Letterboxd 5019o Ed Park https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/ Letterboxd - Ed Park Breakfast of Champions 3x5b2r 1999 - ★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/breakfast-of-champions/ letterboxd-review-881169471 Tue, 6 May 2025 09:10:59 +1200 2025-05-05 No Breakfast of Champions 1999 2.0 12479 <![CDATA[

4v291o

Having re-read the Vonnegut novel this year, and then enjoyed Richard Brody's full-throated defense of BoC in the New Yorker, I was primed to like this. I wouldn't say it was unwatchable; on the other hand, it did take me about ten sittings to get through. It's grim, depressing, obvious, flashy, over the top in sometimes interesting ways. It wallows in its critiques of a deranged America (a similar, even wilder vision would be on display in Mike Judge’s Idiocracy). Albert Finney makes for a nicely dyspeptic, addled, and humane Kilgore Trout, though I can't imagine anyone unfamiliar with the book understanding what he's doing here. It's supremely depressing—a Pyrrhic victory I suppose.

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Ed Park
Conclave 1l6f3b 2024 - ★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/conclave/ letterboxd-review-852055067 Thu, 3 Apr 2025 03:49:32 +1300 2025-04-02 No Conclave 2024 3.0 974576 <![CDATA[

"Ambition—the moth of holiness"!

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Ed Park
Mickey 17 296tq 2025 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/mickey-17/ letterboxd-watch-840879189 Thu, 20 Mar 2025 16:04:45 +1300 2025-03-19 No Mickey 17 2025 3.5 696506 <![CDATA[

Watched on Wednesday March 19, 2025.

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Ed Park
Anora 2j2b4m 2024 - ★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/anora/ letterboxd-watch-836185139 Sat, 15 Mar 2025 14:12:56 +1300 2025-03-14 No Anora 2024 2.0 1064213 <![CDATA[

Watched on Friday March 14, 2025.

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Ed Park
Hundreds of Beavers 574w7 2022 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/hundreds-of-beavers/ letterboxd-review-787008629 Fri, 24 Jan 2025 16:12:59 +1300 2025-01-22 No Hundreds of Beavers 2022 5.0 1019939 <![CDATA[

Unadulterated joy! Inane, insane, meticulously crafted, unturnoffable, HoB improves on its silent-film models and incorporates a videogame's logic patterns and slap-happy repetition...At one point I thought: Do the filmmakers know they don't have to try *this* hard to be entertaining? Every sequence is staged with love.

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Ed Park
Made in England 5b4n6o The Films of Powell and Pressburger, 2024 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/made-in-england-the-films-of-powell-and-pressburger/ letterboxd-review-730335774 Thu, 5 Dec 2024 05:12:59 +1300 2024-12-04 No Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger 2024 4.0 1139072 <![CDATA[

Caught this on TCM by accident — clips from Peeping Tom leading to a thorough look at their oeuvre. I watched about an hour. MS makes a strong case, shows scenes that inspired sequences in his own work. Pretty interesting! (I've only seen I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING! and PT; after a while, I stopped watching, convinced I should see more P&P, not wanting too many spoilers.)

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Ed Park
I Saw the TV Glow 1nz1e 2024 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/i-saw-the-tv-glow/ letterboxd-review-699936516 Fri, 25 Oct 2024 23:30:34 +1300 2024-10-25 No I Saw the TV Glow 2024 3.5 858017 <![CDATA[

Unbearably sad, at once elliptical and vivid—a horror movie in which the big bad is time itself.

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Ed Park
North by Northwest z1v6j 1959 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/north-by-northwest/1/ letterboxd-watch-692961720 Wed, 16 Oct 2024 10:34:23 +1300 2024-10-15 Yes North by Northwest 1959 5.0 213 <![CDATA[

Watched on Tuesday October 15, 2024.

