory
• The Thin Blue Line
• Shoah
• Shulie
• The Battle of Orgreave
• Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills
• In the King of Prussia
• Chronicle of a Summer
• The Human Pyramid

...plus 56 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

keeping a log of every trailer on various dvds i watch in case anyone wants to replicate the experience of watching trailers of contemporaneous movies before a movie on streaming

• Bright Star

  AMOUR FOU (2014)

  HACHI: A DOG’S TALE (2009)

  THE MARQUISE OF O (1976)

• Somewhere

  BLUE CRUSH 2 (2011)
  THE DILEMMA (2011)
  

• Blade Runner

  (director's cut VHS)

  FULL METAL JACKET (1987)

• Southland Tales

  REVOLVER (2005)
  ZOMBIE STRIPPERS (2008)