Movie Time: November
Had this one in the bank and just forgot to post it. Oops!
Sending off what will be the last month of all-around good movies I’ll see because I’ve set myself up for some real dogshit during December. Here’s what I saw in November that stuck with me!
Osamu Tezuka’s Metropolis
Challengingly paced at the start and, honestly, doesn’t go anywhere especially groundbreaking but it was a real spectacle to watch. There’s a several minute-long sequence towards the end that had my jaw glued to the floor. Some real “I didn’t think this was possible to animate” kinda deal.
My experience of it was mostly marred by four teenagers yapping loudly the entire team a couple rows in front. It was a time miserable enough that I opted to just cancel my Cineplex subscription (Our Canadian equivalent of something like AMC A-List) because what is the point of going to the movies if I’m going to have it ruined by some inconsiderate dipshit 95% of the time. Just don’t go to the theatre if you live in Vancouver, man. The normies really cannot behave themselves. (Which I’m saying because the cinephile theatre, the VIFF Centre, has been wonderfully free of this problem every time I’ve been.)
The Manchurian Candidate
Watching this at the aforementioned VIFF Centre on the day after the US election results was… interesting. I stood in line for snacks before the movie and got to endure some real milquetoast reads on the whole affair because that’s what seeing Manchurian Candidate at 6PM on a Wednesday gets you.
Really fun! I said as much in my Letterboxd review but it reminded me a lot of Southland Tales, in that it’s a movie inescapably informed by the post-9/11 years that preceded it. Adapting a then-45 year old book and filtering it through the lens of that specific time-and-place in American culture is like wielding a hammer with razorblades all over the handle. It’s not surprising that it doesn’t all land but it lands a fair amount and that it tries at all is really worth appreciating. Three years removed from a moment that still defines US policy on… basically everything… is not a lot of time and yet it still decided to have a very vivid stance on foreign wars, the public and private perception of veterans who fight in them, and how morbid of a ballet that machine dances alongside political news coverage.
Crash
This was my first Cronenberg and finding out that this is what a lot of people consider to be his least horny effort has me thinking I’m in for a truly demented ride. The shots where people are sensually running their hands along mangled fenders that are later juxtaposed by the intimate exploration of traumatic scars… the man’s a genius. Really inspiring portrayal of sex and intimacy.
Nightcrawler
What a fucking evil movie, dude. The vibes in this are fucking rancid.
I watched a documentary series a couple years ago about stringers in LA and thankfully there’s no one this demented working the beat but they did make it sound like grueling work. Nightcrawler does a great job of showing how compliant the modern news cycle is in protecting not necessarily this line of work but the society that creates, feeds, and consumes it. Lena and I watched it together and she pointed out towards the end that the movie’s score is purposely discordant because it’s never scored to set the tone of the scene, it’s scored to set how Lou feels in the moment. I’d love to rewatch it with that at the forefront of my mind.
Three Days of the Condor
Decided to watch this because a handful of folks mentioned during my Black Ops 6 playthrough that Adler is essentially a carbon copy of this era-Robert Redford and… man, they weren’t kidding. Some real carbon copy work right there. Not that I’m complaining! Adler’s great and Redford is incredibly captivating in this as Turner. Just a really fun 70’s-era spy movie that also has one of my favorite depictions of the CIA ever—an organization so bloated it is repeatedly stumped by a guy who “reads a lot of books”.
The Battle of Algiers
Cannot imagine what I could put here that hasn’t already been said about this incredibly foundational work of revolutionary cinema. Finding out they screened this multiple times in various branches of the US government to get into the heads of the foreign powers they routinely destabilize is both deeply depressing and inspiring. To know we’re capable of doing anything that scares them that bad is invigorating, man. No matter the century, the part of the world, the powers that reign, people will always yearn for freedom.
Solaris
There’s not much to say about the plot of this because it’s less a movie about A Narrative and more a movie about exploring, like, a dozen philosophical ideas and questions about life, love, and memory. I’m still left smitten by it because despite it’s absolute slog of a pace, even for Tarkovsky, it grants you a lot of time to drown in its ideas and doing that against its very loosely sci-fi backdrop presents so many fascinating paths for your mind to wander through.
For December, I’ve compiled a list of 31 Christmas movies to watch and the thing about Christmas movies is that you get about a week’s worth of good ones and then it’s all schlock. They just don’t make “good” Christmas movies, they only make good movies that take place during Christmas. I’m looking forward to stuff like the original How the Grinch Stole Christmas and stuff but man how fast my options boiled down to completely vapid romcoms featuring mid-2000s comedy icons that are past their prime… It’s gonna be a rough month.