Movies Watched -- The Hawk Is Dying (2006)
112 minute running time so 10 to 20 minutes too long … my buddy Dave recommended this one, telling me “you’ll hate it,” but I wouldn’t say I hated it, I just didn’t like it and wouldn’t recommend it. It’s too weird and too depressing and I didn’t get its deep message, assuming there was one … sad-sack Paul Giamatti, who specializes in playing losers, the bald, the glasses, the straggly beard … but he’s a good actor … the girl is Michelle Williams, whom I didn’t immediately recognize because she’s chubbier here, she’s talented too, I really liked her in Shame … but as I said, I didn’t really get it and don’t want even to think about it. As James Greenberg said, “Loaded with obtuse symbolism, the film is not only hard to understand, it isn't much fun trying to figure it out.”
Menage a trois?
Movies Watched -- A Brighter Summer Day (1991)
237 minute running time, that’s right, THREE HOURS AND 57 MINUTES, so it’s a real slog … 1960s Taiwan, I guess there were a lot of street gangs and juvenile delinquency and this kid from a respectable family falls into it … even for someone who has an interest in Chinese history like me, most of this movie was hard to sit through, just sort of boring until the shocking end. No idea why Criterion thinks it’s a “singular masterpiece.” This was a John Farr reco.
Don’t worry about me, Dad
Movies Watched -- The Strange Ones (2017)
82 minute running time, so a good length. Somehow I ran across Christopher Radcliffe in my online travels and learned that he’s half-Chinese, which interested me. Maybe he was a screenwriter of something else I recently watched… anyway this movie was both written and directed by him and a Columbia grad named Lauren Wolkstein … this was a low budget movie with amateur actors and the story was extremely depressing …
SPOILERS: apparently this teenage kid was being molested by both his father and his neighbor so the kid killed his father and burned down the house and ran off with the neighbor. The neighbor was this young beefcake guy, so it didn’t really work for me. A horror movie really. Not recommended and certainly not a John Farr reco.
You’re going to feel some pressure now
Movies Watched -- Sherman's March (1986)
155 minute running time, that’s right TWO HOURS AND 35 MINUTES … not really a documentary about Sherman’s March but about the filmmaker’s screwed-up love life instead … towards the end of the film he says that everything in the south felt “crazy and off kilter,” and I thought that was putting it mildly. All the women in his life, from his sister to the many women he pursued, were all lunatics, just stark-raving mad. McElwee is a smart guy and parts of the movie are hilarious, but the overall vibe is sort of weird and depressing. Lots of examples of terrible 80’s eyeglasses and haircuts, for historical reference. This was a John Farr reco: “… an inspired meditation on life, love and relationships.”
Nightmares of the apocalypse
Hipster Hearse
Check out this car for sale:
Too Young To Live This Old
The beautiful and talented Jennah Bell with John Forbid, I dig it… love the dance routine too.
Movies Watched -- Paris, 13th District (2021)
In French. 105 minute running time … I like Jacques Audiard … he made A Prophet, which I loved, and Dheepan, which I also really liked … but I wasn’t super thrilled with this. I guess the 13th District of Paris is filled with public housing maybe? So you have a lot of immigrants in one spot … it features a Chinese girl, a black guy, and a French white woman … the last is a sex cam worker / law student / real estate agent … the black guy is a teacher and the Chinese girl works in a call center and later a Chinese restaurant .. it’s about how their lives intersect, esp. their sex lives, and how things work out or don’t. Sort of a Millennial movie. I wouldn’t recommend it but John Farr did.
Post-right-swipe coitus joy
Movies Watched -- Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (2021)
In Hungarian. 95 minute running time. Beautiful Hungarian woman, a neurosurgeon in New Jersey goes back to Hungary to chase a guy she met at a conference, but he claims not to recognize her, is she losing her mind? … bit of a weird one, and I wasn’t super thrilled… it was a movie made by a woman for women, maybe? It’s not bad, it’s just not recommended, though John Farr liked it.
Movies Watched -- The Automat (2021)
Documentary. 79 minute running time. Made by someone named Lisa Hurwitz who somehow tapped into the Jewish network and got Mel Brooks and Ruth Bader Ginsburg involved … interesting story, the rise and fall of a restaurant business… was Mr. Horn a homosexual? It would explain the great style of the Automats with the white marble-topped tables … good, fresh food from a central commissary, a neat model … the death of the inner city via suburbanization meant the death of the Automat, but there was a glorious era for them. I enjoyed it. This was a John Farr reco.
