Film Notes
Not That You Mind the Killing
The Night of the Hunter opens with the disembodied heads of five children floating in the cosmos and gets weirder from there.
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ohio. A sunny and brittle Tuesday with wind chills near zero. Last night I watched Hiroshima, Mon Amour.
8½
Fellini’s 8½ is a head-scraping and memory-swirled portrait of the judgment and shame that comes with creative effort.
Double Feature
Nightcrawler and Bringing Out the Dead
L’Avventura
“Our myths and conventions are old,” said Antonioni. “And everyone knows that they are indeed old and outmoded. Yet we respect them.”
Safe
A friend sent me an article about a helmet you can buy that creates its own microclimate of filtered, customized air.
Retreat
This season is defined by muted Bergman films projected on the wall in the hour of the wolf.
Ash
“The bottom line is we’re all prisoners of the universe.” This becomes the coda for Jia Zhangke’s Ash is Purest White, where a dangerous romance downshifts into existential longing.
Melancholy and Prophecy
Six days after watching Melancholia, I cannot shake the airless world of this film that lives in the eerie twilight between calamity and silence.
Red Neon and Broken Clocks
Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey into Night is the best film I’ve seen in years.
Mono No Aware
Ghosts in the machine, glitches in the sublime, and rain-streaked neon. Watching Blade Runner 2049 felt like returning to church.