Suzanne’s Career (1963) reminds me of an uncomfortable time in my life. Like a lot of men from the suburbs, I thought I had it figured out. Up was up and down was down. My second year of college, I remember getting in a fight with my friends over a female friend within the group, though I never would have admitted the cause at the time. I wandered off in a rage until I found a more freewheeling acquaintance, who... Read more
Challengers (2024) satisfies. The actors perform admirably. I don’t know much about tennis, but the CGI tennis ball POV shots, smashing around here and there, kept me excited. No doubt Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s droning electronic score helped. It seemed to me a story of vain decadence and self-sabotage. Everyone is rich. Everyone is ambitious. No one has any real problems. Luca Guadagnino shines a spotlight on three of the most empty, self-interested people ever to walk this earth.... Read more
As a kid, Disney’s Pinocchio (1940) scared the hell out of me. Not the whole thing, mind you. But, shaking like a leaf, I couldn’t look away when Pinocchio, Lampwick, and the gang drank, smoked, and fought themselves silly on Pleasure Island. “Pleasure,” I thought. “Pleasure feels good, right? Why is Pinocchio turning into a donkey?” Of course, he had become a literal jackass. I wasn’t sure what beer was. My parents smoked, so I had that down. But, if... Read more
I feel dirty admitting it. It seems wrong. No one should feel the way I do. It’s a sin. It’s something, something bad at least, a deviation from righteousness or at least from normativity. I didn’t care for Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023). There. I said it. It’s not that it’s a bad movie. Its approach is admirable: how else to depict the true nature of evil than to show how life simply goes on among the depraved?... Read more
The “dull” and the “interesting” are more fungible than we’d like to admit. Intersubjectively, this has an obvious ring of truth. As a recommended post from the Dull Men’s Club recently announced on my Facebook feed, some people light up in developing byzantine ways to stir their sugar substitute into their coffee. Though not a licensed therapist, that behavior gets me asking about fathers and Greek mythology. This fungibility, however, goes beyond preference. Presentation can entrance us. Describe for me... Read more
Until last week, I had never seen The Princess Bride (1987). I understand this to be some species of crime. It never felt criminal to me. I had my fantasies of a Spanish-speaking cat, challenging his father’s murderer for all eternity. To my mind, it also starred Anne Hathaway and may have included Grace Kelly. Such was my contented vision. I turned out to be wrong on each count. Usually, I like to be right. In this case, I’m happy... Read more
Gone with the Wind (1939) has a dubious honor. It exists at a triple remove from us. The David O. Selznick-produced epic is a tale of the mid-nineteenth century told by way of the wistful Lost Cause made by strongheaded, modern studio executives high on the fumes of the Roaring Twenties. If my brief perusal of Reddit is any indication, its racisms are too convoluted to do much but concern young people (or at least, I hope they’re young people).... Read more
I’m a word person. This is, I think, a sound investment. The word is the structure of our most common communication, whether spoken or written; it is the form which most often gives shape to our needs, desires, and losses. No greater technology (save perhaps penicillin—itself dependent on words as much as on chemical experimentation) has yet existed. Even the artificial intelligences that haunt us often speak in words. Their ersatz thinking is a language denuded of ambiguity, language reduced... Read more
Barb Wire (1996) is the kind of movie they don’t make anymore. That is a value neutral statement. Despite pondering the question for a whole day, I’ve not yet been able to disentangle the film’s frantic, leathery energy from the schizoid cultural paradigm it represents. In this case, I wish a cigar were merely a cigar and that Pamela Anderson Lee (Barb Wire herself) were merely Pamela Anderson Lee. But Pam is her breasts and leather onesies. And Barb Wire... Read more
When Kubla Khan did his stately pleasure-dome decree, I imagine his court was excited. Dancing? Zithers? Wine? What’s not to like? I have trouble seeing Kubla or one of his Sinicized Mongol courtiers looking dour: “no. I already watched the dancing girls today! I want new dancing girls! And wine from Shanxi, not Hebei! And the goose stinks! Have the chef executed!” Maybe it happened that way, I don’t know. But life in the saddle ain’t easy. Seeing half your... Read more
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