it's about that time.
it's been a weird year, and despite not getting out much in 2023, i also didn't have a lot of energy to watch movies. so i've decided instead of trying to pick 50 or 25 movies that i watched for the first time this year and ranking them, that i'd just pick the movies that stood out to me the most and say a few words about them. for those curious tho, i do have a ranked list on my letterboxd for this year's first watches.
Minding The Gap (2018)
might as well start here. a movie that captures the desolateness of growing up in the post-recession rust belt wasteland so accurately. these kids are in rockford but their experience translates pretty directly to my hometown and so many others like it in the midwest. it's all just shit man. there's no culture left and what is there wants you to rot inside of it. for many of us, escaping where our adolescence took place becomes a mission in early adulthood. trying to forge our own path and breakaway from the abuse we suffered. the irony is that those same cycles of abuse we absorb can easily get passed on to those we love and care about. this film is about that transmission of abuse. it's about the often poor treatment of women in low-income households. it's about alcoholism and self-hatred. it's about growing up and understanding that life as an adult sucks about as much as life as a teenager does but for different reasons.
i felt conflicted about how those messages were conveyed at times. i think the filmmaker in question is smart and got some genuinely great material on camera, but the way it was edited together and the methods for which he got some of this footage felt questionable to me. had a lot of the manipulative documentary score (and that mountain goats song lol) to force big emotional moments. and i just think it's kinda weird that the dude who is representing himself as a long time friend of his subjects is really just somebody they met a few years prior who is a bit older than them and only came to visit them to film a handful of times after leaving the town earlier than them. but idk i guess the movie magic of making documentaries is always messy like that. and overall the vibes he was cooking up and the messages he wanted the audience to think about are what stuck with me. tho i think the glue that held all that together was recognizing visual moments as ones i've had verbatim growing up in wisconsin. there's just something very powerful about seeing your adolescence reflected back at you.
Ley Lines (1999)
Takashi Miike's resume is all over the map. his fascinations as a storyteller do shine thru his work, even if much of the project's he's involved in feel rushed and chaotic and sometimes undercooked. ley lines is part of a larger, loose trilogy that i haven't seen the other two films of, but i found myself making a strong connection to its characters and their plight nonetheless. much like Minding The Gap, this movie to me felt like an exploration of the realities of trying to escape the world you were born into. when life really and truly has been nothing but cruel to you, it's very difficult to find your way out of cycles of abuse and harm to yourself.
ley lines is a tough watch at times. these kids have no future and are more or less just spinning the wheels trying to find the next high that makes them feel like they are ahead in a race that has long ago left them so very far behind. much of what they experience is heavy and brutal, and often it hits the female member of this group more aggressively. we get a trove of bleak atmosphere punctuated by touching intimate moments sprinkled between dour and desperate scenes. the film's greatest thematic strength is probably the harsh light it shines on japan as a "nation of progress." capitalism and nationalism crush the lives of those without stability, community, support systems, wealth and the means to navigate the very real cost of existing. so often in media we see tokyo depicted as a futuristic and progressive city when it has just as much ugly, cruel, careless and painful to show in its streets in reality. Miike seems interested in depicting the suffering and hardships of people that his society has left behind, large swaths of whom make up those big cities seen in the movies. and i think he accomplished that goal of showing how harrowing trying to climb out of poverty and abuse can actually be, while capturing a serene atmosphere along the way.
Aftersun (2022)
are we noticing a theme yet lol. generational trauma, familial fracturing, loss, dissection of parental trauma and the worries about who you are affecting who you love. this movie very succinctly wraps all of that into a digestible package with a refreshingly restrained depiction of 90s nostalgia from a modern lens. and it takes care to allow space for every moment to breathe, leaving room to reflect on this imagined past and itch at the desire to map it on to our own memories of what once was.
