(The Beast, dir. Bonello, 2023)
I thought it appropriate to compile various thoughts on America’s greatest pastime. I started writing this notebook whilst viewing the work and process of the Napoleon of cinema, James Cameron, at the Cinémathèque Française. Thus, without further ado:
Petersdorf At The Cinema:
Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of The World (dir. Radu Jude, 2023)
★★★★★
Godard by way of the aftermath of the end of history, Godard enraptured by digital haze, Varda by way of Xavier: Renegade Angel, where one day distorts through time and space and almost becomes nightmarish. the vulgarity of gig work.
Never have I seen something so interested in and so bitter about digital interfaces and digital production, film history, post-communism, and the internet! which weighs heavily throughout the film, simply by the way it looks!
Oneof the most reflective films I’ve seen this year, and one I was completely surprised with, having never seen any of Jude’s work.
High & Low - John Galliano (dir. Kevin Macdonald, 2023)
★★
An account of high fashion’s enfant terrible should’ve excited me. I should’ve loved it. Instead, I saw a naked attempt at a mea culpa; reading mostly like PR for the fashion industry in trying to launder away an insidious past and an uncertain future. Public relation contrived by way of referencing Abel Gance (the restoration of Napoleon, which I will be seated for day one) and Argento don’t help at all. A sad recollection for a very sad industry.
There are, however, flashes of interesting questions regarding the fashion industry and creative industries in general and the question of who gets to be an artist in the age of the eternally new, about who gets to make art. A glimpse at brief period in which creative industries weren’t bourgeois finishing schools (the author certainly isn’t projecting here); there’s certainly something to be unpacked there but these are so fleeting it almost doesn’t matter.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (dir. Philip Kaufman, 1978)
★★★★
The unsung hero of the 1970s paranoiac San Francisco based thriller (The Conversation, Dirty Harry, to an extent, the much later film Zodiac, which sits in the lineage of this style of thriller), I tend to regard this higher compared to its contemporaries. The political enjoyments of Pakula not-withstanding, this was a fairly personal film to me. Living in San Francisco beneath the spires of bug-eyed tech guys driving “Cybertrucks” (prior to publishing this, I was nearly run down by a “Cybertruck” who failed to see a red light, perhaps intentionally. The screaming I gave them, I worry, even though it was a rightful scream, imitated Sutherland’s at the end of the film) has made me appreciate the Cold War paranoia and neuroses about conformity that seem to confound the latent anxieties I see every day when I get my cup of coffee as I see a man who just wants basic dignity spurned by something inhuman, in the body of a man.
Body Snatchers feels to be more about San Francisco and the ideological shift of the hippie movement becoming self help entrepreneurs becoming what would later be your fleece vest clad tech guys, I’m surprised it isn't higher on the "Bay Area paranoiac" style of film compared to say The Conversation.
AGGRO DR1FT (dir. Harmony Korine, 2023)
(NO RATING: THIS FILM DOES NOT DESERVE A RATING OF QUALITY FOR REASONS ELABORATED BELOW)
An odd surprise, one Thursday morning. The nigh-impossible film by the ever-present in the back of my mind Harmony Korine, once only screened at strip clubs and accompanied by his persona as “EDGLRD”, an “IP-based studio”, ready to buy at the fine price of sixteen dollars. Sixteen dollars for overwhelming vision. Into the reds and greens of infrared I went.
On one hand, AGGRO DR1ft is inventive in its attempt at deconstructing normative visual style. You have to somewhat applaud Korine and the audacity of AGGRO DR1FT in its overwhelming of the senses on a visual scale. It recalls the video game series "Hitman" by way of Terence Malick.
On the other hand, it's a self-indulgent mess of a man trying desperately to be cool as he enters his 50s, left behind by younger creators. His solution is to utilize AI in the film, to create horrific visual distortions, though, given the banality of the script, I suspect the script was entirely inputted with ChatGPT. Its use of AI is not only dreadful, it’s morally abhorrent; To utilize the death of all art and creativity as "innovation" makes little sense and feels wrong for film as an art form, especially with how disjointed and crass the use of AI feels
Not worth a rating for this perverted reason alone. If this is the "future" of cinema, I want out.
If you’re curious and are willing to lose 16 dollars you get a film that is probably best viewed projected on a wall at the worst college party you've ever been, particularly under the use of several substances.
The Beast (dir. Bonello, 2023)
★★★★★
My favorite film of the year. A tragic tale where I not only cried during the entire length of the film, but I later collapsed to the ground thinking about it afterwards. The most powerful and effective movies as of late tend to question memory, and how we intersect memory with time and technology (Aftersun, to an extent, is a very similar film).
A rupture through history, to raise the period piece and split-screen on an equal footing, thoroughly invested in the current moment by way of a familiar past and familiar future. Are we afraid to love, or are we doomed to lonely constructions?
I'm continually struck by how the film moves through and around time to show an exponential curve away from human intimacy toward isolation through technology. Something nearly unknowable, a Lynchian force, a scream (where the film has its most obvious parallels to Twin Peaks: The Return, essay forthcoming), an innate horror in the banalities of technology. It may have happened before, it might happen now, it might happen in the future.
My Achilles’ heel may be movies about love and loneliness.
The “Best” for last: MaXXXine (dir. “so-called” director Ti West, 2024)
★
An utterly revolting experience to even put my eyes on. I despised every second of this film.
The lapsed Catholic in me likens the work of Ti West to Saint Peter. Where a good Catholic might be an itinerant, I would add his work applies to filmmaking. In an ideal world, West would make a good movie, but he’s likely to be condemned to hell. Observe, for instance, the Biblical text.
“Peter replied, “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.” “Truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.” “
(The Denial of Saint Peter, Gerard Seghers, 1620s)
Ti West is very clear of his influences in everything he’s done. He loves The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He failed in imitation with X.
The first denial of Peter.
He loves the technicolor era. He failed with Pearl.
The second denial of Peter.
Now, he fails immensely at what should be one of the most simple premises for a horror film: the sleaze of 80s Hollywood. The third denial. Peter goes on to be the first Pope. Ideally, Ti West goes nowhere.
Every attempt at imitating Blow Out or any De Palma's heights made me want to walk out. There is no interest in the camera, no interest in approximating De Palma’s heights, let alone the lowest of the giallo. Really, there's no interest in anything, of genre expectations. It recalls Stranger Things in its utterly contrived nostalgia rather than Psycho (an element which features heavily in the film to little use). Utterly thoughtless.
Everything about this “film” (as it is much less a film) was a swing and a miss, to the point I found it bizarre how devoid of energy it was. A deeply lazy experience. I felt lethargy exiting the theater, but mostly regret. What good is imitation without any of the grime and sleaze that made what you want to be so interesting?
This list will change. We all have our highs and lows when we view a film. For me? It’s Kinds of Kindness, then 80s Godard for the next month.