Matt Strohl
@strohltopia
Followers
1,755
Following
1,350
Media
1,276
Statuses
6,895
Philosophy professor. Film criticism and philosophy of art. Also fly fishing. - -
Missoula, MT
Joined April 2021
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
Padres
• 105401 Tweets
Satoshi
• 96706 Tweets
Dodgers
• 84790 Tweets
#究極のポテチ計画
• 29003 Tweets
ドジャース
• 28395 Tweets
Ghar Vapasi
• 26444 Tweets
シロネン
• 25864 Tweets
KAIRAIN FIRST BILLBOARD
• 21890 Tweets
Millonarios
• 18546 Tweets
Teoscar
• 16777 Tweets
プレミア12
• 14218 Tweets
Rojas
• 13894 Tweets
Buehler
• 12915 Tweets
侍ジャパン
• 12256 Tweets
Mookie
• 10857 Tweets
Peter Todd
• 10464 Tweets
Pinned Tweet
My second book HARD TO WATCH: HOW TO FALL IN LOVE WITH DIFFICULT MOVIES is up for preorder on Amazon and should be available soon with a range of other vendors if it isn’t already. The kindle date is incorrect: it comes out in October.
9
24
106
While people are focusing on Warner and how horrible Zaslav is, it’s a good time to revisit this. True enemy of cinema shit right here.
35
659
3K
Really funny that the clickbait mill of prodding directors for inflammatory comments on superhero movies has now made it to directors who at most .05% of people who like superhero movies have ever heard of.
Pedro Costa: "Superhero movies are fascist.
They do not let you think. You just follow and react."
We talked to the emblematic Portuguese filmmaker about the fear of beginning new projects, financing mechanisms, Hollywood superhero films, and more.
Read:
4
115
527
4
29
495
The number of QTs complaining that he left out City of God is very funny.
🇧🇷 10 Great Brazilian Films, curated by
@filipefurtado
for
@BFI
, as an introduction to the best of Brazilian cinema.
83
732
7K
3
12
465
After my first year on Twitter, my review:
Cons: pit of virulent narcissism, rewards shallowness and hostility, corrupts even the best souls.
Pros: reliably easy to find at least one person who agrees with me, risk of ruining my life with one tweet is exciting.
6
26
391
Aside from established classics Mann and Tsai, this is the most based list I’ve seen.
7
30
361
To save you the click, which doesn’t even clearly tell you which tragedy: it’s Euripides’ Hippolytus, in which Phaedra (presumably Argento) tries to seduce her stepson and then frames him for raping her. Now we’re cooking with gas.
Abel Ferrara Sets Ancient Tragedy-Inspired Modern Gangster Story 'American Nails,' Starring Asia Argento and Willem Dafoe (EXCLUSIVE)
14
67
403
7
22
349
The rise of “elevated horror” was driven in part by the terrible reputation of the Saw movies (“good horror movies not torture porn like Saw and Hostel” was the opening critical salvo). Amazing that we’ve made it back to Saw and everyone’s like “oh thank god it’s not elevated.”
9
20
330
The most ruinous shift in higher education during my lifetime is that instead of hiring administrators from the faculty, there is a professional administrator class with little or no teaching experience, and their primary goal is to get an even more lucrative administration job.
University administrators are obsessed with revenue generation. Why? Because they're spending too much outside of their core mission and what is necessary to support it. (18/x)
3
42
249
7
51
246
Everyone let this equally galaxy-brained take go by unnoticed.
No; Barbie > 2001 except for the unrivalled Stargate sequence.
119
69
708
7
6
207
Directed by Russell Crowe, distributed by Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, 9% on the Tomatometer. I’m going in, and I’m very optimistic.
13
3
193
I’m sorry, but I asked the AI to have Picasso paint Hannah Gadsby accepting money from the Sackler family.
2
23
176
Today makes 16 years without a drink. I was going through a handle of Evan Williams and a 30 pack of Miller Lite every two days and routinely passing out face down on the floor. Grateful to be alive today: 10 out of 10, would recommend.
14
0
174
How many 19 year olds are now going to watch The Round-Up? Do it. The Scorsese fandom to Jancsó pipeline is just what this culture needs.
2
9
170
I’m already on record for this one: the greatest “I’m about to die” moment in cinema.
4
19
166
The ratio of Ruben Östlund movies to Raúl Ruiz movies in the
@Criterion
collection is increasingly alarming.
4
14
160
Today makes 15 years without a drink. To twitterize the ocassion, here are the ten titles that resonate the most with my personal experience with alcoholism and/or recovery.
20
1
154
Edge of Tomorrow is in some sense the ultimate Tom Cruise text, because it’s about a regular guy who needs to become Tom Cruise to escape a time loop, and so it’s essentially a filmic treatise on what it is to be Tom Cruise.