2023 has certainly been the "unpacking family trauma" year for me in therapy so i gotta say the themes in aftersun hit particularly hard. your parents are just regular people. they too are just working with whatever skills and dispositions they possess to navigate the unknown. they too can harm without realizing and they too are capable of holding dialectics about their actions and the damage they may have caused. but parents aren't monolithic figures always deserving of our patience or forgiveness either. the trauma we are inflicted when we grow up can happen in the big blow up moments, but it's in the smaller details of everyday life where the scars set the deepest. the routines we fall in to escape the momentary suffering and hardships, the things we tell ourselves that are reflections of our surroundings, the way we wind up approaching the world are all borne out of the moments that feel monotonous and "neutral" to us growing up.
and it can be so difficult to untangle those webs when removed from those spaces and times. when decades have passed and those who touched us may be long gone. we are only left with the memories and who we have built ourselves up to be in the current moment to sort through it all. family is hard. finding your independence in an indifferent world is also hard. and you don't owe anybody anything. you just have to be true to yourself and what you find value in. don't let the world scare you out of believing in that.
Tokyo Fist (1995)
powerful
the rhythmic drum pounding at the center of this film's conflict beats so loud that it's almost hard to hear all the other magical elements peppering the images along the way. Shinya Tsukamoto knows how to direct raw unfiltered energy better than any other director and this film shines as brightly with that force as his other masterpiece Tetsuo: The Iron Man. equal parts sublime transcendence of female lead Hizuru, finding her independence amidst a war of attrition over her love, as it is an epic battle of desperation between two men's insecurities boiling over a don't-email-my-wife type of entanglement. just pure pulse soaring chaos and blind emotion. all coming back to those stormy nights and the darkness under that bridge. these are the elements that legendary cinema is made of. no notes.
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021) & Skinamarink (2022)
gonna talk about these two together because both represent a new wave of horror film to come from my generation and cater to the tastes of the generations following mine. "analog horror" is a concept that's easy for me to understand and that i've seen the evolution of in realtime. to me it feels like a throughline stretching from The Blair Witch Project to Paranormal Activity to Cloverfield to V/H/S to Slenderman and the rise of creepypasta to Five Nights At Freddies, modern ARGs and backrooms explainer videos on youtube. there's a lot more that has gone into it which could be a whole discussion on its own about online communities springing up in the 2010s whose reflections of nostalgia for the 90s and 2000s have been channeled into horror storytelling. but the main elements seem to translate to the shifting focus of the genre. feeling alone, feeling isolated, and feeling afraid in a world that is supposed to make you feel more connected to your surroundings than ever before.
the experience of watching both of these films this year was one of trying to understand this type of horror on its own terms. not trying to compare it to other movies, not trying to dissect how creepypasta can manifest as a feature film, but to simply feel whatever vibes are up there on the screen. a lot of people talk down on these movies, Skinamarink in particular, because their scares come from subtlety, they come from unease, and a sense of quiet discomfort. i think a number of interpretations can be drawn from that subtlety. to me it points to a uniquely modern kind of trauma being processed. a generation of young adults conditioned to be distrustful and scared of intimacy by years of interconnectivity having gross repercussions for affecting relationships with people and society at large. i think the anxieties of the internet generation are acutely reflected in both of these projects, and it's where most of their strengths lie. and i don't think the simplicity of their construction hinders that message from shining through either. the sensations here have direction, there is intentionality in the images and sounds. and even if analog horror isn't really my thing, i could still identify that connection. and i still respect and applaud the filmmakers for achieving it in their work.
The Man Who Left His Will on Film (1970)
when recalling speaking to Robert Redford about starring in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Nagisa Ōshima stated that he was "not interested in making films that can be understood in fifteen minutes." after watching this movie, i can certainly say he's achieved that goal as a director. and that is a positive statement.
