Here's the
@criterion
essay I've been bleating about for a while. It's even prettier printed (the liner layout is just beautiful) but while you wait for the physical disc that you've definitely already ordered to arrive, here are some bonus features.
Now, now, let's not all dunk on the spelling error and the Spotify branding so hard that we fail to adequately rip the piss out of posing an uncapped fountain pen on top of a typewritten page.
Just saw my first 4DX film (TWISTERS) and boy does that preposterous novelty gizmo tech elevate the movie from "fine, sure, whatever" to THE MOST FUN I'VE HAD IN MAYBE A DECADE.
Holy shit, I didn't realise the actors were alone in the house/garden while shooting. What an abjectly, existentially terrifying experience that must have been. I hope the movie had a considerable therapy budget.
“They wired the whole house with cameras. Some of them were hidden. Some of them were visible." Director Jonathan Glazer, his cast and crew on the making of Best Picture nominee The Zone of Interest. Now playing nationwide and opening in the UK.
Remembering the truly peerless and beloved Philip Seymour Hoffman on his birthday ❤️
Here he is in Paul Thomas Anderson's giddily off-kilter masterpiece PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (2002).
Also, not that anyone needs me to continue banging on about this major motion picture, but kudos to the marketing team —this film is not an easy sell — for this chillingly uncanny poster design.
Still marvelling over the segment of last night that was Mulaney's intro followed by ZONE's enormously well-deserved Sound win followed by I'm Just Ken, which was as good/satisfying/fun a 10-minute run as I've ever seen at the Oscars.
At every festival I'm not at, something plays that makes me deeply envious of those attending. Today I happily receive all *your* jealousy: THE LIGHTHOUSE is the fucking bomb.
However bad your day, please remember there is a fleet of post-production people and editors and CG experts and colour-correction technicians and sound mixers who have literally been staring at footage from CATS for MONTHS now.
May we all, at 90, blaze back onto a scene we've quietly revolutionised for decades, make a final, gracenote work of mischievous self-assessment, and exit with the audience wanting more. As well as everything else, Varda had dazzling timing. RIP.
Cronenberg's CRASH is coming to
@Criterion
in December and I have been BURSTING to tell you that, in perhaps the biggest honour of my critic life to date: I wrote the essay. And my God, look at the artwork!
Bigger outlets would do well to learn that it is actually possible to write a headline about this horrible tragedy that gets all the major facts across but doesn't unduly cast blame and leads with the actual lead.
I especially enjoyed the little underseat tremor programmed for when there's no tornado in sight, just Glen P in a 10-gallon hat and a tight white T-shirt as it starts to rain.
So heartily sick of this line, as if reading a goddamn fucking review made for groupthink, while blindly consuming whatever Disney product/Ed Sheeran album gets shoved down your throat by The Algorithm is evidence of proud individualism. Fuck all the way off.
Ed Sheeran says he doesn’t see the point of music critics in the age of streaming.
“Why do you need to read a review? Listen to it. It’s freely available! Make up your own mind.”
🔗:
Well, this fucking sucks. What a loss. She is, obviously, not wrong, but her singular, forceful onscreen presence made the future of the film world seem a little less bleak.
I guess the Oscars move does mean that PARASITE will be the longest-reigning Best Picture winner since 1930's THE BROADWAY MELODY and yes that's a meaningless, cursorily researched factoid, but Christ, imagine it had been GREEN BOOK.
Honestly this is a fascinating phenomenon, born of such spectacularly basic terror that other people might be getting more out of art (and therefore life) than you, a profound tool.
Extremely blasé about a note Cronenberg sent to the Criterion people calling my CRASH essay "a great piece" that he "loved." I mean, I scarcely even care enough to tweet about it. It's like, whatever, you know?
MEGALOPOLIS is a folly of such gargantuan proportions it's like observing the actual fall of Rome. Had a great time with it, in an extremely haha-yes-sickos-meme kind of way.
My
@nytimes
review of
#TENET
, which has absolutely no spoilers because the plot is incomprehensible and I only cared about the suits.
But I cared *a lot* about the suits.
My "Quick! Duck!" Oscar opinion is it's perfectly OK Gerwig didn't get a director nomination, given BARBIE's Picture and Screenplay nods. Let her get nommed again (and win) for something more personal than a highly competent and smart solution to a tricky IP-creation problem.
This is right and good. Chloe Zhao is the fucking real deal, and sorry to get idpol on you but having Bong hand over Best Director to an Asian-American director is amazing and wonderful.
Don't really get how after 2 years of voracious film and TV bingewatching, so many people have somehow reverted back to 1895, "the train is really coming out of the screen!" levels of media literacy. But here we are.
Very sad news about Terence Davies. I do hope people will honor his legacy by seeking out what is now his final film, the terrific BENEDICTION which never seemed to get the release it absolutely merited.
Finally caught up with THE GREEN KNIGHT which I hereby declare a) extremely good and b) a Christmas movie. Also, FYC Supporting Actor: Barry Keoghan, for his rambling, haranguing, lunatic wide shot intro on the battlefield alone.
