autolabrum

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Ran (1985) - dir. Akira Kurosawa

Watched Sorry, Baby

Throughout the first vignette, there is a sense of separation of the viewer from Agnes and Lydie: lots of long and extreme long shots; lots of subframing by doorways; Agnes consistently, almost defensively placed alongside Lydie. This adds a layer to the bizarre, often alienating dialog style that Victor utilizes, inheriting its awkwardness and potently unsure footing from Gerwig and Baumbach. Then, the "bad thing" happens, itself separated to the extreme from the audience as we only look on time passing via the house it occurs in (one of many formal references to Woolf's To the Lighthouse, an explicit influence on the film). Once Agnes leaves this house, during the drive home and the bathtub scene, we are allowed to be close to her while she is alone, vulnerable, and fresh from the experience that creates the stagnant atmosphere of the first vignette. The bathtub scene in particular, using perhaps the first close-up in the movie, connects us with the particulars of Agnes' experience on level animal enough to feel bodily transformative. We do not experience the "bad thing" but we do experience the aftermath, the unsureness and alienation that formulates her experience in the rest of the film. Ironically, we feel connected to her primarily in this shared alienation from herself, and Victor's gift of intimacy is also a curse: to understand her alienation requires us to experience it. In the hospital, the school administrative building, and the courtroom, she is alienated, and we are alienated. There are gleaming moments of kindness, frequently from Lydie and once from a sandwich shop owner, that alleviate this constant isolation, but mostly we are caught up in her pain, her humor, and her life as after a certainty but before only doubt.

Last time I seen my brother. Last time I seen the sun. And just for a few hours, we was free.

SINNERS (2025), dir. Ryan Coogler.

Watched Ran

Watching this only days after High and Low was revelatory: the promise of Kurosawa's mastery of color fulfilled.

Another victim of the David-goes-to-a-cool-theater-on-a-hot-day-while-sleepy syndrome, the main casualty was the connective tissue between the political/military disputes and the interpersonal decay, although the apocalyptic consequences of the former, and the extent to which they do and don't matter to the no-longer-a-king who experiences the latter started to sink in on the bus ride back. Beyond that, an extraordinary collection of performances, with Nakadai, Ryu, and Peter as standouts, set against cinematography so obviously beautiful it was able to penetrate even my sleepy gaze. Will have to give another go with more energy and after re-reading Lear to really appreciate the interconnectedness of the plotting and the ultimate tragedy.

Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997) - Ohtori Academy Hallways

Watched High and Low

The first hour or so has the best blocking of maybe any movie ever. The way that all of the characters are immediately subordinate to the speaker, any speaker, turning their heads down and moving to the peripheries of the shots to make themselves lesser, creates an extraordinary sense of isolation. The conflict is so simple, so straightforward, and so immediately destructive of any consciousness that tries to consider it, that anyone who is not loudly proclaiming their horror becomes a silent mourner, cast to the sides. Mifune, Sada, Nakadai, and Kagawa are standouts in their various lamentations, but their characters are, despite the extreme discomfort brought on by the crime they witness, essentially comfortable. It is Mihashi's role as Kawanishi, a man in extreme economic, mental, and physical discomfort who is able to express the injustice not of the crime, but of the world. All of them are high; he is low.

It's amusing to make fortunate men taste the same misery as the unfortunate.

Watched The Tree of Life (Extended Cut)

Overwhelmingly beautiful. Malick collects a series of images that are, I find, indescribable; in that their potency predates and brings about language as an insufficient descriptive art. This is especially notable during the creation sequence, when the images are imitative of those sights that literally predate language, but it is felt throughout in the quiet subordination of the dialog to the image. Experimental in that it pushes the bounds of the medium as an expressive art, attempting to depict the relationship between the large and the small and the extent to which its particular belief system allows them to coexist and surpass existential angst. In this sense of experimentation with capacity and of the relation between human and nature, small and large, it reminded me in particular of Woolf's magnum opus, The Waves.