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Ed Park
I Know Where I'm Going! 3c455j 1945 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/i-know-where-im-going/ letterboxd-review-652489556 Sun, 18 Aug 2024 06:14:22 +1200 2024-08-17 No I Know Where I'm Going! 1945 5.0 56137 <![CDATA[

Best title + killer opening sequence + I *don't* know where this movie is going + Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) is supposed to be 25 but looks 43 + Torquil (Roger Livesey) is effortlessly charming and mysterious + all the Scottish/Gaelic stuff is great + tertiary characters seem to have lives of their own and are on the same page, acting-wise + e.g. the colonel training an eagle to hunt like a falcon, which functions as comic relief but also (in its peculiarity) stands for the uniqueness of these people and their way of life + the legend / castle stuff is great (and downplayed till just the right moment) + none of these actors were familiar to me except (later) I discovered the altogether winning prim-nerd Cheril was played by a young Petula Clark (!) + the music is great = five stars!

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Ed Park
The Last Voyage of the Demeter k5i 2023 - ★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/the-last-voyage-of-the-demeter/ letterboxd-review-643704584 Sun, 4 Aug 2024 15:46:53 +1200 2024-08-03 No The Last Voyage of the Demeter 2023 2.0 635910 <![CDATA[

Not a sequel or a prequel, TLVOTD is gamely spun off from the "Log of the Demeter" interlude in Stoker's DRACULA. Maybe there's not a word for such an expansion from within because it's too ill advised to warrant a category. DEMETER is a somber affair, and despite some diverse casting choices, it can't shake off the fait accompli-ness that makes most prequels such a slog. It's light on scares; if only the creators had gone for something wilder—on the order of, say, Lair of the White Worm.

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Ed Park
They Drive by Night 20615g 1940 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/they-drive-by-night-1940/ letterboxd-review-643198373 Sun, 4 Aug 2024 00:59:11 +1200 2024-08-02 No They Drive by Night 1940 4.0 16933 <![CDATA[

Two native New Yorkers, Raft and Bogart, are well cast as the Italian-American Fabrini brothers (despite not being Italian) who eke out a living driving trucks, with the elder Joe (Raft) yearning to own a delivery fleet of his own, and Paul riding shotgun, often napping, wondering how to better provide for his wife.

Tonally this movie is interesting to track. A few minutes in, I worried this was a remake of the important but kind of tedious THE WAGES OF FEAR, though that would make no chronological sense; it does, however, convey the grinding mindset (and mortal challenges) of labor, as well as its more humane possibilities. (In this regard, I loved Alan Hale Sr.'s character, and not just because he's named "Ed.")

The tough-luck beginning seems to evolve into a screwball comedy, when the brothers stop by a diner to make an emergency call. A driver named Irish (Roscoe Karns) is addicted to pinball machine, while the new waitress (Ann Sheridan as Cassie Hartley) flings one witty barb after another at anyone who tries to get fresh. (E.g., “I always have liked redheads.” “You shouldn’t—red means stop.” “I’m colorblind.”) I assumed Sheridan would be the femme fatale, but the movie goes in another direction; the great Ida Lupino will fit that role, as Ed's posh, unsatisfied wife. (Hey now what.) With her appearance, some ways into the film, the noir elements at last cohere.

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Ed Park
The Prowler 66q 1951 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/the-prowler/ letterboxd-review-642572204 Sat, 3 Aug 2024 00:50:00 +1200 2024-08-01 No The Prowler 1951 4.0 22985 <![CDATA[

Riveting from the pre-title sequence (post-shower Evelyn Keyes screaming at the titular prowler spied through her bathroom window—i.e., screaming at *us*) to the reliably bleak finale. Joseph Losey (working with a Trumbo screenplay) tracks his doomed lovers (Van Heflin plays the cop turned ill-advised/mercenary beau, Keyes is unhappily married to a late-night broadcaster who presses his own shows onto vinyl) from LA mansion to windswept ghost town. A corrosive vision of sex, lies, and record albums.

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Ed Park
The Fault in Our Stars 5n714l 2014 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/the-fault-in-our-stars/ letterboxd-review-637432195 Fri, 26 Jul 2024 03:03:06 +1200 2024-07-25 No The Fault in Our Stars 2014 3.5 222935 <![CDATA[

Very sad :(

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Ed Park
A Quiet Place Part II 206p37 2020 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/a-quiet-place-part-ii/ letterboxd-review-623500027 Fri, 5 Jul 2024 06:33:37 +1200 2024-07-04 No A Quiet Place Part II 2020 3.5 520763 <![CDATA[

Wouldn’t you know it — after seeing A Quiet Place Day One and the original AQP, I watched AQP Part II. I can’t get enough of this series! When Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt talk in their one scene together, it’s like a warmup for OPPENHEIMER.