4
11
139
@Justin_Wilton
It’s telling that they apparently place zero value on the fact that people worked really hard on these movies.
2
3
134
Here's the version of JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December with the better color correction. One of the most beautiful films to remember him by.
3
27
138
Here is my one and only productivity tip for writing a whole-ass book: have a list of clearly defined mindless tasks that you can do no matter how groggy you are (e.g., citation formatting). Maintain a schedule, and when you get stuck on writing, go to the mindless tasks list.
5
12
134
How has a movie as gorgeous as Terence Davies’ The House of Mirth not been released on blu-ray?
6
12
131
I excitedly showed this to my wife and she frowned and said “is this gonna be like the out of focus Hong Sang-soo movie?”
2
5
133
I've really enjoyed studying Jancsó’s The Round-Up and spending time with these interesting, not boring as shit horizons.
4
6
127
At my grad school orientation 20 years ago, we anxiously gathered in a big circle and introduced ourselves. Harry broke the ice: “I’m Harry Frankfurt. I’m retired, but I was told there would be free pizza.” He was the best. RIP.
0
13
126
I tell students that no matter how late something is I will never penalize them (and they don’t need to give me a reason) but in return I hope they’ll try to get things in as soon as they’re able to… and it works out FINE. I hate this authoritarian “in the real world…” BS.
11
7
123
The blowhard who makes the condescending, misogynistic comments on the
@2022SightSound
posts getting mercilessly owned by Joyce Carol Oates is the closest I’ve experienced to a real life version of the Marshall McCluhan scene in Annie Hall.
4
5
116
Uploaded this masterpiece, for the access-impaired.
5
10
105
This!
6
7
108
The right lesson to draw from Drive My Car’s post-nomination backlash is that our contingent attitudes shape our aesthetic responses more than we tend to admit, and these attitudes often reflect the impulse to distinguish ourselves from other people by rejecting what they value…
2
8
92
Some news. This is what all that time with Lifetime movies has been building towards: an opportunity to corrupt peoples’ taste on a much larger scale.
17
5
92
@labuzamovies
I had the thought today that it feels like the culture of self-righteously scolding people for extremely benign views about media is starting to lose its grip. And then I logged on Twitter.
1
1
85
15 years in the game and I still haven't found a way to coax students to check the syllabus when they have a question instead of emailing me every single time.
14
4
85
Especially struck by
@letterboxd
directly saying in this context that boosting the “populist” credentials of their lists is a benefit, as though the aim were to validate the class of users who already imagine themselves to be the default standard of taste.
Their change target two set of movies: nerd favorites and movies from the global south. So it effective turn their list into the Criterion version of the IMDb top 250. Another win for homogenization of taste with some first world xenophobia throw in.
7
231
1K
2
9
80
“Nicolas Cage is a nepo baby?!” discourse is bullshit. He changed his name for this reason and was picked out of a pile of headshots for Valley Girl by Martha Coolidge. FFC later talked him into Peggy Sue and he only agreed to do it if he could talk like Pokey from The Gumby Show
3
2
78
@therealsupes
So you disliked the movie so much you needed to have your phone out to stay entertained? I’m so confused.
0
1
77
I keep thinking about something Robert Pippin said to me about writing his book on westerns, "I watched 500 westerns for that book, and even when they're bad, they're good, because they're westerns."
6
2
75
Losing my mind over the CNN op ed about Ferrari. This absolutely ain’t it!!!
3
1
77
Excited to receive my contributor copy of LIFE ABOVE THE CLOUDS: PHILOSOPHY IN THE FILMS OF TERRENCE MALICK. Paperback and ebook coming this summer. Here’s the table of contents.
6
6
75
Told my History of Ancient Philosophy class today I needed to take a five minute break at 10am to attend to important personal business on my phone. Did not tell them it was the Criterion Flash Sale and I was worried about the 4Ks selling out.
4
4
73
No one but me at the first local screening of Ferrari. Doesn’t bode well for our culture, but it’s an auspicious starting point for the experience I’m about to have. I had to go back out and remind them to start it.
7
0
71
Posting about
@letterboxd
feels uncool, but it is one of the few remaining mechanisms through which interest in older movies is being transmitted to the younger generation, and I don’t want to see it lose its pedagogical function in the process of pandering to its loudest users.
2
2
69
I think we were the only ones today out retracing the steps of De Palma’s OBSESSION.
5
2
64
Finally found myself with an appropriate three hour stretch to watch David Easteal’s The Plains on MUBI, and I concur with the hype. I vaguely expected it to be dry based on the concept (~3 hours of Melbourne rush hour commuting) but I cried three times. Highest recommendation.
