6u532b

I’m your huckleberry

Hits its marks and moves consistently. Knows what it is and stays in its lane. Ur Trump text.

Still a lot of chewing to be done on this. The first half is infinitely more enjoyable than the second half, as almost everyone has noted. But the change in the second half absolutely has to be intentional. So I’m still trying to suss through whether our recoiling from the second half means the second half is bad, or that the second half is working. 

Visually absolutely enrapturing, especially in that first half. The VistaVision detail and richness is there in spades, even as we were sitting near the front of the theater. I am so glad I got a chance to see it on film, and so glad Brady decided to film it on VistaVision which I’ve always thought just makes a lot more sense/efficient use of the film by loading it like a 35mm still camera, not wasting emulsion needlessly. Transfer to 70mm makes perfect sense as a way to then more widely project the VistaVision quality. 

Super interesting mix and use of camera angles and styles both classical and super contemporary, with that extinct camera tech. A lot to chew on, and sort through. NOT something I could recommend to my parents, and still unsure if the sexual interests of the film add up to a coherent meaning. 

And doing all of this on $10 million… gosh. Like Godzilla Minus One, it should put every Hollywood studio to shame, and lead to so many producers to lose their jobs for obviously wasting money that doesn’t make it to the screen. And never let someone say they couldn’t shoot on film because it was too expensive again.

Some beautiful compositions, but frequently thematically fragmented and narratively either simplistic or incoherent

What a wild, weird mash up of successful swings and clear misses

Real fun modern-day Western, and not ultimately subject to many predictable modern day tropes!

Peter Dinklage is just so dang good

Absolutely stunning, an epic experience, and the incredibly rare opportunity to see it projected in 70mm was glorious.

Seriously appreciated Branagh’s abjuring of the Freudian Gertrude obsession, which allowed so many more of the core themes of the text to come out and breathe. Incredibly Christian play, and the stakes truly could not be higher than that of one’s everlasting soul.

Seeing at Film Forum on the big screen I appreciated this movie SO much more than my first watch at home! Even the little kid seemed less intrusive and annoying, and more an archetypal observer chorus witnessing the mythical clash of the West through immature but enduring eyes

Also, Van Heflin… one of the greatest Western heroes? The champion of the domestic defender?

Chatting with Christopher McQuarrie on the way out was just icing on the cinematic cake

Absolute banger start to finish, there is nothing in the world I love so much as this film

Francis Ford Coppola spent 40 years and $120 million of his own fortune producing this film. I was so gobsmacked after the first watching that I knew not quite what to say. And honestly, the second watching left me in a very similar place.

Francis Ford gave us, I think what may be the only thing I can say with absolute certainty, his honest and earnest pouring forth of his vision of the world and the highest path forward in it. Before my first viewing, Coppola himself burst into the theater and urged us to receive his film with an open heart towards a great debate about the future of the world, and what cinema can be. And so too does Adam Driver urge forth a debate about the future of the world, even suggesting at one point that the mere fact of a debate makes the society that has it a utopia.

What is this debate, then? What is the lack of debate that Francis Ford sees so paralyzing us into intertial dimness? I would think most of us would look at today's society and see no lack of debating; if anything we are best by a surfeit of it in such excess as to risk a societal bout of gout.

Francis Ford, I think, is primarily occupied with his own understanding of creation as bound up in destructiveness. Adam Driver's deep DNA from Robert Moses seems to indicate an iration of the master builder visionary and a willingness to tolerate the human costs such genius unleashed will incur, as he did upon his own friends and family in the making of Apocalypse Now and the making and unmaking of countless fortunes over the decades.

True debate, to Francis Ford, seems to be done at the level of the genius. It is the dialectic within the genius or, should he be so lucky, with a rare peer or partner.

I'm going to try and come up with some more comprehensible thoughts on this film and filmmaker, but it is quite difficult, given how Beyond the project is. Most of all, as I reaffirmed after my second viewing, I am glad this film exists, for all its successes and failures.

Best barkeep in the West, and may we all have a friend like Nitro

Elizabeth Taylor is a star, Monty Cliff should’ve been the lead of Sunset Boulevard, and this film wasn’t ultimately super compelling

Good lesson re premarital sex though!

Norma Desmond is the GOAT

A sublime in theater experience, with a full theater of people freely laughing along, after an introduction by George Stevens Jr

Joel McCrea’s son sat two rows in front of me and said it was the first time he had seen it on the big screen!

Hopefully this 4K restoration means a blu ray is around the corner, I had to order it on a used DVD to own it when I first discovered this film this year

The balls on this director to do this! I thought it was incredibly successful, and maybe the most successful movie I’ve seen doing the meta thing commenting on media and society. Also: this had a HUGE Jungian understanding of sin wrt shadow side and collective unconscious 

Was this a braver gambit than Megalopolis? Maybe. It is also incredibly well executed, the craft in the musical numbers is excellent, while also subverting what musical numbers almost always are. 

For context, I never saw 2019’s Joker so can’t comment on the relationship there. But as a standalone film, this deserves to be a Bleak Week staple for years to come

Watched on Saturday September 28, 2024.

The wages of sin are death

Francis Ford Coppola just DID THAT. 

This is not a successful movie. But it has IDEAS MAN. 

And Coppola is just such a brilliant master of cinematography. 

Robert Moses eat your heart out

John Wayne and Kirk Douglas may be older, but they still know how to carry a Western! First half is stronger than the second, but a heist Western is just a good time. Ocean’s Five, with John Wayne as Danny’s great great great grandfather!