The Man Who Left His Will on Film is a winding tale that circles in on itself and reflects the sociopolitical climate of japan following the dissolution of the counterculture movement of the 1960s. it's a movie about a group of communist college students and the obsession over footage of the death of one of their comrades. paranoia acts as a propellant for the narrative. most of the scenes are left to audience interpretation, opening up space to question what messages are drawn from the many metaphors on display. the camera is here utilized as a political tool and its images rendered as reflections of power. the physical object and abstract concept of said camera is as much of a character as our lead, or the filmmakers, or as us the audience. the landscape too becomes instrumental in understanding what these images are attempting to display. the mundanity of shots of houses and skies hold as much weight to proselytize as a direct political statement to the camera could. it's in this heady space where the scenery becomes ripe to pick apart. its ability to invite, practically beg, for projecting is one of the strongest suits of the film. that open embrace of metaphor and its powers is such a fascinating aspect of this project's construction.
it's honestly a pretty dense text, one that's fruitful to dig into if those kinds of open-ended questions intrigue you. if you see the medium as more than a vehicle for entertainment, and can recognize it as equally an instrument for developing and proliferating propaganda, then i think you'll get a lot out of The Man Who Left His Will on Film. i also think it's beautifully shot and the editing matches the elegance of its themes. just an overall supremely well-packed piece of cinema. hard as fuck title also.
Mysterious Skin (2004)
i love Gregg Araki. his works in the 90s are peak queer cinema to me and he has a keen eye for capturing intimacy and down-to-earth realness. also sick taste in music. but this movie is undoubtedly his masterpiece to me.
years of exploring the complicated dynamics of queer life through film have made him adept enough to unpack the topic of sexual violence in more nuance than most others approaching the topic would be able to capture. the way the experience of these two boys feels so hauntingly accurate to survivors unpacking abuse is a testament to Araki's ability to direct the audience towards a state of emotion, and to the amazing skill of the actors involved. to be able to engross you in what feels so heavy and unworldly to these characters. you too feel the mystery and misunderstanding and confusion and excitement and fear and frustration and anger and everything else the characters go through as their memories are unpacked later in adulthood. and the emotional labor is as honest and messy here as doing that kind of work is in real life.
we are all out here just trying to make sense of our surroundings. being groomed and abused and taken advantage of unfortunately happens all the time, in big and small ways that we are often unaware of until their impact has already been felt. we are all stronger than the trauma we have experienced, but we are also bonded to it. those are just as much our memories and building blocks of our personality as other moments in our lives. and we should treat them with the nuance and careful hand they deserve.
Woman In The Dunes (1964)
absolutely stunning work of psycho-thriller tension. meditative with its length that grips you tighter and tighter until it starts shaking you by the climax. gets under your skin in a way movies with shorter runtimes just don't have the means to. the titular woman in the dunes being less the main character and more the narrative thrust for a fable about the abusive man she finds herself with gives the story a folksy, biblical nature. there's such a wide reaching space of ideas here that what you connect to and pull from will speak volumes about your ideological values.
personally, i felt woman in the dunes scratched at how and why we construct who we are and what we believe in. it ponders why we settle into routines and wonders what our bona fides say about our character, and how we would act when those values are challenged. where and why do we find our rhythms? does settling into a hypothetical "self" bar us from exploring experiences outside our bubble? and also questions about the value of our labor. what are we giving to the environment around us and how is it benefiting us? how and where do we exert our energy? and do we do it by choice? there's so much more going on that i implore you simply to watch yourself to find your own meaning. but i think there's a great many wise decisions within the construction that make it more of an elder's tale than a specifically defined and plotted story. just a fascinating and well thought out piece. in leagues with works like Stalker and Seventh Seal for me.
Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)
hope it's not a cop-out to say, but i simply don't think i possess the language, the historical comprehension, or most of all the experiential relation to the type of queer life on display here to do it justice in a summation. so please, if you watch no other movie on this list, you must watch this one. it's very important. and she slayed.
