msicism

I Miss Sonia Henie (various directors, 1971)

A rare film I was able to see via the Media City Film Festival online, I Miss Sonia Henie is a...

Where've I Been?

Well, in addition to being pummeled by grading, the last two weeks have been fairly intense around here...

Cow (Andrea Arnold, 2021)

Following her well-regarded short film Wasp (2003), British filmmaker Andrea Arnold's debut fe...

Enough Praying (Aldo Francia, 1972)

It happens sometimes: the random luck of the draw directs you to a masterwork you'd never have discover...

Tokyo, Vienna, Paris, Houston...

(...everybody talk about Pop Musik!)

As I begin to tackle the backlog of writing, mostly...

By the way . . .

Hi all,

Just a note to say I've been a bit tied up with the day job, so I haven't posted as much ...

Rotterdam 2020: a sampling (pt. 3)

(Just in ...

Expedition Content (Ernst Karel and Veronika Kusumaryati, 2020)

There is no obvious way to present an audio field recording. The audience for this type of documentatio...

Rotterdam 2022: a sampling (part two)

Burger King Alexandrium, waar je het kunt hebben zoals jij het wilt.

2022-02-08 20:30:33 +0000 UTC View Post

Rotterdam 2022: a sampling (part one)

(pictured above: Het Huis van de Whopper, Rotterdam, Netherlands)

2022-02-04 02:58:15 +0000 UTC View Post

Either or Neither (Dan Barnett, 2021)

This is the third and final film in Barnett's "Sweet Dreamers" trilogy, a suite of feature-length exper...

The Tale of King Crab (Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, 2021)

First it must be acknowledged that this is one of the best-looking films in quite awhile. While Simone ...

Pedestrian at Best Redux: 125 Favorite Songs

UPDATE: 120 struck me as a dumb number. So it will be 125.

It's been a few years, so I...

Fat City (John Huston, 1972)

Given the high reputation of Fat City, I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that it's quite a lo...

1972: Games of Love and Chance

I just finished Fat City (comments forthcoming shortly), so I decided to use ye olde number ra...

Beg to Differ

Here are a couple of films I caught up with recently. I liked them well enough, but others seem more impressed. 

2022-01-23 23:21:57 +0000 UTC View Post

You Could Have Seen the Mona Lisa (Doug Dillaman, 2021)

I wanted to say a quick word about this film, which I recently caught up with. As was the case when wri...

1972 Redux: Don't Torture a Reduckling!

I have been amassing a collection of prospective '72 views here:

2022-01-20 22:50:58 +0000 UTC View Post

Two Master Miniaturists

Last year saw the release of two new films, each by a prominent European formalist. These are makers I should know a bit better than I do.

2022-01-20 19:22:40 +0000 UTC View Post

The Heartbreak Kid (Elaine May, 1972)

Ironically, this was probably a great choice as my introduction to Elaine May. If the films she both wr...

A Font of Wisdom

As Nicolas and I were discussing Kluge's use of bad fonts, my mind drifted back to Pusha T.

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Willi Tobler and the Decline of the 6th Fleet (Alexander Kluge, 1972)

Having recently watched Orphea, the odd film-collage Kluge co-directed with Khvan, I wondered ...

What's Up, Doc? (Peter Bogdanovich, 1972)

The tagline for What's Up, Dog? was "a screwball comedy... remember those?"This was certainly ...

Unclenching the Fists (Kira Kovalenko, 2021)

Although I have been somewhat mixed on the films emerging from Alexander Sokurov's production initiativ...

Simone Barbès or Virtue (Marie-Claude Treilhou, 1980)

The wonderful thing about cinema, or any artform really, is its utter infinitude. For all the moaning a...

Suzanna Andler (Benoit Jacquot, 2021)

There's a true-life legend among my cinephile crowd, involving a screening at the 2000 Toronto Internat...

"Just Open With a Joke"

If you've ever taken a public speaking course, or read any Toastmasters material, or even gotten person...

The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal, 2021)

Maybe it's because I've been watching Yellowjackets recently, but I am getting tired of movies...