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There is a moment in Red Canyon—maybe it’s when the stallion Black Velvet rears up against the burning sky, or when Lucy Bostel turns her face to the wind like she’s inhaling the scent of a forgotten god—when I felt the cracked earth of America tremble beneath its lacquered Hollywood sheen. That’s the thing with these old westerns: you think you’re going in for a bit of nostalgia, a bit of dust and saddle soap and good clean adventure. But sometimes, if you’re open to it, if your nerves are frayed just enough, a film like this kicks you square in the solar plexus and whispers, There’s more here than the script its.

Let me say this straight: George Sherman didn’t set out to make an existential treatise on the human condition. He was a studio man, an assembler of oaters, a craftsman with a quota. But Red Canyon—this strange, vivid Technicolor fable from 1949—not just another horse opera but a fever dream of America. A love letter to the feral. A slow exhale of the dying wild.

I watched it alone, late at night, with the windows open and the city howling. And what hit me, more than the story (which is conventional, fine, let’s not kid ourselves), was what slept underneath it. The throb beneath the skin. The irrational, the unruly, the thing that defies plot and tidy resolution.

Howard Duff plays Lin Sloan, a man with more past than future. He’s trying to break a wild stallion, but of course, we know what’s really being broken here: the outlaw spirit, the animal instinct, the refusal to be yoked. You can smell the self-hatred on him, the way a man does when he’s tried too hard to become civilized. He rides like a ghost trying to what it felt like to have flesh.

And Lucy Bostel—Ann Blyth, radiant, strange, somewhere between schoolmarm and storm cloud—is the axis the film turns on. Not because she’s the love interest, but because she knows. She sees the stallion and doesn’t just see a beast to be tamed. She sees the echo of something holy. Something prelapsarian. Her gaze is a challenge and a hymn.

The film isn’t great. But it’s true. You understand the difference? It’s not tidy, it’s not tight, but it has truth splattered all over its Technicolor frames like blood on a saddle horn. The reds of the canyon are more vivid than real life. The sky looks like it was painted by a drunk saint. The wind never stops. And somewhere in all this beauty is a gnawing, pulsing truth: we are always trying to break what we love.

The horse is just a horse, they’ll tell you. Don’t romanticize it. But I can’t help myself. Black Velvet is the last breath of the untamed world. He’s God on four legs. He’s the animal in all of us that refuses to sit up straight and say please.

What Sherman did—maybe without even knowing it—is film a crucifixion. The wild pinned to the cross of progress. And Lin Sloan is both the Roman and the apostle.

I came away from Red Canyon with my skin itching and my soul unsettled. That’s a good thing. Too many films try to soothe you. This one stirs. It doesn’t tell you what to feel. It just opens the cage and shows you what we’ve locked inside.

If you want narrative, go somewhere else. If you want to feel a dying god beneath the hooves of a black stallion, come sit beside me and watch this strange, minor miracle unfold.

We’ll drink to the canyon and the woman and the beast. And we won’t apologize for the tears.

Watched on Saturday May 17, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 14, 2025.

Watched on Monday May 12, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 11, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 9, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 9, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 8, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 7, 2025.

I’ve been draped across this crumbling couch like a wounded Roman senator, my left shoulder pulsing like a separate animal—dumb, swollen, insolent. Pain has a tempo, and mine has chosen to play the tabla. It thuds in slow irregular beats, some deep, some piercing, like the sound of distant drums.

The hours drift like smoke rings. I haven’t moved in what feels like centuries. There is a crust forming on my soul, and underneath it, a thin film of bitter satisfaction. The world has stopped asking things of me—no phone calls, no emails, no demands to be reasonable or productive. Just this sacred sanctuary of inertia and the faint smell of my own decay. I am gloriously useless.

And so I turned on The Music Room. Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece. Like sipping opium through the eyes. I watched that aristocrat—with his haunted look and broken dignity, clinging to the last tatters of his ruined domain, like a ghost throwing parties for other ghosts. His music room is his sarcophagus. And as the sitar played, my shoulder throbbed in time, as if echoing the man’s disintegration.

There’s something about watching a man crumble with elegance that makes your own misery feel less sordid. My pain felt baroque, suddenly—part of some larger, unspeakable poetry. I imagined myself in a white dhoti, gazing into the chandelier as the ceiling cracks above me. The dust would fall in slow motion, and I wouldn’t flinch. What’s a little dust, when your soul is already buried under the ruins of pride?

I paused the film at one point and just stared at the wall. Not thinking. Just being. Shoulder screaming, but the silence between the screams… it was divine. A kind of minor godliness. Like I was floating in some dead part of time, immune from everything. I was a broken man alone with a great film. What more could a man ask for?

Let the shoulder ache. Let the house rot around me. For today, I am a prince in decline, and the sitar plays only for me.

Watched on Thursday May 1, 2025.

A hallucination composed in the midnight silence of a rust-bitten America, and Jim Jarmusch is its cool, deadpan prophet. Watching this film is like crawling through the back alley of your own subconscious, stumbling on a half-dead bird whispering Hagakure koans in the voice of RZA. It’s a love letter to contradictions: blood and stillness, silence and hip-hop, Bushido and drive-bys.

The first thing to know about Ghost Dog is that it is a samurai film, yes — but not in the Kurosawa pomp of sword-swinging glory. No, this is closer to Goyokin or Harakiri, maybe even Samurai Rebellion, where honor rots slowly under the sun like meat left out in the open too long. But here, the sun is artificial, fluorescents flickering in bodegas, the meat is American decay, and the samurai is a Black man carrying pigeons on his rooftop — his name is Ghost Dog, a perfect cipher. Forest Whitaker moves like a foghorn in a snowstorm, heavy, mournful, guided not by revenge or ego, but by a 300-year-old code whispered through cheap paperbacks and the TV static of a culture long dead.

