i have no clue what the fuck happened in this, but it's king hu, so i'm pretty sure it's near-perfection regardless of the meager details of the plot.
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Godzilla vs. Charles Barkley 1992
a great commercial, but even a greater comic. there should be more media with giant kaiju participating in all kinds of sports; let's see king kong playing some football!
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Happy Together 1997
i've never been in a relationship, but i've experienced so many ones, vicariously, through the realm of cinema. happy together is such a dreamy evocation of both the highs and lows of romance, a well-rounded portrait of queer life that doesn't pull any punches; the nights and days seem to stretch on forever in this, wet streets burning with the reflections of sodium-orange lights and radioactive reds blankets atop sicky-green bedsheets. desperately clinging onto a warm body in a colder and colder world.
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Midnight Run 1988
i usually think of danny elfman as a great composer, but then i listen to something like the soundtrack to this and i wonder if we've given him a little bit too much credit over the years: uber-shmaltzy synth-blues-rock that overpowers every scene and, while not terrible to listen to on its own, really exemplifies the shtick-y sweet mawkishness that late-80s hollywood slathered over hundreds of major releases. midnight run is good, solid fun, but it truly is a victim of its time.
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Johnny Mnemonic 1995
dolph lundgren as a street-peacher mecha-assassin getting zapped by a cyber-cetacean's laser beam... what can i say? it's cinema.
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Old Joy 2006
perfectly embodies that weird feeling where you and an old friend are trying to act like you're still super-close but in actuality you couldn't be farther apart and you both know that on some level but you're still possessive over the concept of you two being buddies, so you settle for just pantomiming in the discarnate shell of your old relationship, frustrated with the cold realization that, from now on, nothing's ever what it could have been, if it should have been anything at all.
wrote a slightly-personal piece about it for my patreon, which you can check out here.
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The Aviator's Wife 1981
why is it a requirement in every rohmer film for the main character to visit either the most beautiful vacation estate known to man, or a weirdly-decrepit liminal nightmare apartment
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Hard Eight 1996
my favorite PTA. the sound of leather creaking, metal clanging, glass shattering, early morning blur in neon swirl. no unpunished courtesy, no walk in a forest without a trace of passage. philip baker hall is unmatched.
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Close-Up 1990
every cinephile has a crippling weakness for movies-about-movies, and kiarostami here makes one for the ages. one big heartache over a man's love of art, loves it because it allows him to be himself in a way that he never could otherwise; in the realm of aesthetics, truth and falsehood are on equal footing, each comingling with the other to create something beyond earthly authority; a conversation, not a binary.