You know, these guys don’t seem to know how to live a flourishing life

On my first viewing I’m very impressed with the documentary observation especially as the movie starts, and the many people who are too real to be actors, almost too real to be on screen. But I did feel myself drifting and I never completely engaged. 

But I noticed throughout a through-running of religious imagery in the background that I want to think more on, and maybe see again with that in the front of my mind. 

I think it could also maybe make an interesting double feature with “The Night of the Hunter”, a study in tremendous contrasts just over a decade apart

But, most of all: poor girl, that Wanda

ittedly I saw this on a TV instead of big screen… but I felt like I understand why it wasn’t the runaway box office smash people wanted it to be… it’s laser targeted to the life experience of people in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area!

Hollywood making movies about Hollywood is always at best walking a razors edge of risk

Jesse Plemons is a national treasure, and responsible for an entire star of this rating on his own

Really wonderful for its brief

Ollllllllld fashioned! The only bit of revisionist influence is how much they shoot men in the back

KIM NOVAK CAN *ACT*

Jennifer Jason Leigh steals the show, and I would watch her and Bruce Campbell’s newspaper screwball as it’s own movie

Tim Robbins is a very sweet man

Paul Newman very nearly literally chomps the scenery 

Seeing this on film is it

The absolute epic banger 

More thoughts on man’s pursuit of greatness and society etc etc to come

Sometimes movies don’t need to be longer than 60 minutes or so! 

Fun flick with good heart, brings the political economy lessons of the screwball tradition to the fore

Spencer Tracy’s bit part holds up his side of the movie, though the coffee mogul himself is very fun, almost too fun for his ultimate role in the story!

A banger experience, that definitely should be seen on film!

Don’t know that any of the timey-wimey stuff adds up to much in the end, but it was a fun enough time at the movies

Straight banger

Stone cold classic 

Nobody mugs for the camera like Toshiro Mifune

Had a lot of fun at the movies with this, and some non-ironic Americana enthusiasm that just sweeps you up in lovely fashion. 

Tragic third act problems ultimately fumble the ball at the goal line, and also just not as tight as it could have been. Have the cojones to cut massively expensive set pieces you’ve already paid for to make a better movie. 

Glen Powell Is The Movie Star!

Amazing brand new 70mm print, restored from original VistaVision negative

John Ford could frame a mote of dust and make it beautiful 

Bring back random ballad break outs in our movies!

What a great movie.

Male-pattern bonding without a commitment to honor or the defense of women will so oft, perhaps ever and always, lead into toxic ruin. And even self-created hierarchical organizations are ultimately subject to the power of their collective hip. 

*Perfectly* photographed, appropriately enough for a film based on a photo book.

Watched on Saturday July 6, 2024.

For 80%, a five star film. A housing shortage centric classic Hollywood comedic romance, thank you George Stevens! Charles Coburn the GOAT of the first half, Jean Arthur the queen of the screwball

Still not my favorite, but I’m coming around on it. Definitely makes sense as the first screwball comedy, not quite as polished in places. Still a hall of fame dad.

Three stars for ambition, and hope for what could still come

Rooftop cinema is definitely the way to see this film

Extra half star for the internal message that buying into the cult of self actualization makes you a Nietzschean murderer sociopath

Eek! Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando are stars and seize the camera, and Charlie tries to Chaplin a bit, but nothing works and this 100 minute film feels like 2.5 hours

Helms Deeeeeeeep

I thought Viggo did a great score! And appreciated how in dialogue with the Westerns tradition it was, even as it was making a distinctly modern movie. Lots of Shane reflected in a movie I actually enjoyed more than I did Shane

Hot gosh darn

Did not expect this pre code sexpotboiler to turn into a study of faith and love!

Also I nominate Eugene Pallette for greatest character actor of all time

Maybe I was spending too much energy trying to study the lighting, but it didn’t grip me

Almost enough to get me to give up on the simple life and take up ambition

Am curious how it might have played w M Monroe as originally intended

A sick watch, so not with my full faculties. Definitely had mixed up w Point Break for the last 10 years, glad to have that sorted. 

Assumed Angie Dickinson was playing his wife, so for the first third of the movie was trying to see it, was left wondering how she had lost her cinematic fastball in all these glamour scenes… then the real Angie turns over in a half asleep stupor through pills and has all the wattage for the word go despite a mostly thankless role

Lee Marvin is a mean SOB

Would make a good double feature w Ford v Ferrari about how corporations suck the fun out of everything

The sheer force of common matronly decency unravels the worst band of villains and knaves ever to comprise a string quintet

The stuff that seizes you by the lapels, slams you against the wall, and insists FEEL THIS

Unordered rn, lost in process for personal reference

• In the Mood for Love
• A Woman Under the Influence
• Mildred Pierce
• The Damned Don't Cry
• All That Heaven Allows
• Written on the Wind
• The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
• The Marriage of Maria Braun
• Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

That I saw

1. Eileen
2. Oppenheimer
3. John Wick: Chapter 4
4. Barbie
5. Maestro
6. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
7. Killers of the Flower Moon
8. Fallen Leaves
9. Asteroid City
10. The Boy and the Heron

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Ranking the films I saw that were released in 2022. Big drops after 4, 9, and 20

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once
2. The Banshees of Inisherin
3. TÁR
4. Blonde
5. Avatar: The Way of Water
6. Father Stu

   Served as an incredibly needed tonic right after "Babylon"

7. The Northman
8. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
9. The Woman King
10. The Fabelmans

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.