That said, I think I would have preferred the theatrical cut. There's a good hour in the middle here that, while gorgeous, becomes frankly excruciating in its repetition and lack of exploration of the world of the film. Lots and lots of particular images to love here, from the fading, endless suburban street to the sinister grass lawns, but it gets overfull of itself in the middle. The finale is perfect.

Favorite First Watches of June

Paris is Burning (1990) dir. Jennie Livingston

Kajillionaire (2020) dir. Miranda July

Caught by the Tides (2024) dir. Jia Zhangke

Alien: Covenant (2017) dir. Ridley Scott

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) dir. Céline Sciamma

The Phoenician Scheme (2025) dir. Wes Anderson

Watched Jaws

First watch in some years. Peacock gave us a short speech from Spielberg about how no one on set knew if they had succeeded at telling the story or not, followed by a movie made up exclusively of perfect shots. So many moments of genius here that it's impossible to keep track. Thinking a lot about the sound design when the laughter among the people in the water cuts out as the camera cuts to the shark's perspective, and the total irrelevance of humanity to its sense of purpose. Thinking about the night time diving sequence with Hooper which beats out anything in Avatar. Thinking about Shaw's enormous performance. Thinking about fear, and thinking about beauty.

I'm still stuck in this scene

Saw Materialists

Definitely not a rom-com, almost not really a movie. Putting aside the failure to grapple with the subjects that it admittedly pretty deftly elaborates, the characters and their lives are so atomized that the various plots at no point feel meaningfully connected, and barely even interact. It doesn't help that Song's picture of New York is one where anyone who is not Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans is essentially a prop filling space and imitating a real urban environment. Very weird to watch a movie with three characters, two of whom basically don't interact, in a world where no one else really exists. Johnson is actually stellar for at least the first act or so at aligning herself with the malevolent atmosphere of this version of New York, and Pascal does some of his more interesting work imitating her elegant embrace of the evil of commodified relationships. Evans is trying, but his character is barely there.

Watched Monkey Man

It's been a while, but I think this was significantly more effective on the second viewing. One of the angriest movies I can remember, Patel succeeds at portraying an emotionally motivating scenario with a more biting political context than any other revenge film I can think of. The violence is brutal, and although there are some pretty jarring sequences, it's extremely well put together considering the production context. Really happy this is out there.

Watched The Holiday

Full of strange choices both by Meyers and, especially, by Diaz, who has some truly baffling line reads. The whole Diaz-Law romance is uninteresting, but takes up significantly more than half of this 5 hour movie. Winslet and Black are more interesting (though not by a huge amount) but criminally underutilized. Eli Wallach is infinitely charming and I adored him here, by a million miles the best part of the film. Was fun to watch with friends in shared confusion.

But I'm a Cheerleader (1999) | dir. Jamie Babbit

Watched The Color of Pomegranates

Unfortunately was tired enough for this one that the thrumming rhythm and enchanting images put me in and out of consciousness. What I did see was an extraordinary collection of images that created such an alien world that I went past bafflement and felt as if I was exploring a new idea of what a cinematic world can be. At the same time, felt a little like trying to read Finnegan’s Wake with a knowledge of Ireland consisting almost entirely of its geographic position. I certainly need to take another stab on more sleep and with more background.

Watched The Life of Chuck

Pretty mixed on this. The thematics are significantly relevant to my recent interests, and are well explored, albeit too spelled out. I think the structure really works except for the prolonged final act, and the performances are quite good throughout (Hiddleston's American accent is exceptionally good, and Ejiofor is wonderful). Flanagan of course can tug at heartstrings, and King's more saccharine side suits him well, so there is a good amount of emotional resonance, although again it suffers from being overexplained (especially by the unfortunately really annoying voice over).

I was a little more frustrated than I expected by King's and Flanagan's belief in the everyman, which is so strong here as to prevent them from actually making Chuck into a meaningful individual, and is unquestioningly based in the mythology of that most 'normal' figure, the white American head of household. Just a few too many kinks with how social the opening act is and the lack of conversation about Chuck's particular positionality.