3
3
62
Heads up: there's a clean copy of Alan Rudolph's Remember My Name streaming (without commercials) on Amazon Prime.
4
5
63
RIP to the great Paul Vecchiali. I recently began the project of watching his films in chronological order and I love this delirious, magical early short THE STORY OF REBECCA.
2
9
62
You know what would be fun: a few more months of EEAAO discourse.
6
1
59
@BrndnStrssng
Almost didn’t reply with this because it seemed too obvious, but I don’t see that anyone has mentioned Keith David and Rowdy Roddy Piper in THEY LIVE.
2
0
58
THIS BEAUTY, by
@nickriggle
, is a model of the kind of philosophy I wish more people would start doing. It’s rigorous without being overbearing, addresses alternatives without getting bogged down in scholarly bookkeeping, and is fun to read without cheapening the material. 1/
2
5
57
source:
1
1
52
@maddiewhittle
My five year old niece (who loves Barbies) was so confused about why the movie would be like that.
1
1
53
If you didn’t watch all of the movies in this Allan Dwan feature, I strongly recommend doing so before they leave at the end of the month. They are all terrific, and the longest one is 87 minutes.
3
9
52
After working on it every single non-teaching day since Christmas, I just sent my rough draft of book
#2
, HARD TO WATCH to my editor, and it feels real nice. There’s still plenty of work ahead, but here’s a list of major topics as it currently stands.
7
0
44
Simple as that
It saddens me that, outside of hardcore cinephiles, the post-60s work still seems to be held at arms length, if it's held at all. Because despite accusations of difficulty, of esotericism, of intellectualism, so much of it is just beauty—pure beauty, ardent beauty, total beauty.
3
1
42
0
4
47
What are the movies that make you feel the absolute worst, but in a way you highly value? Especially interested in non-European and non-exploitation examples. So far I’m thinking about Mysterious Skin (Araki), The River (Tsai), and Black Rain (Imamura)
30
0
44
Absolutely floored to see my first book reviewed in Cineaste Magazine by Adrian Martin! He has of course given me plenty to think about.
5
1
45
This recently released short from Terence Davies has become even more moving in light of his passing.
1
11
47
My book Why it’s OK to Love Bad Movies is out today! It is a treatise on taste and aesthetic value and a love letter to disreputable movies. It is not boring.
Amazon says they have it. Some Barnes and Noble stores have it.
Very kind unnamed remarks below from
@john_dyck
4
5
46
@bartlebooth45
Several levels of humor in play here, but my favorite is guys in America who have seen one Brazilian movie presuming to tell Filipe that it should be on his list.
0
0
45
I’ve got a book review in the new issue of Cineaste. I’m glad to have the chance to contribute to a serious print magazine on film while such a thing still exists (and I’m also glad to be a subscriber).
2
4
44
My book Why it’s OK to Love Bad Movies is slated for release by Routledge in December. It’s my manifesto: a big picture theory of aesthetic value through the lens of so-called “bad” movies, written for a general audience.
3
6
44
The dismissive Jeanne Dielman takes are just embarrassing, but most of the defensive ones also seem to miss how complex it really is. Here’s Rosenbaum pointing to thorny elements that unsettle the easy readings.
2
3
44
@Srirachachau
I knew someone who got fired from the set of There Will Be Blood and he got a nice letter wishing him well from DDL in character (dip pen, special paper, period dialect)
0
1
40
Do they seriously imagine that there’s a “global consensus” that the three greatest movies ever made are HARAKIRI, COME AND SEE, and ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE? Do they think that this result suggests that they’ve cracked the code of a truly objective methodology for ranking movies?
🆕🧮 Today we’ve updated our weighted-rating calculations to better reflect the Letterboxd community’s global consensus for each film. You’ll notice some changes to our official lists.
Read more on Journal:
377
115
2K
4
4
40
Don’t let the covers fool you lol! I didn’t have any say in the cover. I told them I didn’t like it and they said please just roll with it, there isn’t really another option.
photo of two good books i think more people should read from mary beth willard and matt strohl. the kind of books that should be given to students and yeah a lot of younger artists and critics. dont let the covers fool you; there is serious work happening here.
3
5
43
3
0
41
Too bad it’s not an option to think that some Spielberg movies are very good and others are very bad, and that he has both merits and limitations as a filmmaker.
2
1
39
Key insight buried here. The most helpful negative criticism shakes you out of your complacency, gets you to question your habits, opens alternative pathways. But 99% of negative film writing feels more like a myopic ego trip. People are so proud of what they dislike!…
@realhoopermovie
@movingjournals1
At the end of the day I'm not gonna apologize for receiving more edification from more films than most. But I didn't mean to imply that you're unserious; like 95% of the people I follow online, when you like a movie I find your thoughts quite edifying, when you don't, less so
1
0
8
3
1
39
Yet another opportunity to share this excellent piece that reconstructs Godard’s critique of Schindler’s List.