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Ed Park
A Quiet Place 2o4h2b Day One, 2024 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/a-quiet-place-day-one/ letterboxd-review-621103275 Mon, 1 Jul 2024 08:13:22 +1200 2024-06-30 No A Quiet Place: Day One 2024 3.5 762441 <![CDATA[

I haven't seen the original AQP (nor the sequel), though of course I knew the basic concept. I found AQPD1 unsettling at first, with its lower-Manhattan mayhem too glibly drawing from 9-11 image bank; the concession stand at the theater where I saw it still had the Twin Towers on its wall of New York decorations. (Also, since when does Chinatown have marionette shows, let alone non-Chinese ones?)

The alien marauders look too much like the demogorgon from Stranger Things — Joseph Quinn isn't the only thing borrowed from that series! — and at times the movie felt like an acting exercise: "Show us emotion without words!" But . . . the theater was pretty quiet, and abiding by the no-talking directive onscreen. Lupito Nyong'o is in every scene, her glowering offset by a very charismatic cat. And at 100m, it doesn't wear out its welcome—it stops on a dime.

Look for: Angie Kim's novel HAPPINESS FALLS on a cart outside the ruins of "Argyle" (read: Argosy) Book Shop.

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Ed Park
Amazon Women on the Moon o2a6s 1987 - ★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/amazon-women-on-the-moon/ letterboxd-review-621096118 Mon, 1 Jul 2024 08:02:13 +1200 2024-06-30 No Amazon Women on the Moon 1987 2.5 5709 <![CDATA[

I wanting very much to see this, seeing it, and then confusing it with Kentucky Fried Movie and the Groove Tube, which I saw shortly afterward. This was a long time ago.

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Ed Park
In a Lonely Place 6mm6 1950 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/in-a-lonely-place/ letterboxd-review-616844801 Mon, 24 Jun 2024 01:24:43 +1200 2024-06-23 No In a Lonely Place 1950 5.0 17057 <![CDATA[

A meta-movie masquerading as noir, a collision of coincidences, a novel adaptation in which a novel is adapted unfaithfully, a poem of doom.

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Ed Park
Dead Reckoning 204u6v 1946 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/dead-reckoning/ letterboxd-review-613156029 Mon, 17 Jun 2024 13:25:56 +1200 2024-06-16 No Dead Reckoning 1946 3.5 20663 <![CDATA[

Bogart is in every scene, and narrates as well, hat and cigarette and short yet cool-looking necktie, poking and prodding the underbelly of Gulf City, “the tropical paradise of the South,” though inferno is more like it. We don’t see much more than nightclub, casino, and one apartment that looks transported from an Astaire Rogers vehicle. One thug beats him as though playing music. Lizabeth Scott looks and sounds like Bacall but seems even deadlier. There’s a Yale angle. Exceptional noir.

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Ed Park
The Swimmer 4s1ui 1968 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/the-swimmer/ letterboxd-review-607788138 Sat, 8 Jun 2024 15:31:33 +1200 2024-06-07 No The Swimmer 1968 5.0 33564 <![CDATA[

Thought I'd try it for twenty minutes or so, but couldn't turn it off. Utterly compelling, strange yet grounded. What seems like charming whimsy on the part of Neddy Merrill (Burt Lancaster) masks something darker and sadder. Watch for cameos from Joan Rivers and John Cheever himself. (No spoilers, but the narrative strategy looks forward to Robert Cormier's 1977 YA novel I AM THE CHEESE.) / Update — I've upgraded this a whole star! / I revisited the original story, which is just a few pages — terrific in its effects, but also fascinating to see how the filmmakers expanded it so much (entire scenes/characters that don't exist in the book) while amplifying the theme, and ultimately landing on the same revelation. / There is an EYES WIDE SHUT vibe to the proceedings; later I learned that Sydney Pollack (who had a small but key role in EWS) had replaced director Frank Perry to finish the drawn-out production.