The math speech pissed me off, and I don't quite get how Flanagan was trying to balance seeing mathematics as this insidious force and elaborating the beauty of accounting. As in the everyman issue, there seems to be an anti-materialist current here that just doesn't come together in some places (sort of necessary to the solipsistic conceit but could probably have been handled better).

That said, Hiddleston was shmoovin'.

Watched Kajillionaire

Wonderful. Fantastic performances, gorgeous script, a couple of really moving scenes visually (although the cinematography was sometimes disappointing). The household and birth sequences are just about perfectly written. July conveys deeply a sense of oscillating trust that threads through the film. Really impressed at the way that the myth of the nuclear family haunts Old Dolio, and the critique that a naively total rejection of such myths can throw the baby out with the bathwater that July forms without capitulating to the myth itself. The nuclear family is never given real credence (and is pretty roundly condemned during the household sequence) but the concept of affection isn't actually negotiable. An extremely successful script, and potent enough performances to convey it.

As , the United States, potentially heads into another forever war I can only think of this quote.

The Phoenician Scheme (2025) - Wes Anderson

I suppose I'm moved by this absurd performance.

We should get a point for having a team name and team spirit... and we've lost every team task so far.

STEVIE MARTIN Taskmaster 19.8

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE / PORTRAIT DE LA JEUNE FILLE EN FEU Dir. Céline Sciamma (2019)

Watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Exceedingly difficult to write about. On a shallow level, it is easy to gush about the conflict of the artist, the inherent violence and intimacy of portrayal, the sacrifice of the self required to be portrayed, the refitting of an auteur understanding of portraiture in favor of a collaborative perspective, the collapse of an artistic relationship into an exchange of capital, the mythological allegory, the breathtaking cinematography, the tension, the grace, the care, and the beauty that this film elaborates. But it is the kind of piece where a discussion of any one part generates the entirety of the film. I do not know how to write about any one of these things, and to write about all of them is to describe a shadow of the whole thing. I do not have the capacity to reflect this movie.

I can only hope to sketch it.

In the last moments of the film, Marianne sees Héloïse sit down for a performance of Vivaldi's "Summer". The orchestra washes over her, and she weeps at the memory of the song. She weeps, and she watches. Marianne watches. We watch. We hear the same notes, at the same moments, and we weep, together. Across centuries, and across reality, Héloïse gives something of herself to us. Something to watch, something to know. We give her our knowledge.

Postscript

by Seamus Heaney

And some time make the time to drive out west Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore, In September or October, when the wind And the light are working off each other So that the ocean on one side is wild With foam and glitter, and inland among stones The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans, Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white, Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads Tucked or cresting or busy underwater. Useless to think you’ll park and capture it More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there, A hurry through which known and strange things pass As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

Zhao Tao through the years in Jia Zhangke's Caught by the Tides (2024)

Watched Caught by the Tides

Kicking myself for watching this when I was sleepy enough that the gentle atmosphere lulled me into an almost sleep so I missed chunks of the movie. After that disorienting experience, over the past few hours, the film has grown significantly in my esteem. The collation and disarrangement of its time span, almost exactly corresponding to my own life, is extraordinary, to an extent that I was utterly baffled at how it could possibly have been constructed upon walking out. Having learned that the 2001 and 2006 scenes were made up of archival footage and old deleted scenes, the weighty sense of time begins to feel comprehensible in it's execution (despite my naiveté with respect to Jia Zhangke's work). It remains extremely affecting. The final portion of the film is the one I was most acutely awake for, and was enough to bring the warm shower of the rest of the movie together as a singularly consonant experience, having successfully crafted a narrative and (more importantly) a sense of environment and change through a daring exercise in collage. Never have I more strongly felt a sense of the world in time as simultaneously cohesive and shattered, and the pandemic represents the perfect symbol of that contradiction. Zhao Tao has the most contagiously expressive face I have ever seen. Her smiles, frowns, stares, and tears became mine as well by necessity. The latter, her tears, are the deepest and realest I have ever seen on the screen.