Ghost Dog is a man out of t. A lone wolf with a code in a world of clowns. You’ve got the Mafia here, but they’re no Godfather aristocrats. They’re crumbling relics, watching cartoons while the walls collapse. A gang of men who speak in clichés, who don’t realize the samurai standing in front of them isn’t playing at anything — he is the real deal. Ghost Dog carries no illusions. He doesn’t talk unless he has to. He speaks through action — through silence — through the poetry of death istered with precision, like slicing through silk with a tanto.

RZA’s score floats like incense smoke — not overpowering, just enough to lull you into trance. Hip-hop here is a philosophy. Sampling, repetition, memory through rhythm. Jarmusch uses hip-hop as a form of modern meditation. This is the zazen of the turntable. You see Ghost Dog practicing with his sword on the rooftop while a low, hypnotic beat plays — it’s a ritual. He’s not flexing. He’s cleansing. This man kills with honor, then reads ages from Hagakure like sutras, reciting the way of immediate death, not metaphorically, but as an everyday code.

What Jarmusch understands — and this is the mad genius of the film — is that the samurai archetype isn’t a costume. It’s a soul condition. It’s Musashi wandering after the final duel. It’s the melancholy of Yojimbo standing between two factions of fools. It’s the poetry of failure, of unwavering loyalty in a world where loyalty is a currency long defunct. Ghost Dog is the last flame flickering on the wick of a spiritual tradition that has no soil left to root in — so it grows in concrete.

You can trace a line: from the silent vengeance of Shinobu Hashimoto’s scripts, through the existential noir of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï, straight into the hands of Jarmusch. And Ghost Dog, he’s the bastard child of all of them — born too late, speaking in code to men who have forgotten language. He kills not with rage but with a kind of sorrow. Every time he pulls the trigger, it feels like another nail in the coffin of a civilization that doesn’t understand him — or perhaps never did.

This is a film that demands contemplation, not analysis. Like a koan: “What is the sound of a pigeon’s wings before the gunshot?” You don’t answer it — you live with it. Jarmusch gives us this modern myth wrapped in pigeon feathers, Wu-Tang beats, and Mafiosi mumblings. He lets us see the last samurai not in Tokyo or Kyoto, but in Jersey, in the shadows, reading ancient texts by flashlight, communing with birds.

And if that’s not beauty, what is?

Watched on Monday April 28, 2025.

I stumbled onto The Order like a man walking into a cathedral at midnight, soul-sore, and ready to be baptized in shadow. The thing unfolded like a fever—strange, sultry, beautiful in the way a storm over the Catskills is beautiful, when all you can do is stand bare-chested and let the sky open your veins.

Jude Law moves through the screen like a fallen archangel, all poise and peril. There’s that old-world weariness in his eyes, a depth you can drown in. He bleeds, he confesses. Nicholas Hoult is the opposite pole: cool, surgical, precise, like a scalpel dipped in milk. There’s danger in that elegance. And Tye Sheridan, God bless him, is the raw nerve, the pilgrim, the boy-monk lost in a world built for wolves.

But the real lead here, the true sorcerer behind the curtain, is the cinematography. Every frame is a painting dipped in obsidian and gold. Light curls around bodies like whispered secrets. Shadows drip off walls like molasses. It’s inhaled, like incense in some ancient crypt where no one’s prayed in centuries. You feel it in your lungs, your marrow.

The Order is a relic. A sermon. A sin. The fallacy of White Power. The resiliency of the Good in this fight of morality. Watch it alone, late at night, when you’re aching for something you can’t name. Let it wash over you. Let it scar you a little. That’s how you know it’s real.

Watched on Tuesday April 15, 2025.

Watched on Monday April 14, 2025.

Watched on Thursday April 10, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday April 9, 2025.

The most striking aspect of this film is its ultimate revelation: that the vastness of the cosmos is both an answer and a question. The film’s denouement, where Ellie returns from her voyage through space and confronts the ambiguity of her experience, is one of the most brilliant reflections on faith and perception ever captured on film. Did she really travel through space? Did she truly communicate with an alien intelligence? The answer is irrelevant. What matters is that Ellie, in her moment of revelation, has experienced something profound—not in the form of incontrovertible proof, but in the form of her own transformation. 

is a film about the limits of human knowledge. It is about how, no matter how far we travel or how deeply we probe the mysteries of the universe, there will always be something we cannot understand. But that doesn’t mean we stop searching. The search itself becomes the point. The vast emptiness of the universe becomes both a challenge and a mirror, reflecting back our own human fears and desires.

doesn’t offer easy answers. It leaves us with more questions than we had at the start. But in that uncertainty lies its power. The film dares to ask, without answering, whether our search for truth—whether in the stars, in science, or in faith—will ever lead us to anything more than the haunting beauty of the search itself. It is a film that affirms our humanity by questioning everything we think we know, and in the end, that is the most profound of all.

Watched on Friday April 4, 2025.

April 3, 2025: There is something about Cure. I rewatch it for the second time this week, a strange compulsion I can’t quite shake, like a drug that gnaws at the edges of my mind, teasing and pulling me into its spiral. I thought it might lose its effect, this repetition, but no—if anything, it draws me in deeper. The hypnotic pulse of it—the slow, deliberate unraveling of the plot—beckons like a dark tunnel, deeper with each frame, each word, each glance.

The film has no mercy. The camera glides, languorous, as though unwilling to disturb the brooding stillness that fills the spaces between moments. The characters move as though trapped in a dream—a nightmare, maybe—but there’s no sense of urgency. There’s only the weight of something unspeakable hanging in the air, thick with the expectation of horror, but it never quite delivers it in the way you’d expect. It’s not the violence that shocks; it’s the eerie, creeping sensation that this could be the way the world really is—quiet, devoid of meaning, stretched thin like a piece of plastic wrap about to snap.