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Ed Park
American Fiction 515o27 2023 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/american-fiction/ letterboxd-watch-596349072 Mon, 20 May 2024 14:27:13 +1200 2024-05-19 No American Fiction 2023 3.5 1056360 <![CDATA[

Watched on Sunday May 19, 2024.

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Ed Park
Monsters 553i1b Marriage and Murder in Manchvegas, 2009 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/monsters-marriage-and-murder-in-manchvegas/1/ letterboxd-review-589456747 Wed, 8 May 2024 14:57:42 +1200 2024-05-07 Yes Monsters, Marriage and Murder in Manchvegas 2009 4.5 55937 <![CDATA[

Why did I just give this an extra half star?!

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Ed Park
Turtles All the Way Down e4d11 2024 - ★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/turtles-all-the-way-down/ letterboxd-watch-589455613 Wed, 8 May 2024 14:55:24 +1200 2024-05-07 No Turtles All the Way Down 2024 2.5 574451 <![CDATA[

Watched on Tuesday May 7, 2024.

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Ed Park
Living on Tokyo Time 2q634x 1987 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/living-on-tokyo-time/ letterboxd-review-580419423 Wed, 24 Apr 2024 08:26:15 +1200 2024-04-23 No Living on Tokyo Time 1987 4.0 123386 <![CDATA[

Charmingly acted, casually low stakes — and as perceptive an Asian-American movie as we have.

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Ed Park
Monsters 553i1b Marriage and Murder in Manchvegas, 2009 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/monsters-marriage-and-murder-in-manchvegas/ letterboxd-review-575545342 Mon, 15 Apr 2024 15:48:13 +1200 2024-04-14 No Monsters, Marriage and Murder in Manchvegas 2009 4.0 55937 <![CDATA[

I first learned of Matt Farley’s ocean of music (19,000 songs and counting) about a decade ago, but I didn’t know he made movies until reading the recent NYT mag feature. I picked this title pretty much at random and enjoyed it over the course of three or four nights — the cinematic equivalent of Jonathan Richman at his faux-naive best.

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Ed Park
Oppenheimer 6z4m3m 2023 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/oppenheimer-2023/ letterboxd-watch-539723801 Thu, 22 Feb 2024 19:28:21 +1300 2024-02-22 No Oppenheimer 2023 3.5 872585 <![CDATA[

Watched on Thursday February 22, 2024.

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Ed Park
Birth 2k2w3d 2004 - ★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/birth-2004/ letterboxd-watch-529787717 Thu, 8 Feb 2024 04:07:50 +1300 No Birth 2004 3.0 10740 <![CDATA[

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Ed Park
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three 56565b 1974 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/the-taking-of-pelham-one-two-three/ letterboxd-review-527589786 Sun, 4 Feb 2024 19:01:28 +1300 2024-02-04 No The Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974 4.5 8333 <![CDATA[

Does for subways what Jaws did for large bodies of water — a perfectly grimy New York nightmare, with Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw matching wits over the radio and a color-coded heist-ring naming protocol that prefigures Reservoir Dogs. Every detail pays off. An exceptionally pure ‘70s crowd pleaser in which the cross section of society crammed into the car might reflect the spectators in the audience.

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Ed Park
Patience (After Sebald) 1aj5i 2012 - ★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/patience-after-sebald/ letterboxd-review-525199265 Thu, 1 Feb 2024 08:40:40 +1300 2024-01-31 No Patience (After Sebald) 2012 2.5 96535 <![CDATA[

I wish I ed this better.

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Ed Park
Robinson in Space p5p43 1997 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/robinson-in-space/ letterboxd-review-525198824 Thu, 1 Feb 2024 08:39:46 +1300 2024-01-31 No Robinson in Space 1997 5.0 54838 <![CDATA[

For readers of Sebald's THE RINGS OF SATURN, Chris Reynolds's Mauretania comics, and THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY.

