Astonishingly Sane

new-to-me #579 - In die Sonne schauen (Sound of Falling)

I’ve always been willing to put in the hard work to experience difficult art, but the other side of that coin is that the artist has to make my effort worth it. This movie is not worth the work it takes to watch it. It is full of uncomfortable and disturbing imagery, but everything is played at such a distance that I was never moved, discomfited, or disturbed. On a technical level this is an achievement — it never looks or sounds less than great — but ugh this just isn’t for me.

Paul Mescal & Josh O’Connor photographed for “The History of Sound” © Ruven Afanador.

It is amazing how this captures the feel of a meandering biopic even though it is fiction. It wants to tell Lionel’s whole life story, even though this obscures the point of the movie. (Which is… the love story? Honestly it is not clear.) Going on a trip to preserve folk songs is a fascinating hook. The first three weeks of that trip shouldn’t have been glossed over, but Lionel’s later time in Europe should have been cut down to five minutes of screen time at most. The thing that makes this worth watching is the performances. Paul Mescal has a strong presence (and is unrecognizable clean-shaven with his hair combed back — motherfucker Clark Kented me), and Josh O’Connor creates the kind of archly effete character we now read as gay, but who people in the early 20th century would have just read as intellectual.

ー Lynne Ramsay

A twenty-first century Yellow Wallpaper. There was something inauthentic about Jennifer Lawrence’s performances in her heyday that kept me from unreservedly loving her, but with age and life experience she has really come into her own. Here she goes completely feral and it is as disturbing as it is compelling.

Kelly Reichardt - The Mastermind (2025)

There is an opaqueness to this, a distance from the characters, that is completely intentional but kept me from completely falling in love with it. JB keeps his thoughts and motivations close to the vest, so the audience has to try to piece together the little scraps of exposition we get. There is also clearly some statement being made about the Vietnam War, as is it gets more and more present in the narrative as the film goes on, but I’m not sure how exactly it fits in. One man’s solipsism being steamrolled by history? Josh O’Connor has become one of my favorite young actors, and he does great work with a tough character.

Ruth Chatterton "The Laughing Lady" (1929.)

ELLIOTT SMITH c. 1997

"Hors du Temps" d'Olivier Assayas avec Vincent Macaigne, Micha Lescot, Nine d'Urso, Nora Hamzawi, Maud Wyler et Dominique Reymond, juin 2024.

I appreciated this film most as a time machine back to the early days of COVID. It made me vividly remember Lysoling grocery bags and wearing surgical gloves when I had to be in public, before we had any solid information to go off of for how the virus was transmitted. I found the characters and their various reactions to lockdown recognizable, but none of them were too interesting as specific people. Their conversations and reflections were interesting enough, but the value for me in this film was being zapped back to March 2020.

This is not as good as Cooper’s other directorial efforts, but it has its strengths. Obviously, getting time at the Comedy Cellar is a big deal but I like that the movie doesn’t show Alex as immediately successful or honestly anything more than mildly funny. Nice story of people coming back together after discovering who they are. I guess there are marriages out there where partners don’t communicate for twenty years (especially since they keep coming up in movies), but I hashtag can’t relate.

What a great concept. The execution lets it down a little — there just wasn’t the budget to make the creatures true Lovecraftian horrors — but Sam Neill is selling the hell out of it. The ending is the absolutely perfect choice to drive it all home.

Anthony Perkins in Cannes, France, photos by Patrice Habans, May 18th, 1961. Tony was in France to attend the 14th Annual Cannes Film Festival where he won the Best Actor award for his sensitive performance in the United Artists/Anatole Litvak May-December romantic drama Goodbye Again (aka: Aimez-vous Brahms?).

I Walk Alone (Byron Haskin, 1947)

The Odyssey (2026)

Now will someone please give me a film adaptation of the Oresteia that is on this level?

This movie sucks. There are no laughs here. I would have thought the excess of Eurovision was ripe for parody, but the acts we see here are all pretty tame. The biggest problem, though, is Will Ferrell. He is still doing the same shtick as he has for almost thirty years, and it is starting to seem pathetic. Even Chaplin retired the Tramp character eventually. And this movie, which has very few things resembling jokes, lays bare the limitations of the Ferrell persona. He does not play likable people, but given a better script, this character can win you over. Here he is the villain of the movie, only the movie doesn’t seem to realize it. He is selfish without any redeeming qualities. The movie almost comes alive when he isn’t onscreen, particularly in the scenes between Rachel McAdams and Dan Stevens, two people with charm and charisma who are actually acting. (Put Dan Stevens in more things!) But even their efforts aren’t worth the time I spent watching this misfire.

just one moment let me have a quick little sippy before we continue fighting

Kay Francis photographed by Elmer Fryer, 1929