The hypnosis is in the pacing, the repetitiveness, the way every scene seems to invite you to go deeper. I begin to lose my sense of time, of place. The film unfolds with such cool detachment, as if the universe itself is indifferent to the lives of these people, that I too am beginning to feel indifferent. Am I the detective, or am I the one being stalked by this creeping, slow-moving madness? The lines blur. I am hypnotized, yes, but I also feel as if I’ve become the hypnotist, shaping my own reality, making sense of these fragmented pieces of madness.

And then there’s the music—or lack of it. A few jarring notes, but mostly silence, punctuated by an occasional whisper of wind or the clatter of distant voices. It’s as though the film doesn’t want to give you the comfort of sound, of music to lead you safely through the chaos. It forces you to sink into the quiet, to listen to the steady drip of the narrative, the way the characters’ isolation seeps into you like some slow-acting poison.

I wonder, for a moment, if I too am becoming like the protagonist, losing my grasp on reality, caught in this hypnotic cycle that neither begins nor ends. The more I try to understand it, the less it makes sense, and yet, the more I watch, the more it feels as if it is the only thing that matters, as if it is the key to some hidden truth I cannot yet see. Maybe that’s what draws me back—this promise of revelation, wrapped in layers of confusion and dread.

I should stop, but I know I’ll return again. Perhaps that’s the true curse of the film—once it gets into you, it doesn’t leave. It lingers in your blood, runs through your veins like a fever you can’t shake, and all you can do is watch it again, and again, and again, until you are both the dreamer and the dream itself.

April 2nd, 2025: I sat down tonight for a second round with Anora. The film drips with that quiet despair that you don’t realize is seeping into you until it’s already too late. Sean Baker’s touch is always raw, unfiltered, but with this one, there’s something sharper—something more haunting. It’s not just the story of Ani, a young woman caught in the suffocating whirl of the underbelly of American society, though that alone would be enough to anchor the film. No. It’s her. She’s the damn thing. The story barely matters without her. She’s the film, the lifeblood running through every shot, every scene. If there’s any justice in cinema, they’ll be writing dissertations on this character decades from now.

On the surface, the plot seems simple: Ani is a woman living in the margins, drifting between grungy apartments, desperate jobs, and the sick cycle of emotional and physical exploitation. She’s not unlike the heroes of great Russian novels—poor souls trying to break free from the grind of life, from the inevitability of their circumstances, but always finding themselves dragged back in. The world is too heavy, the choices too few, and yet Ani never completely gives in. There’s a defiance in her that you can’t quite pin down, not at first. It’s hidden beneath the surface, simmering, barely perceptible, until it’s there in full force, raw as a wound.

Watching Anora a second time, I found myself seeing the cracks, the tension between survival and hope in every small gesture she makes. There’s a tragic beauty to it, a Russian sensibility that’s so often stripped from American cinema. She’s almost like a modern-day Raskolnikov—except instead of plotting murder in cold alleyways, she’s just trying to survive in a world that wants to swallow her whole. Her loneliness, her pain, they come across without sentimentality, without apology. There’s no grand redemption arc here, no heroic gestures. Just a woman, standing on the edge, trying to make it through the next minute. And there’s something so goddamn real about that.

She’s not a victim, though. That’s the thing that keeps me coming back, that keeps me captivated. She’s not the broken heroine waiting to be saved. She’s fierce, determined in her own fractured way. Like Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, but without the luxury of a tragic love affair or the time to ponder philosophical musings. Ani is too busy living the desperate kind of life that chews up the soul. And that’s why she stands apart, above the flood of forgettable characters. She’s one of the greats. She’s a character who doesn’t need to be liked to be understood, and perhaps that’s the most dangerous thing about her.

In fact, I’m not even sure I like Ani. But I ire her. I feel for her in a way that feels almost sacrilegious, like I’m intruding on something too private, too real. She’s a reflection of the world as it is—bleak, unromantic, brutal—and yet in her, I see a kind of resistance, a refusal to vanish quietly into the abyss. And for that alone, she deserves a place among the cinematic greats. The Russians knew this—Dostoevsky, Tolstoy—they wrote about men and women on the edge, characters who are less about redemption and more about survival, who push against the weight of the world until they break, or don’t.

So I sat there, watching her fade in and out of this miserable landscape. And I wondered, maybe that’s what makes her so powerful. She’s not a symbol. She’s not an allegory. She’s just… Ani. Uncompromising, unyielding. A force in a world that doesn’t care.

And as the credits rolled, I realized that I was already thinking about the next time I’d watch it. How couldn’t I? This kind of character isn’t born every day. In fact, I’d say they’re rare—perhaps only a handful of times in the history of film do you encounter someone like Ani. The rest of the time, it’s just actors playing roles. But here—here, in this film, Ani is more than just a character. She’s a mirror. And whether I want to look or not, I can’t help but stare into it.

April 1st, 2025: Felt like the day began at work. It’s the strangest thing, sifting through what’s real and what’s an April Fool’s joke.

I left work feeling like I’d just waded through a pool of muck. I needed something different. Something real. Came home and collapsed into the couch. I opened YouTube. Antareen (The Confined) by Mrinal Sen. No subtitles. I don’t speak Bengali, and I don’t know why I picked this film, but there was something magnetic in its stillness. The film unfolded slowly. A man, a woman—both locked in their worlds of alienation. The woman, hiding behind a life of superficiality, caught in the grim shadows of her own thoughts. The man, drifting, disconnected, like an old ghost, locked in his solitude. Their lives intersected, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need to understand a word of dialogue. The silence between them spoke more than any speech ever could.

It wasn’t about what was being said. It was the feeling. The isolation. The loneliness that stretched between the frames, almost tangible, thick with despair. I didn’t need the words. The quiet pain was written across their faces, in the spaces they didn’t fill with sound, in the way they avoided each other’s gaze—like two people who understood the vastness of their emptiness and were too afraid to cross the gap.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? We all speak a different language. We fill up the world with words, but it’s the quiet moments, the unsaid things that hold us together, hold us apart. It’s this ache—always there, pressing in, a constant reminder that we’re all just ing through, no matter how hard we try to pretend otherwise. I could feel it in my bones.