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Ed Park
Air 6e3f6m 2023 - ★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/air-2023/ letterboxd-review-520992043 Fri, 26 Jan 2024 16:39:37 +1300 2024-01-25 No Air 2023 3.0 964980 <![CDATA[

Another extended product placement, but that's the going ethos. Damon, Bateman, and Tucker are affable straightmen, Affleck (Phil Knight) and the guy playing the actual shoe designer are entertainingly eccentric, and Davis is humorless as MJ's mom. The big mystery might be why we don't see (or, until the very end, hear) MJ—at first it seems perverse, then knowingly hilarious, then just prosaic (i.e., likely the result of some agreement with the Jordan camp). I would have liked it more had, say, Affleck's Phil Knight started intoning Robert Burton's Digression of the Air (The Anatomy of Melancholy, Sect. 2, Member. 3), or if it had stayed in its temporal lane without so much winking at what we know to be everyone's fates. (I did recently get some Nikes, though.)

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Ed Park
Return to Seoul 5p43c 2022 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/return-to-seoul/ letterboxd-review-518300009 Mon, 22 Jan 2024 16:55:41 +1300 2024-01-21 No Return to Seoul 2022 3.5 952701 <![CDATA[

Jagged, bleak, fascinatingly structured — a sort of nightmare inversion of Past Lives. Comic relief arrives in the form of Park Sun-young of Crash Landing fame.

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Ed Park
Dark Star 3c2n5m 1974 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/dark-star/ letterboxd-review-516087236 Sat, 20 Jan 2024 03:49:50 +1300 No Dark Star 1974 5.0 1410 <![CDATA[

Built on a shoestring, Dark Star is the visual antithesis of the sleek, speckless THX 1138: everything is already falling apart, and the special effects dare you to complain. The ship’s pet alien is literally a beach ball with some feet. The storyline leads, languidly and amusingly, to disaster. Pinback confesses in a video diary that he’s actually a fuel specialist who boarded the ship back on Earth, after the real Pinback killed himself. We get a montage of his entries over the years, as his tone shifts from regret (“I do not belong on this mission and want to return to Earth!”) to delusions of grandeur (“I’m the only one with any objectivity on this ship and I should be the one assuming command!”). The stoner vibe reaches its giddy apex when Doolittle uses phenomenology to argue with one of the ship’s bombs not to detonate after a snafu. (The bombs on this ship talk, of course.) How does the bomb know that it actually heard the original order to detonate? Millions of miles from Earth, language itself remains a labyrinth....

More here!
www.criterion.com/current/posts/6773-the-labyrinth-and-the-plague

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Ed Park
Safety Last! 3p2f53 1923 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/safety-last/ letterboxd-review-516085894 Sat, 20 Jan 2024 03:45:54 +1300 No Safety Last! 1923 5.0 22596 <![CDATA[

"As a piece of comic architec­ture, it’s impeccable,” Orson Welles said of Safety Last! (1923), Harold Lloyd’s best-known work and supreme achievement. He might as well have meant the film’s central structure itself: the fictional Bolton Building, home to the DeVore Department Store and sundry offices for everything from real estate to sport­ing goods. Over the course of seventy-three minutes, it becomes one of cinema’s great fun houses, every floor teeming with silli­ness and danger. The first half of the film takes us inside, to a frenetic vision of work­place hell. Lloyd plays a striver from the sticks, slaving behind the fabric counter at the aptly named DeVore, fend­ing off zealous biddies as he tries to get a leg up. For much of the second half, he clings to the outside, climbing up the treacherous facade, encountering a zany array of obstacles—from the believable (a flock of pigeons) to the absurd (a bton net)...

More here!
www.criterion.com/current/posts/2804-safety-last-high-flying-harold

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Ed Park
Memories of Murder 492u3x 2003 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/memories-of-murder/ letterboxd-review-516085512 Sat, 20 Jan 2024 03:44:40 +1300 No Memories of Murder 2003 5.0 11423 <![CDATA[

....A gritty crime saga that can also be seen—even enjoyed—as an absurdist comedy of errors. Early on, what should be a sobering analysis of a murder scene turns into a train wreck, if not an ad hoc amusement park, as the police chief tumbles down a grass embankment, children frolic, and a driver blithely rolls over a crucial bit of evidence. “This is total chaos!” exclaims one detective. Your laughter keeps coming up short, however, every time you glimpse the body, bound and gagged and dressed in red—the reason for the whole performance, yet never the center of attention....



