Drawn from a pool of hundreds of interviews, Hirokazu Kore-eda presents 22 palm-of-the-hand memories. Shot on 16mm by a documentary cinematographer, the film is composed of interview segments in which the recently deceased have to select a single moment from their years on earth to carry with them onto Charon's ferry. But to do this, each person must consider a lifetime of experiences and how their senses, connections, and recollections, whether painful or joyful, define the totality of their existence.…
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Censor of Dreams 2021
Based on a short story by Yasutaka Tsutsui (Paprika, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time), Censor of Dreams is another foray into Morpheus' vast and nocturnal domain. At first it seems a lighthearted farce about technicians ineptly papering over triggering objects and scenarios—a pool, fellatio, neighborhood kids—until the film pieces together the objects' collective meaning. In the process this creative film metamorphoses from quirky to haunting to genuinely touching. There are many films about the emotions we repress at all costs, but there aren't so many that are this great.
Paired on the Criterion Channel with After Life.
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Lolita 1962
Snakes slither through the garden, tonguing for the taste of nectar unspoiled by knowledge, good or evil. Coiled around runners abundant with rosy red strawberries, they sink their fangs instead into the pale flesh. Disinterested in the cloying sweetness of ripe old age, the addled adders squeeze, drop by drop, the tart juice of only young fruits. But all fresh things must mature, go sour, and rot. It doesn't take long for even the most sheltered girls know who is…
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Twilight 1990
Damp with dread, a chill that sticks to the skin. Cold truth: all our problems are material, all our solutions immaterial. Investigators approach truth backwards, repercussions first, always trying to glean the vessel from the size and shape of its wake. But nothing propels the intransigent sleuth in the the conquest for truth like a flood of answers that flows to nowhere—facts cycling back to the dismal, banal habitudes from whence the violence sprung, then vanished, vaporized. Even after the…
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The Friends of Eddie Coyle 1973
You're too late, Eddie. It all happened without you.
When you make a deal with the devil, you may save your skin, but not your soul. And what Eddie Coyle can tell you is your skin wears out even quicker than you think. We're all driving fast on a short highway to nowhere, trying to spare time because we know we can't bottle it up. At best you can sell it, but the money goes easy, no matter how much…
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I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang 1932
There's just two ways to get out of here. Work out, or die out.
America after the war, back when the First World War was just The World War, the war to end all wars. Those fortunate to have endured until armistice discuss the future while dreaming of rosier days gone by. And that is what those times really are. Those lucky enough to survive learn the hard way nobody actually returned home from Europe; even if they didn't lose…
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Marlowe 2022
A lousy mystery and a worse period piece, where the best thing is unbelievably Neeson himself, even though he seems to be sleep walking through the part. Stubbornly stuck in a past era it can't hope to recreate, with nothing fresh to add to its genre, it absent-mindedly ribs at various noir tropes as if clumsily calling out a MacGuffin is all it takes to pass for modern Raymond Chandler. In all senses it's like a slow billowing cloud of cigarette smoke—wispy, indistinct, opaque, lax, unformed. And stinky.
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The Nun 2018
Oops all jump scares. If I could, I would put James Wan in an old timey tin trash can and kick it down a hill. His influence and impact on modern horror have been disastrous, and I simply "can't wait" to find out what dubious delights the studio and Malignant/M3GAN co-writer Akela Cooper cooked up for the sequel. I can already here the smoke alarm in the kitchen going off. Cinema is dead, long live getting wine drunk at its funeral.
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The Maltese Falcon 1941
The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.
Ain't that a kick in the head? Some works are influential, and some others lay the foundation for entire genres. So it is with Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, and so it is for John Huston's debut (!!!) film. Because of that, decades of guys like Orson, Alfred, Billy, Joel and Ethan—to say nothing of Fritz, Jules, or Raoul—have all taken their best cracks at developing, refining, and evolving the form. Because…
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The Bear That Wasn't 1967
Adapting from former Warner animator Frank Tashlin's storybook, Chuck Jones, working then at MGM, puts his unique stylistic stamp on this parable about identity and the modern world. In fact, he's probably pushing the style a little too much, as the mod 60s Kafkaesque cartoon shtick doesn't do a lot of justice to the original illustrations. But with that funky theme song and distinct look, it holds up on its own just fine.
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Porky's Romance 1937
After getting rejected by a bad bitch, Porky Pig tries and fails to kill himself. In the resulting stupor, he imagines his would be bride hogging out on his dime and decides to split while she's still hot. But not before punting her snooty little dog like a game day pigskin. 30s cartoons, nothing like em.