When the film ended, I sat there, still. The credits rolled, but the room felt thick with the same loneliness that had hung in the air during the film. I walked to my desk, stared at the blank page in front of me, and for a moment, I became the writer in that film. Alone, searching for meaning in the empty spaces of my own thoughts, trying to find something to say that would fill the silence. The writer who writes not because he has something to say, but because saying nothing is more unbearable than facing the blankness.

And now, here I sit, at this table, pen in hand, trying to give shape to my own isolation. And yet, the act of writing, of being alone with these thoughts, gives me the strangest comfort. As if, somehow, this emptiness, this silence, is all there is to understand.

Tomorrow will come. The world will continue. But tonight, it’s just me, the words, and the loneliness that speaks louder than any voice ever could.

Watched on Monday March 31, 2025.

Watched on Saturday March 29, 2025.

Watched on Friday March 28, 2025.

A film so sleek, so impossibly cerebral, that watching it feels almost like observing a brain unravel itself in real time, on screen. And that, my friends, is the beauty of it. Cure is a meditation on the very nature of the human mind, its weaknesses, its obsessions, and most importantly, its capacity for darkness.

This is not your typical horror fare – there are no monsters lurking in the shadows, no blood-spattered serial killers stalk the screen. No, what Cure does is far more insidious. It burrows beneath the skin of its audience, inching ever so slowly into the recesses of the subconscious, planting seeds of dread, doubt, and confusion. By the time you leave the theater, you won’t be able to distinguish the nightmare from reality.

It begins with a series of murders – one after another, all with the same chilling signature: a single, inexplicable “X” carved into the victim’s neck. Detective Takabe (played with a kind of haunted stoicism by Kōji Yakusho) is tasked with unraveling the puzzle. But there’s no easy answer. No red herring. No neatly tied-up ending. Instead, Takabe finds himself caught in a web of psychological games that lead him closer to the brink of his own madness.

Kurosawa’s direction is meticulous, even hypnotic, as he conjures an atmosphere of oppressive unease. The film’s pacing is slow, but never boring – it’s deliberate, like a ticking clock winding its way toward some unseen, catastrophic conclusion. The silence is often louder than the score, amplifying every creak of the floorboards, every flicker of light. The visuals are deceptively simple: cool, sterile settings, often empty of human life, all of which heighten the feeling of isolation. This is a world where people are not so much alive as they are merely ing through – their minds cracking under the strain of something much larger than them.

What makes Cure so potent, so unforgettable, is its philosophical heft. It explores not only the psychological aspects of its characters, but the very nature of free will. What if the line between control and submission is thinner than we thought? What if we are not so much masters of our own actions, but puppets, pulled by forces beyond comprehension? The film plays with this question like a taut wire, never offering an answer but leaving you to grapple with the terror of the possibility.

And then there is the performance of Kōji Yakusho, who, with barely a twitch of emotion, embodies the slow collapse of a man lost in a world he can no longer understand. He’s a man unraveling, inch by inch, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left but the empty shell of his existence.

In a world where films are often predictable, loud, and brash, Cure is an anomaly. It’s slow-burn suspense wrapped in an intellectual enigma. It’s not just a film; it’s a question mark hanging over the viewer’s mind long after the credits have rolled. And the most terrifying thing of all? The question isn’t whether or not we have answers – the question is whether we ever even knew what the question was in the first place.

In short: Cure is a masterclass in psychological horror, a film that burrows into your brain, lingers, and leaves you questioning everything you thought you knew. It will haunt you, not through ghosts or monsters, but through the unsettling realization that the true horror is something far more intimate, far more pervasive – the horror of the human mind itself.

Watched on Thursday March 27, 2025.

A film that sneaks up on you like a whirlwind of Soviet idealism and Brooklyn eccentricity, with a hint of slapstick thrown in for good measure. It’s the sort of picture where America – in all its fluster and phantasmagoria – appears as a land of disheveled contradictions, where the streets are paved with dreams and hot dog stands, and yet underneath the superficial warmth lies a labyrinth of alienation and hope.

The premise is simple: Vladimir Ivanoff, a circus musician from the USSR on tour in New York defects during a shopping trip in Bloomingdale’s, leaving behind the tightly-wound coils of totalitarianism for the dizzying maze of Western capitalism. What director Paul Mazursky, however, pulls off in this film is nothing short of genius. By casting Robin Williams in the lead role, the film is given wings. Williams’ gift for both humor and pathos—his brilliant, borderline manic comedic sensibility paired with a rare sensitivity—dances like an unwitting immigrant in a city of steel and glass. It’s a match made in cinematic heaven, where the biting cold of the Soviet system crashes headlong into the freewheeling excess of America, and the result is a deeply human comedy that feels both existential and utterly universal.

Let’s step back a moment and imagine what the picture represents in the mid-1980s, the final act of the Cold War, a time when the iron curtain had begun to rust, but the ideological battle between East and West was as fierce as ever. It’s a moment in time when the Soviet Union’s breadlines still haunt the imagination, while America’s consumerist id has begun its inevitable encroachment on the human soul. Moscow on the Hudson wears this on its sleeve, but never with a preachy air. It’s not a political statement so much as it is an emotional revelation. Vladimir’s clumsy immersion into the American system is marked not by rigid lectures, but by encounters with the strange, wild creatures of capitalist America: the neurotic waiters, the perpetually dissatisfied department store salespeople, the endless bureaucracy that asks a man to drown in forms before he can swim in the sea of opportunity.

Yet, it is precisely in this chaos, in this mall of infinite desires, that Vladimir begins to understand what it means to be human, not just a cog in a machine. Through his interaction with the various “ordinary” characters in the city—like the earnest, lovely, and somewhat disillusioned New York woman who takes him in (played by Maria Conchita Alonso)—he learns, awkwardly at first, to navigate not just the alien ways of the West, but to become a man who must make a choice. A choice between the rigid, heavy-handed idealism of his past life and the messier, more chaotic, but infinitely more vibrant possibility of freedom.