SO ANGRY that I held off watching GONE WITH THE WIND for 80 years because I needed to stream it on a confusingly marketed, fortnight-old premium service and now I can't and can only find it on like 6 other online channels or in literally any DVD bargain bin on earth.
Just when I thought the marketing for Poor Things (“Bella Baxter is a feminist hero for the ages!”) was rubbish, I run into THIS banger on the underground.
Genuinely embarrassed for the few good films awarded last night that they have to be associated with the Oscars. I really hope DRIVE MY CAR can live it down.
Busy day for the "Oscars are about *quality* not gender or race" brigade. Takes real, blinkered, moronic dedication to post this on every single critical article as if it were some unreturnable mic-drop and not the most skullfuckingly basic take since the dawn of takes.
OK, a top 50. With apologies to the docs I haven't watched (which is all of them) plus TOP GUN: MAVERICK, FUNNY PAGES, TURNING RED, BURNING DAYS, CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH, METRONOM, WOMEN TALKING, EMILY THE CRIMINAL and, indeed, EMILY which all landed just outside, merry Christmas!
RIP Bruno Ganz. While everyone's (rightly) memorializing THE AMERICAN FRIEND, WINGS OF DESIRE and DOWNFALL, I submit the scene between him and Frank Langella in UNKNOWN, which is one of the greatest ever examples of masterpiece performance in a film that's, um, not a masterpiece.
The
@berlinale
awardees' impassioned expressions of solidarity with Palestine and calls for a ceasefire being decried as "anti-semitic" by the Berlin mayor is just breaking my fucking heart. I scarcely recognise this city right now.
Hyper-hyper-hyperventilating. Sometimes good things happen. I had forgotten it was possible. So, so, so well deserved, the best guy and the best critic and I could cry.
@JustinCChang
wins Pulitzer Prize for criticism
Had a lovely time revisiting the terrific selection of Deborah Kerr movies now on offer
@criterion
and writing my way into an even deeper appreciation of this often undervalued actress.
I find the heat AMERICAN FICTION is picking up in Adapted Screenplay — of all the most competitive categories — baffling. I don't outright dislike the film, mainly because of Wright, but the one thing it is not is a good, or even wholly adequate, adaptation of an incredible book.
Well, so THE SOUVENIR II is not just masterful, it's the kind of masterful that retroactively engulfs and electrifies the already-very-good THE SOUVENIR,reshaping it, too, into a subtly different magnificence.
Fuck it, I'm doing a top films of 2019 thread, now that they're no longer the rage. It's bloody long, but I wanted to give some shine to the many underseen or as-yet-unreleased festival titles that I loved across a very busy year. Get yer mutin' finger ready!
I've never related to anyone quite as much as I do, retroactively to Jane Fonda, for that little pause where it's like she's treasuring being the only person in the room to know, for just one precious little beat.
Ok, now that any danger of being topical or timely has passed, here's my top 50 (and then some) favourite films of 2023. Late to the party, but at least I'm showing up – thanks to all those who've gently prodded me to do so.
You know who ought to be getting way more Supporting Actress love, because a) she's amazing and b) her role is *actually* supporting? Aitana Sánchez-Gijón for PARALLEL MOTHERS, that's who.
In addition to an unassailable legacy, Stanley Donen delivered maybe the most delightful ever honorary Oscar acceptance speech. RIP, and thanks for the lovely movies. Like that!
HOLY FUCKING SHIT! My favourite Jim Thompson novel is being adapted by my favourite THE FAVOURITE director! Though tbh it's a little rude I'm not writing the screenplay.
Covid-19 giving Italians new ways to flirt: a museum usher took my temperature today and when I asked if it was ok, he said, "36 degrees - perfetto! The most beautiful temperature of them all."
Super ironic mistake to make (conflating "Black" and "African-American") given what this movie is actually about.
Also, watch SAINT OMER, you idiots. It was the best film of last year.
RB: Look, it's the future, it's 2023! You're going to be the first woman to solo-direct a billion-dollar movie!
GG: Yes and you... well, you're going to have a hit TV documentary made about you.
Love the pre-Oscar tradition of watching non-film types grapple with not liking Best Picture nominees, and film types grapple with liking Best Picture nominees.
I don't think we're getting to the heart of the theatrical vs home viewing debate. It's not about screen size, production value or even potential revenue.
On top of all of the superlatives that have been heaped on SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, allow me to add my own: it is quite the most bored I can ever remember being at a blockbuster movie.
Thought my Paris apartment couldn't be any nicer but then this sweet, friendly and perfectly Tournée du Chat Noir cat started showing up whenever the windows are open.
Brb, cancelling mum for being 10 years younger than dad and flinging a vase at my reflection in the mirror for being the offspring of this gross, unholy union.
Thought 1: Holy shit, these "brutally honest" Oscar ballots -- sure they're anonymous but *someone* knows who you are, would you not tone down the obvious sexism and ignorance?
Thought 2, immediately: Maybe this *is* toned down.
Thought 3: Need 1pt ice cream, 1 spoon.