Motion Pictures at a Revolution

Whew, what a year! Before you take a look at the list, take a second and maybe donate to my friend Oday in Gaza. Thanks! The List Continue reading “Time Doesn’t Exist Yet It Controls Us Anyway”: 25 from 2025

24 from 2024 24. Blitz / Directed by Steve McQueen + Mothers’ Instinct / Directed by Benoît Delhomme 23. Monkey Man / Directed by Dev Patel  22. Late Night with the Devil  / Directed by Cameron Cairnes and Colin Cairnes + The Exorcism / Directed by Joshua John Miller 21. Starring Jerry as Himself / Directed by Law Chen + The Brutalist / Directed by Brady Corbet 20. Gaga Chromatica Ball /…

It’s still chilly enough to warrant at least a few layers and a winter jacket, and the grey skies that diffuse the sunlight into nature’s fluorescent office bulbs muster what energy they can to emulate something like daytime. It’s February 8th and I’ve put off writing something about my favorite films (or culture, if we want to be inclusive) of 2023 for a month and a half. The urgency wasn’t…

“Everybody’s Lookin’ for Something”: 21 from 2021

It was a long year of looking at the lives of others, and even one’s own life, as if through a glass pane, or a warped lens, the recognizable contorted into the surreal or the uncanny. A sprint to what was once quotidian and comfortingly banal tainted by a hideous awareness of the effort of it all to do just that. As what was considered, various privileges notwithstanding, “normal” melts memories…

All Those Glittering Years: On “Follies”, “Friends: The Reunion”, and the Road They Didn’t Take

Look at these people, Aren’t they eerie?Look at this party, Isn’t it dreary?I’m so glad I came— Sally, ‘Don’t Look at Me” from Follies (1971) The Friends set is not crumbling. The Russian dressing colored couch in Central Perk is not in tatters, and the moths haven’t eaten at the corners of its upholstery. The foosball table in Joey and Chandler’s apartment isn’t in pieces. The garish purple…

The Exterminating Angels: Fake Friends’ “This American Wife”

Inever wrote the essay about my sort of-ex that I had intended to, one that started out drawing the ironic comparison between his flawed communication style and inconsistent articulation of his desires with the fascination he had (which he then shared with me) in the flawed communication style and inconsistent articulation of desire, of the women on the Real Housewives of New York. It was…

Housewives, Interrupted: On Time, Memory, and the “Real Housewives of New York” Season 13 Premiere

For a brief moment, as it was both truly brief and momentary, The Real Housewives of New York returned to its quasi-anthropological (or at least by Bravo standards)/Lauren Greenfield-esque roots. In the premiere episode of its 13th season, the reality TV show paused to show us a reality that was beyond the grip of producers and could not be manicured or performed or contrived in the way that many…

In Sally’s Eyes: On Imelda Staunton’s “Losing My Mind”

In Sally’s eyes, as played by Imelda Staunton in the 2017 National Theatre revival of James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim’s musical Follies directed by Dominick Cooke, you can see madness, pain, a dream slipping through her fingers, curdling into nightmare. It’s Sally’s folly in the back part of the show, the ghosts of the past not so much stalking her, her pathetic and unfaithful husband Buddy,…

If U Seek Britney: On “Framing Britney Spears”

At a fairly pithy 74-minutes, The New York Times Presents: Framing Britney Spears articulates its desire to be about control even in its runtime. It hurriedly attempts to establish the authorship the pop star had in her early career, even within the confines of a misogynistic industry (“industry” here can mean so much), and the ways in which it was wrenched from her in a litany of ways and from a…

Like Me, Like Me, Don’t Retweet: “Malcolm & Marie” and “Fake Famous”

There is so much bait in Sam Levinson’s Malcolm & Marie (on Netflix) that every moment is an arch rachis, a streak of fakery on an angler, barely hiding the dull hook. As the film prods its characters to prod its audience, the aggressive and argumentative film continually vies for your attention and interrogation, invites you, and then shies away, resentful, when you’re ready to joust. Its hook…

“Promising Young Woman” Wants What “Lady Vengeance” Has

(CW: discussions of rape and sexual assault.) I don’t think it’s an accident that Anthony Willis’ string arrangement of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” sounds like a swarm of bees, the angry and volatile kind, conjuring a venom dipped revamp of the classic Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov composition. It’s the most dramatic attempt in Emerald Fennell’s film Promising Young Woman to (supposedly) invert the sugar…

“You Found Me”: On “Search Party”–Season 4

Spoilers ahead. The whites of Alia Shawkat’s eyes, despite their size, blind and flood the screen, in contrast with the actress’s olive skin tone, painted Seurat-esque with freckles, her head cut and her body dusted in soot. Her eyes, they’re cream-colored, a blank canvas, white enough that if you were to look into them, you would be staring into the other side. And you do, the blackened lungs…