The genius of Moscow on the Hudson is that it never lets go of its comedy. There is no preachiness here, no heavy-handed condemnation of the system Vladimir is escaping. Mazursky doesn’t use Vladimir’s defection as an excuse for a rant about the evils of communism or the unholy righteousness of American capitalism. Instead, it’s a wonderfully delicate balancing act, where laughter and reflection form a strange yet perfect symmetry. In the chaos of 1980s New York, where everything seems to be in motion, you sense something about human nature: it will always adapt, whether to oppressive regimes or the swirling vortex of consumerism.

Robin Williams, in what could have been a mere comedic vehicle, gives one of his most restrained and affecting performances. His Vladimir is an innocent abroad, but also a man teetering on the edge of a major transformation. Williams plays the role with such earnestness that, in the rare, quiet moments, you can see the internal conflict, the confusion of a man who has traded one set of chains for another. It’s a performance that is both comic and poignant, thrilling and tragic, a perfect foil to the larger-than-life absurdity of the world he’s stepped into.

The ing cast, too, is impeccable, with a parade of wonderfully drawn New York characters who embody the spirit of the city. There’s no grandstanding here, no caricature of a New York that’s too glossy or too grim. What Mazursky delivers is something more authentic: a vision of the city that reflects the contradictory nature of freedom itself. The city’s endless noise, its overwhelming sense of possibility, and yet, at the same time, its profound loneliness is a theme that runs through the film’s DNA.

At the heart of the film is the notion of identity. Vladimir is caught between two worlds: the concrete, the material, the tangible promises of America, and the ideological landscape of his Soviet upbringing. But he never truly escapes one for the other; instead, he merges them. This film isn’t about abandoning the past but reconciling it with an often unpredictable, sometimes chaotic future.

This is a film about the beauty of transformation, about the miraculous mess of life itself. It’s about how a person can, in one moment, be like a child in a candy store and, in the next, confronted with the very meaning of freedom, all while keeping a great, big, silly grin on his face. Moscow on the Hudson is a comedy of life, a mosaic of human truth wrapped in the trappings of a fish-out-of-water story. It’s one of those films that, much like the great American experiment itself, leaves you exhausted, exhilarated, and ever so slightly in love with the unpredictable ride.

Watched on Wednesday March 26, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday March 26, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday March 26, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday March 25, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 24, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 24, 2025.

Watched on Sunday March 23, 2025.

A haunting dance captured through Payal Kapadia’s singular lens- the narrative splintered between two worlds—one a throbbing Mumbai, where the urban sprawl pulses with the madness of humanity, and the other a tranquil, almost mythic seaside village where time seems to slow and the waves whisper secrets. This bifurcated structure speaks to the fractured soul of modern existence, as if Kapadia is trying to stitch together the jagged edges of experience, where the city represents the ceaseless grind of life, and the village offers a dreamlike escape, untouched and untarnished.

Surreality permeates both realms—Mumbai’s hyperactive energy breeds a sense of detachment, like a dream that’s too real, while the village pulses with an eerie calm, where the silence is deafening, and the natural world seems to encroach on human memory. Themes of isolation, longing, and the search for a deeper connection surface with a weight that can only be felt in a space that straddles the ordinary and the otherworldly. Kapadia’s film makes no attempt to reconcile these worlds but instead revels in their tension, offering a meditation on the dualities of being and belonging.

Extended Edition.

Re-Yang Series 05

In Taipei Story, Edward Yang does something extraordinary: he transforms the city of Taipei into a living, breathing entity that pulses with the emotional life of its characters. The film, like much of Yang’s work, is a sharp and subtle exploration of the existential despair and quiet longing that accompany the modern world’s relentless march forward. But what makes Taipei Story so particularly haunting is how Yang uses the city as more than just a backdrop—Taipei itself becomes a mirror, reflecting the inner turmoil of its people.

The characters, as if trapped in a web of their own making, move through the labyrinthine streets of the city, a space both familiar and strange. The towering, modern skyscrapers loom overhead like cold, indifferent gods, casting long shadows that seem to weigh heavily on their shoulders. The bustling markets, the cramped apartments, the neon-lit streets—all these physical spaces serve as metaphors for the psychological dislocation the characters feel. Just as the city’s rapid modernization alienates those who cannot keep pace, so too do the inner lives of the characters become increasingly fragmented.

Yang’s Taipei is both a confining cage and a potential escape. It offers nothing but the stark beauty of alienation. As the characters move through the city, it’s as if they are in constant search of something—an answer, a reconciliation, or perhaps merely a sense of connection. Taipei, in Yang’s hands, becomes not just a city, but a living testament to the complexity of human emotion.

In the end, Taipei Story offers no easy answers, no neat resolutions. But in its stark portrayal of a city and its people, it compels us to look deeper, to ask ourselves: in the sprawling, indifferent world of modernity, where do we find meaning? And perhaps more poignantly, where do we find ourselves? Edward Yang doesn’t offer solutions, but he presents a truth that cuts straight to the core: the city and the soul are often not as separate as we like to think.

Watched on Monday March 17, 2025.

The Lakers lost to the Bucks tonight—bad. It was like watching a dream slip into the gutter, a slow death of all those hopes that get built up around the game. My wife said, “Put on a movie I haven’t seen. Something romantic.” Usually, I would’ve thrown on some laugh-a-minute romantic comedy—something full of canned jokes and easy love, the kind of thing that leaves you numb and forgetting about the world by the time the credits roll. But tonight, something was different. I could feel it in my gut, that deep, gnawing hunger for something with weight, something that hits you in the chest and leaves a bruise. I chose Frankie and Johnny. A film that isn’t interested in punching you in the face with a happy ending. It’s a story that twists and pulls, dragging you through the muck of real human feelings.