More here!
www.criterion.com/current/posts/7361-memories-of-murder-in-the-killing-jar

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Ed Park
Rosemary's Baby 125225 1968 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/rosemarys-baby/ letterboxd-review-516084963 Sat, 20 Jan 2024 03:43:02 +1300 No Rosemary's Baby 1968 5.0 805 <![CDATA[

Bookended by aerial shots of Manhattan and a demented, wordless lullaby, the film unfolds as a malevolent fairy tale of New York. (Moral: Don’t get too close to your neighbors—let alone drink their smoothies.) Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse, transplants from Omaha and Baltimore, respectively, are a young couple with social and artistic aspirations. Guy (a tightly wound John Cassavetes) is a frustrated actor relegated to small theater roles; his biggest break to date has been a television spot for Yamaha motorcycles. Rosemary is bright where he’s brooding, a blonde pixie mixing elbows-out gawkiness with a posh elocution at once absurd and adorable. She’s the picture-perfect homemaker and every inch the ive wife. “He’s been in Luther and Nobody Loves an Albatross, and a lot of television plays and commercials,” she tells anyone who inquires. When unit 7E opens up in the legendary Bramford, she convinces Guy to move, despite the building’s disintegrating hallways and the apartment’s unsettling traces of the late former tenant, Mrs. Gardenia....

More here!
www.criterion.com/current/posts/2535-rosemarys-baby-its-alive

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Ed Park
Athens 4h6d4x GA Inside/Out, 1987 - ★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/athens-ga-inside-out/ letterboxd-review-514746906 Thu, 18 Jan 2024 03:08:06 +1300 2024-01-17 No Athens, GA Inside/Out 1987 3.0 223387 <![CDATA[

Teenage Ed was disappointed that there wasn't more R.E.M. (I was at the peak of my fandom—it would drop off sharply with the release of Green), but looking back I like thinking of the bands that left no impression on the culture: the Bar-B-Q Killers, Dreams So Real...Then again, I read that Jack White was used the stripped-down two-person setup of the Flat Duo Jets for the White Stripes. (What do I mean by culture?) The best songs were by the Squalls. I every note of "Na Na Na Na." Glorious!

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Ed Park
https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/withnail-i/ letterboxd-review-512983375 Mon, 15 Jan 2024 17:29:50 +1300 2024-01-14 No Withnail & I 1987 3.5 13446 <![CDATA[

I saw this in the theater in 87, revisited it last week for the first time. I ed the vibe, REG’s ramshackle Withnail, but not much else. I liked how *written* it was, in addition to the performances and the overall grimy look. (In addition to a patchwork of girlie mag pictures, a poster of Harold Lloyd hanging from the clock hands decorated their bathroom.) I forgot that so much of it took place in Uncle Monty’s cottage. (Indeed, I forgot about that character completely — his haunted presence says the unsayable about W&I’s domestic arrangement, even as the movie plays his queerness for laughs.). This time around I clocked the sadness of the ending; what happens to the Withnails of our lives?

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Ed Park
Top Gun 52523k Maverick, 2022 - ★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/top-gun-maverick/ letterboxd-watch-506888977 Mon, 8 Jan 2024 11:47:29 +1300 2024-01-07 No Top Gun: Maverick 2022 2.5 361743 <![CDATA[

Watched on Sunday January 7, 2024.

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Ed Park
Leave the World Behind 622q50 2023 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/leave-the-world-behind-2023/ letterboxd-review-506886726 Mon, 8 Jan 2024 11:45:30 +1300 2024-01-07 No Leave the World Behind 2023 3.5 726209 <![CDATA[

A Ballardian feel-bad movie, with some indelible scenes and a sharp ending.

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Ed Park
Past Lives y3v2x 2023 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/past-lives/ letterboxd-review-501524678 Wed, 3 Jan 2024 05:43:07 +1300 No Past Lives 2023 4.5 666277 <![CDATA[

Some might think this too gentle, too quiet, but that's Song's masterstroke here. Her chamber piece conveys the inarticulate longing of immigration, of any profound cultural separation. Or maybe I mean *of any past life*—we all get one, starting sooner than we think.