By Hook or by Crook (2001)
legendary and kinda hard to find movie that deserves a much greater spotlight and place among the new queer cinema canon. it's a transgender buddy film about chosen family and the bonds that hold us together in the most precarious of circumstances. its characters are quirky and weird and their situations oddly obtuse and desperate, but that's what makes them relatable. i too know what life in poverty as a queer person is like. and although i don't know the specific struggles of these specific trans men, i do feel a kinship with their agony, fictional though it may be. the never ending series of attempted-scores that go awry all in service of just getting by another 24 hours. this is really what being on the fringes of society feels like, and they make for the strangest of encounters and connections to people.
and all of that strangeness is wonderful to bask in. this movie moves different. it's pacing, dialogue and editing are all pretty freeform and feel just as much a transcendence of the conventions of the medium as they do amateurish aberrations of the form. and i say that lovingly. you just can't create a film like By Hook or by Crook without there being more going on in your personhood than could ever be depicted by a major hollywood studio movie-by-committee mindset. it's a shame then that this film doesn't have a more widespread distribution, nor a whole lot of writing about it or the place it holds amongst its peers. aside from this wonderful article by Jo Barchi and this illuminating interview with the directors. i feel like all the movie needs is more eyes on it to gain the reputation it deserves right up there with Araki, Waters, Kassovitz and its contemporaries like Jenni Olson. currently the only ways to view the film are by renting it on amazon in abysmal quality (that you can't even screenshot without disabling hardware acceleration in your browser thanks to disgusting DRM) or buying an out of print DVD copy. i'm currently working on getting that DVD and giving it the highest quality rip i can, because there aren't even any torrents or bootleg youtube uploads of this thing out in the wild after nearly 25 years. she needs preservation and an HD remaster pronto. time to dust off those old DV tapes boys.
but until then, if you want to watch this movie please DM me cuz i got you.
Go (1999) & Groove (2000)
ever since i watched Human Traffic a few years ago, i've been curious what other films exist that have a focus on raving culture. fictional or otherwise. both of these little time capsules exist at a flashpoint between the peak of 90s uk raving and the weird and tough transitional clubbing years of the 2000s. they're also both american pictures, so we can see things from the oft-excluded perspective of us yanks across the pond who had to find weirder pockets of the country for our rave experiences back in the day. it's charming to see the old warehouses, the vinyl decks, the map points, the usenet flyer blasting, and of course all the wonderfully wacky outfits. kandi kids of san fran you will especially feel the nostalgia watching Groove.
but aside from aesthetic, these movies also capture the vibe of being at an all-nighter. now, Go is a teeny-bopper pulp fiction style flick where a warehouse rave is the central location and thrust of three branching plots, and Groove is more of a straightforward story about throwing and going to a rave from multiple perspectives. so each film is doing something slightly different with the general concept. but both accurately depict that type of experience. the drama, the excitement, the mystery, the thrilling rush of sensations, the ecstasy and euphoria. the comic relief gay couple that are weirdly humanized for the time because the environment is an open and welcoming one. it's all there and it just warms my gay little raver heart to see depicted on the big screen. and just like Human Traffic, both films have great soundtracks loaded with hot underground dance tracks that have almost all been forgotten by time.
more movies need to be about raves. if you have any movies you like that are about the culture or strongly feature a rave or ravers in them, please send them to me. i'm trying to build a repertoire as a seasoned rave movie expert.
Millennium Mambo (2001)
all too familiar this feeling... letting it all pass through you. pretending this is what you want. avoiding the discomfort and hoping things will sort themselves out so you don't have to. so you can live in that bliss and look back on these days as nothing more than a bump in the road. oh, to be caught up in a love that is an illusion. to be swallowed by your doubts and too afraid to voice your truth. i know this feeling. i've been here before. i've awoken to the sound of the train passing by my window early in the morning through the snow. could this feeling last forever? would i want it to? where did the year go and what are we going to do after this time has passed?
Hou Hsiao-hsien is a director i always knew i would like. and now i have to watch more of his movies. but i'm also afraid i may have started the show with a showstopper watching this first. i suppose time and more viewings will tell. i'm glad i waited until the 4k remaster dropped to watch tho, despite having a DVD rip at the ready for years. there's something about all those blues blown up on my projector that looked so magical watching in the night. can never pass up a movie that offers me another opportunity to yearn. ahhh...