And what a film it is.

Michelle Pfeiffer—there’s no effort here, no grandiose gestures of ‘look at me, I’m acting!’ She takes Frankie, this woman who’s seen the ugly side of life, chewed it up, and now hides behind this hard shell of indifference. Her face is like an open wound, every movement a sign of pain. There’s a quiet desperation in her eyes, something unspoken, but you feel it crawling under the surface. This is a woman who’s afraid of love, afraid of needing someone because it means you’re opening yourself up to being destroyed. And yet, in the way she moves, in the way she breathes, in the way her eyes dart nervously, you can see she’s dying for it too. It’s raw, beautiful, and goddamn tragic. 

Al Pacino—a loud, scrappy, gregarious mess of a man, yet there’s a purity to his Johnny. He’s come out of prison with the hope that he’s somehow learned something, that the man he was before isn’t the man he is now. But you know that’s bullshit. He’s still the same, stumbling through life like a half-drunk lover trying to find his way home. Pacino, in all his bravado, knows how to strip away the armor and show you the vulnerability hiding behind that Italian-American machismo. It’s not flashy; it’s intimate. You feel his eagerness to connect, his hunger to be loved, and it’s heartbreaking. His Johnny isn’t some grand heroic figure—he’s a man trying to build something from the wreckage of his life, stumbling, fumbling, but still fighting for something real.

And the city—New York in the early ’90s, crawling with energy, with tension, with life. You can almost taste the smog in the air, feel the dampness of the streets clinging to your skin. This isn’t the glamorous, postcard version of the city—it’s the raw, pulsating heart of it. The diners with neon signs humming in the night, the subway tunnels that echo with the sound of a thousand lives intersecting, the rain-soaked sidewalks where people walk in a daze, lost in their own thoughts. It’s New York as a character, a city of dreamers and drifters, of people whose fates are as intertwined with the city as their own skin. It’s not pretty, not pristine. It’s the grit and the glory of a place that will chew you up and spit you out, and somehow, you’ll keep coming back for more.

What makes Frankie and Johnny so special, though, is the way it handles love—not just between men and women but between people, period. Frankie’s best friend Tim, a gay man, (played by Nathan Lane) is not some token character, not some sidekick thrown in for comic relief. He’s treated with dignity, with care. There’s no need to make a spectacle of his sexuality. He’s just a person trying to find his way in the world, loving who he loves, living his life with the same complications and joys as everyone else. It’s one of those rare moments in 90s cinema when a gay character isn’t the punchline or the ‘other’—he’s just another person navigating the messy, beautiful tragedy that is love.

But let’s talk about the state of romance films now. It’s all been watered down, hasn’t it? Every romance feels like a manic, sugar-coated explosion of punchlines and pratfalls, all wrapped up in a neat, tidy package with a bow on top. Where are the films like Frankie and Johnny? Where are the films that don’t rush to make you feel good but instead force you to look at love, at the raw edges of human connection? Where are the stories that don’t need to disguise the darkness with jokes, but instead expose it with quiet dignity? Romance dramas, the kind that really make you feel, have almost vanished. Instead, we’ve got rom-coms—bright, shiny, forgettable little trinkets that disappear as soon as the popcorn’s gone.

And that’s a shame. Because a film like Frankie and Johnny—with all its mess, all its imperfections—reminds us that love isn’t some simple thing. It’s complicated, it’s messy, it’s painful. But goddamn, when it’s real, it’s the only thing that matters.

The Knicks are facing the Trailblazers tonight, 10 p.m. A collision of men on hardwood. I’ll watch, of course, or at least flick my eyes at it between sips of tea and the inevitable descent into thought. The game’s a distraction, but my mind is elsewhere, spinning in the labyrinth of filmic obsessions, of all things. My friend Dillon and I had been tossing texts back and forth like dice in a smoky alley, dissecting the sacred cow of Nicole Kidman’s career, as cinephiles are wont to do. I suggested, provocatively, that Kidman and Cate Blanchett’s careers have run along parallel tracks, one indistinguishable from the other, both capable of stepping into each other’s roles without so much as a raised eyebrow. The difference between them? Early Blanchett never had a film like the one I’ll be viewing tonight before the game. 

But enough about the metaphysical blabbering. I had time to kill before tip-off, so I threw on Dead Calm—a film from 1989, almost forgotten in the roar of the ’90s. It’s only 95 minutes long, a concise thriller set at sea. The film rests on the knife-edge of tension, like a man with a gun in his hand, trying to make a decision he knows will change everything. Kidman, fresh out of the cocoon of her early career, co-stars with Sam Neill and the ever-unstable Billy Zane, who, let’s face it, was born to be both beautiful and dangerous.

But Kidman owns it. From the moment she appears, so taut, so fragile, you feel she’s been carved from the bones of the ocean itself. There’s no other word for it: she is magnetic. She doesn’t just act; she inhabits the ship, the isolation, the soul-crushing knowledge that something is terribly wrong in the dark expanse of the ocean. Her performance is a masterclass in restraint, a taut, vibrating string that could snap at any moment. When her character, Rae, is thrown into a life-or-death struggle with Zane’s psychopath, Kidman’s eyes shift between terror and sheer willpower. Her voice? A whisper, a murmur, the sea itself. She doesn’t shout, she doesn’t need to. The film might be short, but she carries it like a monolith—grace under pressure, and then, when the pressure gets too tight, an explosion of raw, primal strength.

Every frame of her in Dead Calm feels deliberate, sculpted with an intensity that sticks to your skin long after the credits roll. You can’t help but wonder why she’s spent so many years playing it coy, pulling back when here, in the unforgiving light of the sea, she finds herself naked and unstoppable. This is not just a role; it’s a revelation.

P.s. Knicks won in Overtime 114-113

(Also, welcome to Letterboxd, Robbie.)

Watched on Tuesday March 11, 2025.

Watched on Sunday March 9, 2025.