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Ed Park
The Holdovers 102p1w 2023 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/the-holdovers/ letterboxd-review-500528823 Wed, 3 Jan 2024 05:49:34 +1300 2024-01-01 No The Holdovers 2023 4.0 840430 <![CDATA[

I watched the first half hour before the new year turned, and then finished it into the wee hours of January 1—this hinge feeling, a door opening or closing. Possibilities, dead ends. The movie begins in December 1970, and tips over into ’71; there's a Hal Ashby-era vibe, a soupçon of Dead Poets Society, a feint in the direction of The Breakfast Club. It moves from one kind of movie to another; there are more things at stake than we initially assume. A chamber piece with three filigreed characters (Giamatti, newcomer Sessa, Only Murders' Randolph) and any number of fleeting but memorable tertiary parts—you see someone once, don't see them again. Nonobvious, often very funny, lovingly lensed—Payne's best? (Why not?)

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Ed Park
Eyes Wide Shut 4y4r6z 1999 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/eyes-wide-shut/ letterboxd-review-487130753 Wed, 13 Dec 2023 13:27:59 +1300 2023-12-12 No Eyes Wide Shut 1999 5.0 345 <![CDATA[

What Home Alone 2 could have been.

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Ed Park
Sharky's Machine 562z3g 1981 - ★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/sharkys-machine/ letterboxd-review-486475552 Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:15:56 +1300 2023-12-11 No Sharky's Machine 1981 1.0 14664 <![CDATA[

Somebody convince me this is better than my memory of it!

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Ed Park
Repo Man 6g4q6v 1984 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/repo-man/ letterboxd-review-476722843 Thu, 23 Nov 2023 07:10:17 +1300 2023-11-22 No Repo Man 1984 5.0 13820 <![CDATA[

A few weeks ago, a friend asked if I knew of any movies that featured grocery stores. I immediately thought of the generic products in REPO MAN, a movie that set my brain afire in the 80s but that I hadn’t seen since. Flash forward a few days. I’m on a plane, and what do I see on the video menu? REPO MAN! What are the odds?! And as I came to the part where one character talks about the “lattice of coincidence,” it suddenly all made sense.

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Ed Park
Koyaanisqatsi 5s4a57 1982 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/koyaanisqatsi/ letterboxd-review-476711466 Thu, 23 Nov 2023 06:41:57 +1300 2023-11-22 No Koyaanisqatsi 1982 5.0 11314 <![CDATA[

Pure cinema. Beautiful, horrifying, hilarious. It’s forty years old but still seems to have all the answers.

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Ed Park
Love at First Sight 3g14x 2023 - ★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/love-at-first-sight-2023/1/ letterboxd-review-467974271 Sat, 4 Nov 2023 15:25:44 +1300 2023-11-03 Yes Love at First Sight 2023 1.5 353577 <![CDATA[

An interminable rom com that at a certain point feels written by AI. The one thing that spoke to me though was the fact that the leads both dislike mayonnaise. Why are they dancing to “Video Killed the Radio Star,” though? The AI hallucinates…

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Ed Park
Beyond the Gates 2si46 2016 - ★★½ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/beyond-the-gates/ letterboxd-review-452918208 Thu, 5 Oct 2023 04:59:20 +1300 2023-10-04 No Beyond the Gates 2016 2.5 397981 <![CDATA[

Such a good concept…could more have been done?

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Ed Park
No One Will Save You 69x4v 2023 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/no-one-will-save-you/ letterboxd-review-448366499 Mon, 25 Sep 2023 08:50:48 +1300 2023-09-24 No No One Will Save You 2023 4.0 820609 <![CDATA[

Mysterious and effective! I guess the poster gives away an early plot turn, but if you have 90 minutes, just go and watch it without knowing anything but the title...

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Ed Park
Daughter of Shanghai 2ug5l 1937 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/daughter-of-shanghai/ letterboxd-watch-435884334 Sun, 27 Aug 2023 08:30:34 +1200 2023-08-26 No Daughter of Shanghai 1937 4.0 88209 <![CDATA[

Watched on Saturday August 26, 2023.

