I write reviews for my future self, knowing that what I recall or feel about a film will fade away or become twisted with time. Even with a written record, those experiences congeal neither perfectly nor permanently. Middle age has only exacerbated this sad fact. I'd reckon Alain Resnais knows a thing or two about that. I see his Last Year at Marienbad as an exploration of memory. His tackling of the subject is awash in repetition, fragmentation, and opaqueness,β¦
βFilm 35/40 of my Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist! Challenge 2021.
Sometimes, the ions of a cineaste lead to exhaustion. This film; lauded. That picture; celebrated. These movies; vaunted. It brings about an acute case of KBTFS (Kurosawa-Bergman-Tarkovsky Fatigue Syndrome), where I, the afflicted, find myself avoiding that handful of esteemed titles I swore I would get to this year because, good grief, it's inexcusable that all these decades have ed and I still haven't seen High and Low. Oh,β¦
βPart of my 10th Annual Letterboxd Season Challenge: 2024-25.
βWeek 9: Found Footage
As any found footage flick should, Operation Avalanche at least justifies its existence by clearing the most rudimentary of bars: invoking voyeuristic unease. The sensation of feeling like you're watching something you shouldn't or witnessing something accidentally captured is a crucial component of the technique. If you're not eliciting an apprehensive response from your audience, you've done something wrong. Happily, Operation Avalanche has more going for itβ¦
βPart of my 10th Annual Letterboxd Season Challenge: 2024-25.
βWeek 8: Alien Encounters
βEliminated from my List of Shame!
The mind boggles at the imaginative whimsies that develop across Fantastic Planet's very psychedelic, very '70s, and very French 72-minute runtime. However, though happy to bask in the visuals, the mind wishes that the allegorical backbone and its attendant plot lines had been more robust, brought more to the fore, and endowed with a greater sense of the eccentric. Just think what could result if a Yorgos Lanthimos script fell into the Fantastic Planet vat of trippy visuals and bizzaro style. That'd be one wild concoction.
βPart of my Birth Year Challenge.
This thing is all over the place. You've got slapstick, action, big acting, small, intimate scenes, and romance, and none of it seems to mix comfortably with any of the rest of it. Also, they kept calling the stunt car (clearly badged a Mercedes-Benz), a Duesenbergβunforgivable. Although, truthfully, the car is neither.
βPart of my Letterboxd Season Challenge: 2020-21.
βWeek 3: Classic Performers: Sidney Poitier
Well, that was quite the rollercoaster ride! A Raisin in the Sun firmly belongs in that fascinating stage-to-screen genre. The adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's play is noteworthy for the fact that Hansberry was a black woman whose protagonists comprise a black family. Her characters embody real, complex flesh-and-blood people of color of the sort Hollywood had rarely ever portrayed. There are no stereotypes or stock depictions onβ¦