Watched on Sunday March 9, 2025.

There is a peculiar satisfaction that comes with watching a documentary like Chaos, directed by Errol Morris, which unfurls a story that, though rooted in history, seems almost otherworldly in its reach. Based on Tom O’Neill’s investigative book, Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, Chaos takes us on a journey into the interstitial spaces of truth and conspiracy. But, like a reflection in a cracked mirror, there is something inherently fragmented in the way Morris presents O’Neill’s monumental work. In the end, the question that lingers is not whether the film is compelling—because it undeniably is—but rather if it might have been more so had it taken the form of a documentary mini-series, stretching out its insights to reveal the full complexity of O’Neill’s labyrinthine investigation.

To understand why, we must first consider both O’Neill’s book and Morris’ film as separate but intersecting roads, each following a different rhythm, each pursuing a different form of truth. Tom O’Neill’s Chaos is an astonishing piece of investigative journalism that dissects the Manson Family murders with the precision of a surgeon, peeling away layers of deception and revealing a reality far stranger than we ever imagined. The book’s strength lies not only in its depth but in its unyielding commitment to questioning every accepted assumption about the murders, the players involved, and the sociopolitical climate of the 1960s. O’Neill’s investigation forces us to confront not only the peculiarities of the Manson case but also the larger implications of government secrecy, the manipulation of public opinion, and the shadowy connections between the counterculture and covert operations.

O’Neill’s narrative style is relentless in its pursuit of unanswered questions, often drawing parallels between the personal and the political, the individual and the systemic. The book’s strength lies in its sprawling scope—its intricate web of interviews, files, and historical context. It is a complex, immersive work that leaves no stone unturned. There is a rawness to O’Neill’s reporting, a doggedness that suggests a man in search of truth, at all costs. He is the modern-day detective, but his narrative, like the case itself, resists closure. It is a narrative of ambiguity and incompleteness, but that is exactly what makes it so compelling. The book lingers long after you’ve finished it, as you are forced to reexamine everything you thought you knew about the Manson case.

In contrast, Errol Morris’ Chaos is a film that contends with the weight of O’Neill’s findings but ultimately can’t match the depth of his exploration. The film, like much of Morris’ previous work, is constructed around the manipulation of interviews and archival footage, creating a narrative through fragmented voices. Morris excels at this: he knows how to mine the tension in a single look or phrase, turning an ordinary interview into a piece of cinematic tension. But in Chaos, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the film was too short, too constrained by its medium to fully capture the expansive nature of O’Neill’s investigation.

Morris is, of course, no stranger to complex and elusive subjects. His earlier works—The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time, Fog of War—are studies in paradox, in how truth is rarely as clear-cut as we wish it to be. Like O’Neill, Morris is fascinated by the nature of belief, the mechanics of narrative, and the disorienting intersections between the personal and the political. But where Morris’ films are often about the search for truth in a world of half-truths and misdirection, Chaos feels like it is still playing catch-up with O’Neill’s book. It’s not that the film isn’t thought-provoking, or that it doesn’t draw out essential elements of the Manson case, but rather that it feels incomplete. As a single film, it is an abstraction of a much larger truth.

Had Morris chosen to develop Chaos as a documentary mini-series, I believe the film would have had more room to breathe, to allow the intricate layers of O’Neill’s investigation to slowly unfurl over time. As it stands, the film’s brisk pace often glosses over crucial details and key insights, relegating O’Neill’s years of research into a few brief sequences. The complexity of the narrative demands more than what the documentary format can provide in a single, compressed narrative arc. What O’Neill achieved in his book—the exhaustive compilation of disparate, yet interconnected, details—feels truncated in Morris’ cinematic translation.

This is not to dismiss Chaos as unworthy or to detract from Morris’ skill as a filmmaker. The film is a compelling watch, featuring interviews with key figures, replete with Morris’ trademark ability to frame moments of profound reflection and unsettling revelation. Morris’ work is always a mirror to our understanding of the world, but in Chaos, that mirror is cracked. We can see fragments of truth, but they are not enough. Perhaps, in the end, it’s the fragmentation that mirrors the story itself: a puzzle, never fully solved- the film is merely the beginning, the door left ajar, waiting for us to walk deeper into the mystery.

Watched on Friday March 7, 2025.

Watched on Thursday March 6, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday March 5, 2025.

Re-Yang Series 04

It’s difficult to explain what makes A Brighter Summer Day such a haunting, beautiful experience—why, after all these years, it lingers like smoke in the lungs, filling every corner of your soul. Maybe it’s because the film speaks in a language so close to my own heart, one that understands the ache of youth, the hunger to break free, to rebel against the world that so willingly shoves you into a box without question. Edward Yang’s masterpiece, sprawling almost four hours like an epic novel, doesn’t just capture the sting of adolescence—it devours it whole, turns it inside out, and hands it back to you in pieces.

The plot is deceptively simple: the coming-of-age story of Xiao Si’r, a teenage boy in 1960s Taiwan, struggling against the weight of a society that constantly tells him who he should be, where he should go, what he should feel. He’s caught in the tumultuous intersection of a fractured family, the political tensions of a post-war Taiwan, and the violent streets that seem to promise only destruction. But it’s not the events of the plot that pull you in—it’s the mood, the silence between the words, the feeling that these characters are not just living, but surviving.

The political backdrop of the film, Taiwan in the throes of post-war authoritarianism, is a country emerging from the ashes of war, struggling to find its identity amidst the suffocating grip of foreign influence and internal division. The young generation—Xiao Si’r and his peers—are like rats scurrying in a maze, caught between tradition and the desire for something more, something unnamable. The adults, fractured by their own historical traumas, impose a harsh, unforgiving world on their children. There’s a creeping sense of inevitability—this is a generation whose rebellion is not just personal, but political, even if they don’t fully understand the forces that have shaped them. The film, with its long takes, its subtle but powerful shots, feels like an endless rumble beneath the surface, a nation trying to find itself in a world that doesn’t seem to care whether it succeeds or fails.