1
6
38
Amazing that Bresson's The Devil, Probably is right there to watch on Criterion Channel. At one point I paid $20 for a bootleg DVD-R with crap quality. Appreciate this boon for what it is.
2
2
40
It’s a lot easier to appreciate a film when your brain isn’t filled with a groupthink orgy of people live-tweeting snarky comments during their initial viewing because they concluded it was bad before they started it and only watched it in order to harvest twitter engagement!
6
3
34
It’s not close.
Who has been your favorite actor-director pairing since 2000? (At least 3 films together.)
71
7
149
2
3
40
Here are my favorite first viewings for 2022. There’s a chronological top ten, one per director, and then 55 additional selections. At this point, I’ve watched 1222 titles for the year, with 947 first viewings.
4
0
39
Oh wow, Ken Russell’s Lisztomania is now on HBO, with Roger Daltrey as Franz Liszt.
1
7
37
I posted and then deleted these stats because from a certain point of view they are embarrassing, but I saw a couple tweets that made me want to show solidarity with people out there watching what I consider to be a reasonable number of movies per year.
4
0
39
People piling onto this are being gross. For-profit film publications are at the mercy of market demand, and even Film Comment couldn’t stay in print. Cineaste can only exist because people voluntarily put work into it because they believe in the cause.
Seeking Assistant Editor (NYC area only) to work with us on our Website, using HTML to help maintain our Store site and other duties. While unsalaried there are numerous associated “perks." Please email a letter of interest and résumé to cineaste
@cineaste
.com.
9
7
28
4
3
38
Would also be great if theaters would refrain from serving dinner during a movie…
Don't take pictures during the movie with the flash on. Don't take pictures during the movie with the flash off. Don't even touch your phone during the movie. Just - just don't. PSA over.
139
1K
11K
3
1
38
I think about this book constantly during Taylor Swift discourse. If you don’t know it, it’s the essential modern thing to read about taste, and it casts the Swift discourse in a very different light.
2
1
37
Woke up with no heat. Took my furnace apart, diagnosed the problem, fixed it, and I’ve literally never been so proud of myself. Listening to the Rocky soundtrack and feeling like a champion.
2
0
34
Seriously though, the tone of land acknowledgments (if you’re going to do them) should be “we stole your land and we do realize that’s fucked up.” They too often stink of self-congratulation about respectful stewardship or whatever.
Broke: "Sorry we stole your land."
Woke: "We stole your land. Thank you"
6
50
279
0
4
35
Mind truly blown that the bulk of QTs here are defending the blood-sucking administrators! He’s not talking about low level administrative staff, he’s talking about the ever multiplying throng of vice presidents and associate provosts.
No original insight here, but colleges and universities are paying an enormous amount for administrators and senior staff whose value added is mostly negative 1/
14
39
341
1
3
31
Drop the most iconic photo of you.
Stranger took this of me in 2011. Years later, someone emailed me to let me know it was on his website as part of his portfolio.
7
1
177
2
0
35
Wish I would have heeded this. I regret every minute.
I’m 20 minutes into Poor Things and can safely declare that I hate every single aesthetic choice this movie has made so far.
5
1
57
5
1
37
A bunch of guys with an ape or frog as their profile pic who lost their savings on crypto said that girls can’t be philosophers so now literally hundreds of philosophers in my feed are arguing in all seriousness that they can.
1
0
32
I went from having the worst customer service experience of my life at a Best Buy store to the best on Best Buy chat.
2
1
32
Timeline last night: goodbye dear Twitter friends, it’s been nice knowing you, search for me on Discord.
Timeline this morning: here are my top 7 Sandra Bullock movies.
2
0
33
A woman with wild grey hair walked up to me in the woods and said “I’m the BS lady, you want some BS?” “I suppose I do.” “BS stands for butterscotch. Here’s some candy.”
I fretted for a while about whether it’s ok to take candy from strangers in the woods. Reader, I ate it.
4
3
34
Black Glasses (Dario Argento, 2022). Giddy that we got another late work from the maestro: a minimalist digital giallo about the sensory modalities of fear and revulsion and the solace of connection between outsiders. It exceeded my sky high expectations.
3
0
33
As I foreshadowed with this tweet, my second book at the intersection of philosophy of art and film criticism is underway. The working title is HARD TO WATCH, and it’s about difficulty in film. This time it’s a full-on trade book. Here’s a brief preview thread.
What are some examples of movies you consider difficult? If it's not obvious, in what way are they difficult? (I mean to leave "difficult" open to interpretation.)
I hate to be a prompt guy, but this is for a project I'm working on and the responses might be useful.
21
1
17
4
2
33