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Ed Park
Are You There God? It's Me 4502m Margaret., 2023 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/film/are-you-there-god-its-me-margaret/ letterboxd-review-424453992 Thu, 3 Aug 2023 02:10:52 +1200 2023-08-01 No Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. 2023 4.0 555285 <![CDATA[

I'm not the demographic, but I did read a lot of Judy Blume growing up. Despite the strong font game, I was hesitant to watch this, amid the hoopla of the dramatization of the Judyverse. Well—it had me not quite at hello, but at the shot of the kitchen in suburban New Jersey, ca. 1970 — it really could have been the kitchen of my childhood home (from a few years later into the 70s)—the cabinets, the color, the layout, the vertical blinds over the glass door to the backyard. I'm that age now—homesick for certain settings, nostalgic for flavors of childhood. Watching the movie brought up long-buried memories of the book. Even though I didn't grow up a girl in New Jersey, I ed why (apart from the then-rare popular stories about growing bodies — a chaster time in YA)(whither a Then Again, Maybe I Won't streaming series?), the book left an impression: Margaret's argument with the Big Guy. I too was raised without religion—especially in those early years, a confusing state to be in, when everyone else seemed to be baptized, confirmed, bar-mitzvah'd, or otherwise religiously claimed. For me, AYTGIMM hit home not just for the kitchen decor but this willingness to address a child's struggle with faith and *not* have it resolve the way most popular stories do. ("She's nothing!" M's mother says, arguing against M's grandparents and their competing religious agendas.) // Excellent performances by Abby Ryder Fortson in the title role, Rachel McAdams (mom), Kathy Bates (grandmother)—special shoutout to Benny Safdie, whose movies (Uncut Gems et al.) I still have not seen but whose acting appearances I've greatly enjoyed (Stars at Noon, Licorice Pizza).

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Ed Park
00s and 10s 104x1b https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/list/00s-and-10s/ letterboxd-list-26306279 Thu, 11 Aug 2022 05:26:20 +1200 <![CDATA[

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

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Ed Park
My Sight + Sound List p6c8 2012 https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/list/my-sight-sound-list-2012/ letterboxd-list-42263343 Tue, 30 Jan 2024 16:49:48 +1300 <![CDATA[

I was asked to participate in Sight + Sound’s 2012 critics’ poll. Here are some of my all-time favorites, though I it a few were spur of the moment inclusions. Now I can't all of them. I'll add them as they pop into my mind...

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Ed Park
Noo Yawk Noo Yawk! 64t4s https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/list/noo-yawk-noo-yawk/ letterboxd-list-26542372 Mon, 22 Aug 2022 14:54:40 +1200 <![CDATA[

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

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Ed Park
Uncanny '80s 22696f https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/list/uncanny-80s/ letterboxd-list-26306409 Thu, 11 Aug 2022 05:34:54 +1200 <![CDATA[

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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Ed Park
My Sight + Sound List p6c8 2022 https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/list/my-sight-sound-list-2022/ letterboxd-list-42263185 Tue, 30 Jan 2024 16:45:02 +1300 <![CDATA[

Every ten years, Sight + Sound magazine asks critics to name their top 10 movies of all time. For this pandemic version, I restricted myself to stuff I saw (mostly new) streaming.

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Ed Park
Strange '70s c3z3k https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/list/strange-70s/ letterboxd-list-26306317 Thu, 11 Aug 2022 05:29:02 +1200 <![CDATA[

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

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Ed Park
Koreana 2k4h2g https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/list/koreana/ letterboxd-list-26306282 Thu, 11 Aug 2022 05:26:39 +1200 <![CDATA[

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

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Ed Park
Nebulous '90s 57356r https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/list/nebulous-90s/ letterboxd-list-26306308 Thu, 11 Aug 2022 05:28:35 +1200 <![CDATA[ ]]> Ed Park Buffalo 66 596s5x https://letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/saturnhead/list/buffalo-66/ letterboxd-list-26350208 Sat, 13 Aug 2022 08:51:46 +1200 <![CDATA[

66 or so movies with some connection to Buffalo, NY

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Ed Park