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000)
counting this one even tho i didn't finish it until jan 1 of 2024 because i did watch the majority of it chapter by chapter during 2023. and it hit me so extremely hard and felt so very close to my heart that i just have to talk about it. so A: forgive me if these fresh thoughts are a bit more flowery than my writing already is and B: give me a break because this movie is just shy of 5 hours long.
what does it mean to watch your life flash before your eyes? As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty is a poetic memoir presented in an uncountable amount of images and comparatively select few poetic words. it's as personal as they come and as intimate as can be. it's a film i felt a deep emotional connection to and one that has fully reignited my passion for the medium.
for all the drama and emotional swelling a precisely written and edited and composed work can bring. for all the weight it can carry and pass onto me as a viewer. nothing to me could be so powerful as an expression of work, of a life's work, than to simply lay bare the nakedness of your everyday life. to share the mundane and the average and the routine that make up far more of your identity than the big moments you celebrate and remember vividly. to posit that "nothing happening" is what your life is made up of, and not in a nihilistic defeatist sense, but in a bare bones matter-of-fact (and honestly fairly casual) pragmatism. jonas mekas is more interesting and frankly brave than most filmmakers i respect in that assertion. he gets at what is so raw and gripping about the human experience than i think i could ever convey. and he does it with extremely simplistic tools. if you're unfamiliar, this film is 4 hours and 45+ minutes of a man talking directly into a microphone over an endless series of unsorted home movies strung together. on a purely presentation level, that's it. it's, you know, one of Those Kinds Of Movies.
this was the type of movie they showed me in film school. we had a particularly experimental-leaning curriculum and interest among the faculty, many senior members of which have direct ties with mekas and his sphere. we watched work that championed the poeticism of reflection and meditation. work that pondered how message was conveyed, what role artist and audience play in art, and what our conceptualization of the medium could be. being inundated with that kind of work naturally had a cooling effect on many early 20-somethings passing through the program expecting a more hands-on production experience. a lot of my peers did not appreciate what they were being taught, and i'm not afraid to admit that it took many a growing pain for me to be comfortable in that same environment too. but by the time it was all said and done i was profoundly thankful for the experience. many of that wonderful staff helped me find my creative voice and gave me so many different perspectives to view the world and my artistic endeavors with. i will always be grateful for that.
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty is exactly the kind of film that speaks to me personally and scratches that creative interest i found in film school. the kind of work that i have grown not just to love, but to cherish. it cracks at that core of my brain thirsty to explore new ideas, new perspectives. and it activates that emotional core permanently tangled to my identity. i am so very very happy that this film exists. and that its legacy persists. thank you jonas mekas for your words, for your sounds, and your images. thank you for the inspiration and thank you everyone else at every other moment of my life for helping me discover who i am, what i like, and how i move through the world.
I saw it in your eyes, in your love, you too are swinging towards the depths of your own being in longer and longer circles. I saw happiness and pain in your eyes and reflections of the Paradises lost and regained and lost again, that terrible loneliness and happiness. Yes, and I reflect upon this and I think about you, like two lonely space pilots in outer cold space, as I sit here this late night alone and I think about all this.
so that's about it. didn't watch as many movies as i would have liked. and watched a lot of things in pieces this year. just didn't always have the time or energy to devote to a complete sitting of a movie but could will the spirit to piecemeal things 20 or 30 minutes at a time. i recommend that, especially if you're the kind of person who wants to watch more movies but feel conflicted by the time investment. i know i'm gonna continue watching things that way this year. i also burned through some anime with my gf (and a lot of vanderpump rules lol) and am working my way through a rewatch of breaking bad too. so it's not like i was starved for moving images. video essays this year have also been fantastic. you know my ass was gobbling those up.
i am sad that i only got to 25 of the 67 films on my list of movies i was trying to prioritize watching this year (and also only 4 of the 35 i wanted to watch for halloween, yeesh). but so it goes. a lot of cinema i enjoy the most is slow and long and takes a stronger mental capacity to sit through than i had the will to muster most of the year. so i suppose it's no surprise that moments when i was unemployed were where most of my movie watching got done lol. but cheers to 2024, i'm already excited about what's new to see. thanks for reading and if you got this far: i love you. hope you're doing well.