By the use of the language of sorrow I had for the time being obliterated my sorrow—so powerful is the charm of words, which for us reduces to manageable entities all the passions that would otherwise madden and destroy us.

Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer (1980)

Watched The Phoenician Scheme

Certainly not as captivating or moving as Asteroid City, but that would be far too much to expect. This still is, just about, a perfect movie.

In the vein of Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich or Chekhov's A Boring Story, Anderson gives us a significantly more optimistic look at a crotchety old(er) man facing his mortality and becoming slowly overcome with a revolution of meaning. Del Toro is a revelation in this role, and his ability to express doubt while remaining such a force of nature is exceptional. Threapleton accomplishes much of the same. The near death experiences are vivid and affecting, but not overly affecting (Zsa-Zsa himself only weighs them at less than 25% of the instigation for his religious motion), and made me want to see Anderson explore the experimental space in that direction in the future. Riotously funny, an unparalleled density of jokes that almost universally land. Cera is hilarious and perfectly integrated into the space.

In his first vision, Zsa-Zsa meets his grandmother, who does not recognize him. What are the things that matter?

Plausibly the greatest end credits scroll I've seen.

Read The Aeneid (Vergil, translated Shadi Bartsch

Bartsch's translation is fantastic, vivid, and enthralling even when entrenched in the dregs of violence. My first time reading since achieving any real form of political sapience, and the window that Aeneas gives into the colonialist mindset is completely fascinating.

The primary action of the poem that I was interested in this reading is the transformation from a national identity defined by victimhood to the colonialist violence in the second half. Aeneas' piety appears to me to be largely a vehicle for his entitlement. It serves to justify his promised rewards, but he uses these promises and prophecies to deflect from his own culpability in betrayal and violence. This turn to childish arrogance first became apparent to me as our hero abandons the home he has found for his people in Carthage. Besides his personal betrayal of Dido, here it becomes clear that it is not safety or comfort he is looking for, but a particular imperial rulership, as he excuses himself to Dido saying "My father's troubled ghost alarms me in my dreams. He says I've harmed my dear son Ascanius by robbing him of western rule and fated fields" (IV.352-4). Here, Aeneas completely removes blame from himself, relying on his piety to his father and imagined nation as an excuse for his selfish, deadly actions.

The most exceptional occurrence of this blame-shifting entitlement, however, is one in which even the excuse of piety strains belief. When Aeneas murders Turnus, his entitlement has already been established: "Our rites owe me Turnus" (XII.37). He is joyful during the duel, but at the end, even his deep belief in his violence as utterly justified begins to falter. Turnus appeals to his piety, to his love of his father and his son, and Aeneas begins to feel the conflict between his hate and his love: "Turnus' words began to move him and he hesitated" (XII.940-1). That is, until he finds a way out. He sees Pallas' belt, a symbol of his victimhood, of violence committed against one of his compatriots, and deals the fatal blow. Crucially, he refuses agency here: although this act is not ordained, the gods have not ordered him to murder Turnus, it is not essential for his rule to be secured, he finds a way to shift responsibility: "Pallas sacrifices you, Pallas punishes your profane blood" (XII.948-9). Bartsch completes her last mission as a translator, and uses her final note (so often a halter of the momentum of an ending) to leave us with a final observation on the shifting of victimhood: "Turnus' knees buckled with chill: As do Aeneas' knees the first time we meet him in the epic, I.92. These are the only two times this phrase is used: Turnus is now the victim that Aeneas once was" (Note to XII.951).

Watched Sister Midnight

Really delightful style, invigorating editing, and lovely, Anderson-esque cinematography. Radhika Apte gives a fantastic performance, with good enough physicality that the film almost becomes a silent comedy at times. The vignette style is a little difficult at first, but quickly enraptured me, carefully and effectively creating the setting and characters. Don't want to get too much into the plot, because the twist is so well executed, but suffice it to say that Kandhari creates a deft and cutting piece of magical realism, that does a good job of according its mythological symbol with the kind of isolation the film depicts.