But what truly drives the film is not just its political weight—it’s the extraordinary performances of the young actors. Chen Chang, as Xiao Si’r, gives the kind of performance that you can’t teach. There’s a quiet, almost painful stillness in his eyes, an emptiness that suggests a boy on the verge of something catastrophic. He’s lost in the labyrinth of his own desires and confusion, but there’s a rawness to his performance that makes you believe every moment of it. You don’t just watch Xiao Si’r; you feel him.

And yet, perhaps what makes A Brighter Summer Day so damn personal to me, why it’s become one of my favorite films of all time, has less to do with the grand political themes and more to do with something simpler, something more primal: it reminds me of my own youth—that yearning, that suffocating desire to break free from a world that tells you to stay in line, to follow orders, to accept things as they are. I was once Xiao Si’r, caught between my own rebellious impulses and the expectations of the world around me. Like him, I wanted something more, something I couldn’t name. But unlike him, I never had the guts to follow through. The film’s themes—the quiet frustration of wanting more but never knowing how to seize it—resonated with me like a wound that never quite healed.

When I watch Xiao Si’r struggle, when I see him clash with the weight of his family’s expectations, when I see him standing on the precipice of a future he can neither escape nor embrace, I’m reminded of the chaos and confusion of my own adolescence. I, too, longed for something that wasn’t given to me, something outside the boundaries of the life I was told to lead. A Brighter Summer Day isn’t just a reflection of Taiwan in the 60s—it’s a mirror to the universal experience of youth. Every young person feels, at some point, like they’re living on the edge of a cliff, staring down into the abyss, wondering what it would take to jump, to break free from the suffocating grip of society.

And perhaps that’s why A Brighter Summer Day stands out among the countless films I’ve seen. It’s not just a film about rebellion—it’s a film about the cost of rebellion, the way it rips at your soul, leaving you scarred and adrift in a world that doesn’t care whether you win or lose. The film, with its long silences, its haunting shots, its almost unbearable slowness, makes you feel the crushing weight of history and the vulnerability of youth. It reminds you that rebellion isn’t always glorious. Sometimes it’s just the desperate cry of a soul trying to find a way out. And perhaps that’s what I see in it—something I’ve carried with me my whole life. A hunger for something more. A need to scream against the walls that surround me.

This is why A Brighter Summer Day resonates so deeply with me. It’s not just the political backdrop, or the performances, or the exquisite direction—it’s the feeling that, somehow, this story is mine, too. The hunger to break free, to rebel, to be more than what the world tells you you are—it’s something every soul carries. And in that, this film, this glorious, painful film, becomes one of the most personal things I’ve ever encountered.

• The Wizard of Oz
• Citizen Kane
• Casablanca
• Laura
• The Big Sleep
• The Killers
• From Here to Eternity
• The Searchers
• Touch of Evil
• Spartacus

...plus 27 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Wizard of Oz
• Stolen Kisses
• Moscow on the Hudson
• Taipei Story
• Terrorizers
• Melinda and Melinda
• Beginners
• Labour of Love
• The Farewell

“He adored New York City. He idolised it all out of proportion. Uh, no. Make that- he romanticized it all out of proportion.“

My favorite films set in the Big Apple.

• On the Town
• The Seven Year Itch
• Sweet Smell of Success
• The Apartment
• Breakfast at Tiffany's
• Midnight Cowboy
• Shaft
• Klute
• Super Fly
• Across 110th Street

...plus 60 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

In 1959, The 400 Blows exploded onto the screen with the force of a primal scream, shaking cinema’s foundations like an earthquake at the very heart of celluloid. François Truffaut, that impish wizard of French cinema, thrust himself into the world’s gaze—not as a simple director, but as a messenger of something entirely new. A new kind of cinema, a new kind of man. The French New Wave, with all its fury and fresh ambition, was born in that moment, and the world was left trembling in its wake.

But Truffaut, the architect of this upheaval, didn’t just bring the world his vision—he gave birth to a creature so real, so alive, that the celluloid itself seemed to hum with his pulse. That creature was Antoine Doinel, a raw and restless young soul, sharp with defiance, tender with loneliness. Played by the eternally restless Jean-Pierre Léaud, Doinel was not just a character; he was a mirror of Truffaut’s own self, a reflection of the filmmaker’s own youth, scarred by a world that refused to understand him. Doinel was Truffaut—flawed, messy, yearning—but he was also something more, something impossible to capture in a single glance. He was every kid who ever screamed at the sky, every lover who ever burned with desire and hatred, every man who ever tried to make sense of the jagged shards of life.

From the opening frame of The 400 Blows, Doinel’s journey became ours: the shifting sands of adolescence, the tangled confusion of love, the stinging betrayals of life. And like some indomitable force of nature, Doinel didn’t just disappear into the past; he returned—again and again—in four subsequent films. Each time he emerged, a little older, a little wiser, but no less haunted by his demons, no less swept along by the mad current of existence.

Through Truffaut’s gaze, we watch Doinel, this eternal youth, stumble through the wilderness of his years: from the burning ion of his first loves, to the bitterness of marriage, the disillusionment of fatherhood, and the aching sorrow of divorce. Each film a step further into the labyrinth of life, each film a portrait of a man not quite capable of finding peace with himself or the world around him. He was a symbol, yes, but not the tidy, neat kind you can hang on a wall. No, Doinel was the embodiment of every person who has ever felt trapped in their own skin, yearning for a way out, yet too paralyzed to find one.

• The 400 Blows
• Antoine and Colette
• Stolen Kisses
• Bed and Board
• Love on the Run

• In Our Time
• The Green, Green Grass of Home
• Growing Up
• Ah Fei
• The Sandwich Man
• That Day, on the Beach
• The Boys from Fengkuei
• A Summer at Grandpa's
• Old Mao's Second Spring
• Taipei Story

...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.